Editorial Section:
First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for the great feedback from last week's article.  I learned a lot from the comments and discussion and will be taking sometime soon to really apply the discussion and probably take another crack at the MB breakdowns. 

This week's editorial section is going to be a bit different than my usual fare, as I have a bunch of little items that I picked up while in Renton.  And while each is interesting, many of them just aren't big enough to really support a full editorial section on their own.  So I will list them all out and provide a bit of context and details as needed.

Quick hits -
In regards to OP's stance of sanctioning Standard Pauper: The format is too small and too easy to figure out, and it's not really in line with what they want for OP.  Don't expect it any time soon, if ever, sorry folks.  I'm sure Alex/SpikeBoyM will have more details later.  Essentially, in a nutshell, if the format has prizes on the lines the decks would boil down to the best deck very quickly, and the rest of the time would be very boring and stagnant.  This happens even in a full Block constructed format.  Like Jund in last year's Alara Block.  By the end, it was the clear best deck and not much could really race it.  As such, the format stagnated and began to whither.  That's what they'd expect from Standard Pauper.

In regards to MOCS: OP is evaluating the layout of the MOCS tournament structure and will very likely have some changes about how it works for next season.  Probably with some steps to reduce the 'grinding' aspects of the current program.  As grinding into wins doesn't really promote the aspects or play experience of MTGO that they want to promote.  I agree with this change as I understand it.  I look forward to whatever changes Mike and company announce for the next season.

In regards to MOCS 2009: Organized Play did indeed check into the top players of MOCS as far as they could, with obvious limitations.  Everything was on the up and up with what they could investigate.

In regards to the Community Cup: Mike Gills is the man behind the MTGO Community Cup, thanks Mike, this was awesome!

In regards to the Community Cup: Playing Magic/MTGO for two days straight is a lot of work/stress.  To quote danger "I just want to stop playing now...".

In regards to MTGO: MTGO really is the focus for many people in the company, and it's hard to find a place that didn't have UI shots of the new client, along with proposed changes/mockups that we haven't seen before.  (No pictures allowed, sorry! But it's still looking cool!)

In regards to Organized Play: Mike Gills really knows his stuff.  The way his mind works when discussing tournaments, point scoring schemes, etc is hands down remarkable.  There's a reason he's turned the MTGO Tournament environment around so quickly.  I learned a lot in three days that I'll soon be applying to my PureMTGO clan. (Which reminds me.  Clannies!  We had a lot of people interested in Small Set Block Constructed.  Let's get to work on that, the format is really good right now.  U/W has a decent match-up against Vamps)  Look for me to start a playtest session in the /join puremtgo room soon).

In regards to MTGO inside of WotC: More WotC's need to play MTGO.  But considering they can play paper Magic at work any time they want, I can understand the lack of playing at home or on MTGO.  Still, I'd like to see more of them on the client from time to time. 

In regards to stalking: The 'invisible' feature should be granted to ALL players, not just WotC's/Orc's.  So handy.

In regards to 8th Edition: Shiny 8th edition bad cards are way cooler than non-shiny 8th edition bad cards (Really?  Skull of Orm?  Why did we get this as a reprint?)

In regards to Momir: Momir BASIC is as fun and frustrating as I remember it being.  The giant tournament will be a blast of yelling, cursing, screaming and laughing.  Just like Momir Basic should be.

In regards to "Holla!": Seeing Matt Tabak yell 'Holla!' is worth his weight in gold.

In regards to "MULTIBALL!": Yelling 'MULTIBALL' is super fun, but does create headaches after about six hours.  Completely worth it though.  A+++ meme, would yell again.

In regards to WotC's playing: Watching WotC's play competitively with something on the line is really fun.  They don't often get to exercise that aspect of playing once they work there.  Serious WotC's are serious.

In regards to WotC's playing:  MTGO allowed for far more diversity of the WotC opponents.  And by that I mean that they could take people with minimal rules/game knowledge and set them down with someone to help with the interface and the program would handle all the upkeep stuff like shuffling, counters, triggers, etc.  All those little things helped make things go smoothly.

In regards to WotC's playing:  MTGO doesn't actually have cause more 'mistakes' than paper Magic.  MTGO allows misclicks, etc, but paper allows missed triggers, missed effects, etc... just different mistakes than you'd have in paper but not actually any more than the other.

That's a lot of "in regards to..."'s, which is kind of a weird way of attempting to tie a whole bunch of unrelated data together with some semblance of a theme.  A lot of these pieces of information were gathered through just hanging out and talking with various people at Wizards of the Coast, and having gotten to spend a lot of time with the people who get to help make this great game. 

