Hello! Last October, we introduced the Magic Online Feedback Program with the goal of giving players an easy way to provide feedback on specific Magic Online features.

We ran two surveys last year, one for Prerelease Events and one for Leagues, and your feedback provided great insight on the types of things you are looking for in your event experiences. You've already seen the results of the Prerelease Events survey, so today I want to talk about the results from the Leagues survey, and show how your feedback from both surveys helped shape the Shadows over Innistrad Prerelease. Plus, we have a new survey for you (and if you want to skip ahead and take that survey, here is the link)

Creating a New Legacy

Only three Leagues were available when we ran the Leagues survey: Standard, Modern, and Pauper. In that survey, we asked how well these Leagues met your needs. Here were a couple results:

We have expanded our league offerings to additional formats with Sealed Deck Leagues. There are now competitive and friendly Leagues for both Standard and Modern. We've also added a Legacy League.

We're still evaluating other formats to see if they are a good fit for the Leagues structure—since Leagues require a minimum threshold of players to be successful, we may not be able to offer Leagues for every possible play type. Stay tuned to MTGO.com for the latest updates about your favorite formats, and please don't hesitate to get in touch with us either via Twitter or by emailing us at MagicOnlineFeedback@wizards.com.

Sealed Leagues and Prereleases: A Love Story

At the time we were reviewing your feedback, we knew that Sealed Leagues were coming—they had been testing great on the Closed Public Beta (Interested in helping make Magic Online awesome? Apply to the Beta today!), and we felt confident they would be a big hit when they launched. We were looking to integrate leagues into our prerelease offerings, and feedback on prerelease events reinforced our belief that they were a good match. In particular, we saw four major trends from your responses of things players were looking for that helped cement this decision as the right one:

1. Play Magic "On Demand"

The excitement for getting to play with new cards is at a premium, and it could be an agonizing experience under the old structure to wait for those last two people to finish their match so the next round could begin. On the flip side, some players wanted to enjoy the rush of a Prerelease but didn't have a several-hour chunk of time available to participate. Enter Leagues! The ability to find a game quickly and then decide whether or not to play the next game is probably the best part of Leagues.

2. Time to Learn Cards

One of the questions we asked during the Prerelease survey was "What is the ideal deck building time for the Prerelease?" Results were pretty split—some players wanted more time, some wanted less time. Leagues are again powerful here with their untimed deck building. This structure allows those who haven't seen the cards and want to read them thoroughly the time to do so at their leisure. Meanwhile, folks who already have several battles under their belts can start playing as soon as they click Submit.

3. Change Decks

We often try to make our experiences mirror paper Magic as closely as possible. One of the great things about in-person Prereleases is that you can change your deck between rounds if you feel like your build isn't the best one. Previously, players weren't able to do that on Magic Online. With Leagues, you can create as many decks as you want and switch between them at any time between games.

4. Better Prizes

Many players told us they just skipped Prerelease events because they didn't like the prize structure. Others told us that the subtle difference between Prerelease and Release Events made it difficult to know which events to participate in. That's certainly not the reception to Prereleases we wanted. To simplify the offerings, we changed the event and prize structures so Prerelease events are now "regular" events with bonus cards and/or avatars, making them better than the regular events that follow. If you want more details on these changes, feel free to check out Lee Sharpe's Shadows over Innistrad Prerelease article.

The Survey Continues!

We're going to keep looking for opportunities to both gather your feedback, though we're going to make sure our cadence allows us to show you how that feedback impacted the changes we've made on Magic Online.

On that note, we've got a new survey for you today! If you have 10 to 15 minutes, please take our latest survey to let us know your thoughts about the MTGO.com website and how we can improve it. In the meantime, if you have any comments about the feedback program, the new Prerelease structure, or anything else about Magic Online, please drop us a line at MagicOnlineFeedback@wizards.com!

—Brandon Kreines