Meeting with Microgaming

[Casinomeister]

I'll be meeting with Microgaming at the Isle of Man in the next couple of days, and if you have any constructive suggestions or comments you'd like me to share with them, please post them here and I'll bring them to the table.

[uungy]

Would be interesting to know if they have they taken any steps recently to prevent casinos disappearing into the big black hole.

I think Microgaming should have give a new casino the choice of either being licensed by a reputable licnese such as the UK licensing or Kahnawake (who seem to be pulling their act together of the late) and Alderney, failing that, they ought to have a "reserve" with Microgaming, the funds wont be used for arbitration, but only in the event they go belly up.

[De Beuker]

Thats great!

The biggest problem I have with MG are the softwarechanges that made the older games almost unplayable when beeing on anything less than a quadcore with a dedicaded 512MB or more videocard.

All other software runs just fine on my PC, the new Marvell games from Playtech run superfast and smooth, and these are also graphic intensive.

I know there are many, many complaints, as even now there are still MG casinos refusing the updates (like Fortune Lounge and Casino Rewards), so I really wonder if anything is done about this.

Microgaming used to be the fastest and smoothest playing software, now they are by far the worst playing software.
I've upgraded my pc, from a single core Celeron (on which MG ran just fine until November last year) to a dualcore, but its still crap.

I really hope they are going to do something about it, so that I can enjoy games like Stash of the Titans, Little Chief, BDBA, and Jolly Jester the way I used to do.

Thanks in advance!

[spiderlegz]

What uungy said.

Plus any comments why they directed skins (at least RedNines) to TUSK/MPP when "everyone" should have seen that it was slowly being drained out of money. How much rake did they get from the TUSK poker players over the years?

And why they had no problems allowing Linx Group opening a casino (Linx casino) when the whole group was close to bust. How much rake did they get from the Eurolinx poker players over the years? (BetOnBet was "too fresh" in the Linx stable)

Apparently they do zero due diligence on tho whom they license their software. Is that going to change? E: so that we dont see any new multimillion fiasco in the future.

[gloria460]

What if anything they are going to do about the Amercan players. How is it still possible to play in a MCG casino but be denied excess to new games and progressives? It doesn't make any sense..what if an American player hit a big sum on one of the slots?... they would find a way to pay him so either deny all American players or let us have everything.

[denamoutz]

YA!!!! allow US players

[maphesto]

I'll be meeting with Microgaming at the Isle of Man in the next couple of days, and if you have any constructive suggestions or comments ...

A few small things. Not extremely important but just a bit annoying when almost everything is 10/10 when it comes to amusement factors. I have read a lot here and there the past months, some of the comments are my own..

Players from U.S.? Grand Prive? Not ok! I don´t mean moaning about new games and those things. Affiliates have to be paid!

Paytables at slots, the paytables sometimes say things that is not true if you read the more detailed one. One example is Alaskan Fishing where the paytable clearly says: ALL wins are doubled during free spins when bonus game wins are not doubled.

Casino software: I can see the advantages with the new software, but it still runs slow on most computers. It doesn´t look as nice as the old one either. I can guess that there is a better one coming but I prefer the old one so far. The new one looks blurry compared to the old.

Casino tournaments: Many players find it odd that you can play same tournament several times just because you can log in to a different casino and play again. Players compare this with two users at a poker table.

[Roanan]

My question should be an obvious one:

Why does Microgaming continue to allow people to use multiple accounts/skins to register for the SAME TOURNAMENTS, thus cheating the legitimate players out of a fair shot at winning?

[vinylweatherman]

What about the old games that were taken down. In JANUARY I was told by an operator that there was a problem with these games and the new lobby tabbed gaming feature, in that if one (or more) of these 8 games was being played in a tabbed environment, the overall balance was not tracked correctly. I was told this would be fixed in "about 2 weeks", and the games would return.

These games are STILL present in EVERY casino using the old lobby, but have NOT returned to the rest. This is more like 2 MONTHS, rather than 2 weeks. It seems par for the course, the other issues with the new lobby ONLY working well on "supercomputers" has been around just as long, yet there is STILL no sign of a corrective patch, despite there having been 2 further monthly updates.

This week, I noticed that the 8 games have returned at Grand Mondial, AND on the new tabbed lobby. Presumably the balance tracking issues were recently fixed, so WHY ARE WE WAITING for this to be rolled out across the board?

Ultimately, many of these issues are down to the complete lack of information coming out of MGS about the software, and upgrades. The technical troubleshooting advice is YEARS out of date, and refers to the early Viper software, and even the earlier Thumper lobbies. Nearly all of the information is useless. There is NO WAY that Viper works on the so called min PC specifications quoted, even machines at the top end more than 2 years old have considerable problems.

Players attempting to upgrade their kit, or purchase new kit, have no idea what is needed. Some are going quad core, some are increasing RAM, and others are going for better video cards. MGS are saying NOTHING about which of these will be worthwhile, and which are just a waste of money.

Going quad core is probably one of the "waste of money" upgrades, since unless Viper is coded with multiple core support, it will make little or no difference. A better video card may be the best way, but how big? There is no guidance as to how much graphics memory the Viper client needs to run the full 5 tab experience - the obvious upgrade would be to a card that has all the required memory "on board", rather than have the software using the paging file, or system RAM, to support the graphics. In turn, this may mean that a poor video card causes so much RAM and paging file space to be grabbed by the software, that the PC as a whole slows right down.

The vast majority of players will be using "off the shelf" PCs, and only a few will have the high end gaming machines that already have the best of everything. The players with these high end machines are probably the ones saying "problems, what problems, the new lobby works fine for me".

MGS tournaments - when these were new, they played much, much, faster than now - currently, they are far too slow to be entertaining. Too much time is spent waiting for the result. When I play, I expect to be able to hit the "spin" button as fast as I can, and for the game to keep up with me. This DOES happen in the normal lobby versions of the games, but no longer in the tournament versions. The struggle to keep pace with MY spin rate often has the tournament server disconnecting me for short periods of a few seconds, btu sometimes it's a full disconnect, with a boot from the game, and inability to reconnect. The roll out of more servers ahead of the "Grand Slam" has made ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE to performance. It seems MGS simply added to the load through other changes, most notably now allowing one entry per casino, rather than per person, which has more than taken up the extra capacity from the new servers.

I hardly play the MGS tournaments now, but I once played them regularly, and PAID for many of them too!

[Mavin1]

Pretty much been said here. Hate the querky, jerky slow crawling spins. Hate the long load and refresh between every game, I can go make lunch waiting on some games to load. Hate hearing the fan in my computer kicking on everytime I play.