While at WotC's headquarters it was suggested that I pay attention to the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference this week... for "no reason what-so-ever".  I was also directed to keep an eye out for a specific keynote regarding Silverlight 4. 
For the record, some key features of Silverlight 4 from the Keynote include:

• Continued Mac and Windows support
• Right Click
• Mouse Wheel
• Webcam/microphone support
• Programmatic access to clipboard and printing (copy/paste from Silverlight to, say, another program)
• Rich Text Support
• Drag and Drop.  Drop a deck to open?  Drop a csv to load a trade?
• Run 'out of browser', Like a regular application not tied to a web page.
• Windowing API
• Notification pop-ups, HTML Support, Drop Target
• "Trusted" applications that run outside of the current 'sandbox'.
• Access to the local file system
• Access other sites on the internet
• Full keyboard support
• On Windows COM Automation to run other programs... programmatically talk to MS Office, etc.  Probably not used here, but still pretty neat.
• Faster than Silverlight 3
• Complete control of the application look while running out of browser.
• Silverlight SDK for Facebook.
• Support for multi-touch enable screens... you might actually be able to, gasp, 'play' the cards!

I don't know how much of this functionality will be utilized in MTGO.  But I'm sure that some of this will be used from the get-go.  For example, right click, mouse wheel, 'outside of browser', Windowing API and notifications and Drag and Drop all jump out at me.  Also, the integration with web cams and microphones means that just maybe I'll be able to chat with my clan mates and buddies from within the client in the not too distant future.

Discussion Items:

Downtime on Tuesday:
Due to Thanksgiving here in the states, the downtime will be on TUESDAY instead of the typical WEDNESDAY!  Be ye warned!

Announcement:
I'd definitely like to thank Paul for his email to me about the lack of exposure that these blog posts on mtgonline.com have been getting.  Granted, some of them are pretty sparse for information, but this is the place to go if you ever want to see where the MTGO downtime posts are going.

Most everything else revolves around the "3.5" UI, and the Millibot issues... Silverlight Discussion #1, Silverlight Discussion #2, Milibot Issues; for those who may not have seen them the first time around.

Below are some announcements that I felt everyone should be more aware of... (copied from the WotC boards)

Price Discussion:
Oh what a difference that Worlds can make.  For those who don't keep up with paper Magic very much, this week is Worlds in Rome which is being run in the Standard format.  As such, the price of lots of Standard cards have gone through a great deal of flux.  Cards like Elspeth, Master of the Wild Hunt, Nissa and Eldrazi have gone up quite a bit thanks to recent popularity in Standard.  I'm guessing that Undiscovered Paradise has found a home in Classic as it was tied with Elspeth for the top weekly increaser.

Baneslayer, on the other hand, has led this weeks price decreasers, most of which are pretty straight-forward.  Either they are unused Standard, Extended or Classic cards, or cards that are weaker than other cards in their respective formats. 

The first price graph is one that I keep making but forgetting to include in the article each week.  It's the Expected Value of an average draft of a specific format.  This allows you to see the most potentially profitable format for your drafting considerations.

Prices Tables:

Price Charts:

undiscovered paradise chart
elspeth, knight_errant chart
nissa revane chart
eldrazi monument chart
emeria angel chart
master of the wild hunt chart
sphinx of the steel wind chart
ajani vengeant chart
day of judgment chart
greater auramancy chart
emeria angel chart
oracle of mul daya chart
sphinx of lost truths chart
valakut, the molten pinnacle chart
undiscovered paradise chart
the rack chart
greater auramancy chart
telemin performance chart
dauntless escort chart
mycoid shepherd chart
baneslayer angel chart
avatar _ serra angel (alt.) chart
protean hydra chart
mutavault chart
dark depths chart
tezzeret the seeker chart
felidar sovereign chart
vendilion clique chart
twincast chart
goblin guide chart
avatar _ armament master chart
protean hydra chart
hypnotic specter chart
eternity vessel chart
wooded bastion chart
flame javelin chart
goblin guide chart
mystic gate chart
lorthos, the tidemaker chart
haunting echoes chart

Tournament Stuff:

Dailies:

Premier Events:

Weekend Events:

Conclusion:
I updated the weekend event charts to correctly state that they require SIX tickets instead of TEN tickets. Thanks to rainin6 for the correction!  Also, as Harpist pointed out, the name of my 16 Player Swiss Queue was incorrect and could have led to confusion from the players.  I have corrected this, thank you Harpist!  My apologies to anyone for any confusion I may have caused!

I'll probably re-touch the Myers-Briggs profiles again in the next few weeks, but as last week's article took about three weeks of prep work the next one might be a couple more weeks away.  However, I definitely intend on following up on that article with what I've learned.  A lot of great discussion and information is contained in the comments of last weeks State of the Program, and I thank you all for sharing your details!

See you in seven!
~Erik