They have "serious" draft leagues which are single elimination. Prizes to just 1st and 2nd. That's probably what LSV was playing. It could also be a special event (Streamer Showdown?).
The current set can only be drafted in leagues. I agree that this sucks. I stopped drafting for a few months when this change happened. I believe that the previous set can be drafted in a Swiss league (6-2-2-2).
The advantage to the current format is in speed. You can draft and knock out your 3 games in a lot less time. This is particularly popular to those who Twitch or create draft videos. There was a lot written about this when the change first happened, including WotC posts covering their rational.
New leagues are different from the old leagues. There's no such thing as tie breakers. You play at your own pace, there's no such thing as matches per week. You can read more about leagues here and here.
I always save a screen shot of my deck when drafting. But, you should also be able to find your deck in the decks section of the collection window. For draft and sealed, I think it might be under freeform. I'm not sure exactly where because I've never needed to do this.
What is "freeform Commander"? Freeform is any deck you want, including one with 40 Lightning Bolts. However, I'm a bad reference for tips about playing constructed. I haven't done that in years, just limited now.
The trick is finding another like-minded player who want to play against whatever deck you built. If Commander is your passion, try to find a Clan or other group of people with the same interests. Buddy them to help identify when they are online.
You definitely should no buy booster packs. I think they have had pre-built commander decks in the store, but I'm not sure if they still do. I don't have access to the game right now to check.
Even if they don't have pre-built decks for sale, there's a large online commerce in selling singles. You can buy them from a store's website and then trade in-game to pick up your purchase. You can pay with paypal (often for a slight discount) or event tickets. If you use event tickets, you need to buy the tickets from the MTGO store before hand and make them tradable. Then, when you open a trade with the store's (usually) automated system, they will pick the tickets and you pick your cards.
Note that online cards are much cheaper than for paper. Most online rares cost pennies. Many mythics are less than $1.
PM me if you'd like online seller recommendations. There are a couple that I've been using for years.
You can configure the client to save your draft picks when you draft. These are saved as a text file on your local computer. That's the closest thing there is to what you ask, short of people uploading their picks to some sort of draft archive server.
New article by Chris Cocks (President, Wizards of the Coast). Related to this thread, it mentions:
We are reimagining digital versions of Magic and other Wizards games. We recently created the Digital Games Studio, a group of all-stars led by industry veteran Jeffrey Steefel. Jeffrey's team includes experienced Wizards game designers and industry talent from Dire Wolf Digital, Valve Corporation, Cryptic Studios, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Activision, BioWare, and many others. The Magic Online team is now included in this group, as well as digital art and game design. They're all thinking about how players might tap mana and prepare spells in the future, and I can't wait for you to see what they're working on.
I disagree that "most players on mtgo are pro". There are 1,000's of players. Maybe many of them want to be pro...
They are already driving people away. This happens each time they drop support for a play format or event type or make some other cost-cutting change. I don't like draft leagues, so I stopped drafting once Kaladesh came out.
I'm not a pro, but I've been playing mtgo since day one. Or, rather, I used to play. Its been a month or so now...
I run Windows 10 on my Mac using Parallels. I have .NET version 3.5 and 4.6 installed. Maybe you need to upgrade .NET? I'm not a Windows expert, this is just a guess.
You might have been disconnected. Your clock would keep ticking down on its own. There were also some lag problems over the weekend. See this twitter post for more info.
The advantage to the current format is in speed. You can draft and knock out your 3 games in a lot less time. This is particularly popular to those who Twitch or create draft videos. There was a lot written about this when the change first happened, including WotC posts covering their rational.
New leagues are different from the old leagues. There's no such thing as tie breakers. You play at your own pace, there's no such thing as matches per week. You can read more about leagues here and here.
The trick is finding another like-minded player who want to play against whatever deck you built. If Commander is your passion, try to find a Clan or other group of people with the same interests. Buddy them to help identify when they are online.
Even if they don't have pre-built decks for sale, there's a large online commerce in selling singles. You can buy them from a store's website and then trade in-game to pick up your purchase. You can pay with paypal (often for a slight discount) or event tickets. If you use event tickets, you need to buy the tickets from the MTGO store before hand and make them tradable. Then, when you open a trade with the store's (usually) automated system, they will pick the tickets and you pick your cards.
Note that online cards are much cheaper than for paper. Most online rares cost pennies. Many mythics are less than $1.
PM me if you'd like online seller recommendations. There are a couple that I've been using for years.
They are already driving people away. This happens each time they drop support for a play format or event type or make some other cost-cutting change. I don't like draft leagues, so I stopped drafting once Kaladesh came out.
I'm not a pro, but I've been playing mtgo since day one. Or, rather, I used to play. Its been a month or so now...