What is this website for?
What is the history of Magic Interactive Encyclopedia?
I bought MIE after Feb 2003. What did I miss out on?
What is the history of this site?

What is this website for?

This website is for players to meet and play using Magic Interactive Encyclopedia or MTGPlay. Players can learn more about using the programs and updating their Magic card databases with the latest card sets.

What is the history of Magic Interactive Encyclopedia?

On December 1998, an agreement was signed between Saltmine Creative and WotC to develop Magic Interactive Encyclopedia. The CD-ROM program went on sale on November 1999. It was a designed as an expert tool with encyclopedia, search engine, inventory database, and online play. The program was criticized early because of a few flaws. These were fixed with a program patch released on December 1999. And as new card sets were released, WotC provided updates for MTGIE. On October 2000, another program patch was released that added several program enhancements. (This patch was later combined into one patch - it is listed as a December 1999 patch but totals 9MB in size.)

MTGIE did not receive much promotion. Few Magic players know of its existence. WotC did announce a beta preview of the product at GenCon, August 1999. However, there does not seem to be any other announcements of the game. MTGIE's official main page is located at WotC's site.

WotC provided many download updates with card sets, rulings, prices, and even pre-constructed decks. A small launcher program was also made available for players to play each other over a LAN.

Sometime before June 2001, WotC had stopped production of Magic Interactive Encyclopedia. A Magic player had inquired about the game and received a response from a WotC representative saying that the game production had stopped. Later, a statement from WotC said that card set updates would be continued to be provided until an improved version of MIE was released. Also, there would be no more updates or improvements to the program code.

Typically, card set updates were released for download within a week of a card set's real life release. WotC failed to produce an update for Torment until 3 months after the set had been released on February 2002. Because of the late release, players wondered if WotC would stop support for MIE. As already stated by WotC back in June 2001, WotC would continue to support MIE until it had been replaced by an improved version. Magic Online was that replacement. On November 2001, WotC announced its plans to develop Magic Online with Leaping Lizard Software. Magic Online went through beta testing starting February 2002 before being officially released on June 2002.

In early December 2002, the WotC officially declared that it would stop supporting Magic Interactive Encylopedia at the end of 2002. Despite WotC's discontinued support, players around the world continue to use MIE because of its searchable card database and online play capabilities.

I bought MIE after Feb 2003. What did I miss out on?

If you bought MIE after Feb 2003, then you did not experience using the chatroom that WotC provided when WotC still supported MIE. The MIE program attempts to access the chatroom when you click on "Start Game" at the playtable screen. The URL was http://rogue.wizards.com/webapp/mtgonline/login.asp but it does not work anymore. There is no notice of discontinued support - the webpage simply does not exist anymore.

The WotC chatroom was a place to meet and play against other MIE players. The WotC server was able to link 2 players to a Magic game. Sometimes the server was not able to link players so players would use a program called Sidestep to link instead.

WotC provided separate chatrooms for varying types of players: Open, Standard (Type 2), Classic (Type 1), and Sealed Deck. Traffic in the chatroom usually varied from 0 to 40 people. With so few players meeting at any given moment, everyone would just meet in the Open room and then tell others what type of game they were looking to play.

Some players would use MIE, but some liked to use an alternative interface program called MTGPlay. MTGPlay uses the same card database and decks built in MIE. For some, MTGPlay's key feature was its support for multiplayer games. Its easy-to-use interface became popular with players. And with constantly improving features, MTGPlay became the favorite program to use. Players would simply meet in the same chatroom, but then play each other using MTGPlay.

What is the history of this site?

This site started off as a tutorial site for new players to use Sidestep and learn some of the features of MIE. Some new owners were having a difficult time understanding MIE and how to play. This site allowed players to download Sidestep and learn more about MIE.

This site also began offering an alternate chatroom for times when the WotC chatroom was not working. Few players knew of this website though. So when the WotC chatroom failed to work, only a handful of players started to meet here.