Editorial Section:
In case you missed it, which I wouldn't be surprised about, there was a simply amazing MTGO Status post on the MTGO Group's Forum. Not to be confused with the MTGO Forums, or the MTGO Group Blog.... from Gordon Culp where he gives a great new status update. The original thread can be found here: MTGO Group Forum.
"Magic Online Development Update:
Summary: Progress on our two long term development projects is going well and staying on schedule. The Dev, Ux, Production and QA teams are fully staffed and have succeeded in keeping the production system healthy and growing, while keeping the long term projects on schedule. Leagues continue to be an unscheduled project as we have to keep working on infrastructure to support the large amount of user growth that is occurring in Magic Online."
Between the lines version: they've been working all this time, and the progress that we don't see is the stability we've enjoyed. Instead of V2, where they worked to keep it from imploding, they're now working to keep it healthy. The latter is much easier to achieve than the former, I'd imagine. It's easy to overlook the stability we've had as 'about time', since this is how it's supposed to be. As you read onward however, it should become apparent how much work they must be doing based on many inefficiencies are still lurking in the infrastructure.
"New Client: The first of four design phases will complete October 9. Phase 1 will be the most lengthy phase, and will have produced a complete design for the duel scene. The deliverable for each design phase include a functional prototype, extensive wire-frames and very detailed specifications. We will be bidding out the construction of the new client to external resources. Our intention is to have all four design phases complete by the middle of 2010. The community will get to see the duel scene design in some form before the end of October. We are using the User Centered Design process, so usability studies and feedback from any other use of the prototype will drive further refinements or changes to the design. But we will have achieved a complete duel scene design in a couple of weeks from now. We are currently prototyping using Silverlight, but I must stress that a final platform decision for the client has not been made. Construction time, cost, WotC’s overall digital strategy, and the availability of qualified development resources will factor in the final platform decision."
I added the emphasis that has been woefully overlooked by anyone commenting so far, as it seems kind of insignificant at first glance. However, Silverlight is a cross platform browser plug-in similar to Adobe's Flash. Have you caught the interesting point yet? Cross. Platform. As in, there are Mac plug-ins, and possibly even Linux adaptations of the Silverlight platform. And even though Gordon threw out a Loxodon sized caveat about it maybe not staying that way... this may very well be the best chance for the Mac players to get a native MTGO client of their very own. Of course, this is subject to all the concerns that Gordon mentioned at the end, but still, this is the first promising possibility for a Mac uprising that we've seen in... well... ever. Make your voices heard in the linked forum thread!
Besides that, we're looking at a usable prototype THIS MONTH. If at all possible, I'll hound the WotC's at Austin to allow me to grab some screen shots/etc of the UI and duel scenes. Wish me luck!
"Infrastructure Update/Single Managed User Connection: This project is on schedule to complete before the end of the year. 3/4s of the dev work is complete, and half of the testing effort. We have 5 distinct application server classes currently, and 3 of 4 have been rewritten to work with a single managed connection, as well as to be maintainable and extensible. This work must be completed before the collection server can be constructed and deployed. This project will make constructing the collection server considerably easier."
They've been working on this for a long while now, and being done by the end of the year is a great thing for the reasons that were stated. Moving to this type of setup up should put an end to any of the 'I was chatting but disconnected' nonsense we've had to deal with since V3 launched.
"Collection Server: Design and prototyping are underway for the collection server. It is targeted to be in beta in Q2 and released for early Q3 2010. All out development will begin no later than January 2010. We have all the needed resources on staff to complete it on time, with some chance that work can begin before the end of the year."
This has long been our Holy Grail. The one thing that we've been waiting for that will fix so much and enable us to move forward... kind of sounds like what V3 was promised to be.... It's the piece of the puzzle that will allow the program to get to the next level of stability and expandability. A less temperamental collection server would remove the issues of trading cards you just got from an event, re-trading cards you just bought, etc. Lots of these little things that add up to a very frustrating trade experience. I'm curious as to what they beta process for this will include, as it's going to take some heavy pounding to find the cracks as well as very intricate testing since it's going to be directly in charge of maintaining the cards in everyone's accounts. Of all the changes slated for being released, this is the one that makes me nervous. Even a small bug or glitch could severely impact the users in huge ways.
"Stability & Growth: The number of users and the amount of activity on the system has continued to grow steadily this year. The system is now supporting considerably more user activity than 2.5 ever did in terms of games, tournaments, drafts, trades, store deliveries, and such. A lot of work has gone into keeping the system performing well at these increased load levels while the larger infrastructure projects are being worked. We have managed to succeed in this area without slowing down the schedules for the infrastructure work. A lot of smaller scale optimizations have combined to keep the system running well under increasing load. "
I'll be honest. Stability has been far, far better under V3 than any time I can remember on V2.5 (from Darksteel to the end). And while this is something that should 'just work', it's also something that always take time effort and resources. The amount of effort being directly related to the efficiency or inefficiency of the product in question. The worse the product, the more 'incidental' work needed to keep it afloat. The good news is that whatever they've been doing, it's been working well for a while now. The bad news, well, the bad news is obvious. Every hour spent propping up the current solutions is an hour stolen from the new work that will fix it. Luckily the new work is still moving ahead. However, the work would be so much faster if the current version was already more self-stable.
"Leagues: Leagues are currently in the 2011 plan. If I can find a way to deliver Leagues earlier and still ensure that the system can support the anticipated growth in activity, I will do so. The next challenge for growing system capacity after the collection server is deployed will be match/game starts. The collection server will raise the bar on how many users can enjoy being on the system significantly, but then the challenge will become validating decks for ownership and for the game format, and getting matches started for an increasing number of users. As with Escrows, the original design relies on too many database calls to resolve deck list comparisons against relatively static data (format rules and the card sets). Even the match records themselves do not need to persist in the database through their transient state, just the starts and finishes need to be in the DB. Deck list data is also stored inefficiently in the DB, with complete submissions being stored as XML rather than just deltas as sideboarding occurs during matches. This has led to too much growth in data size. Archiving has helped to date, but isn’t a long term solution. The studio’s feature and infrastructure development capabilities continue to steadily improve as we add and ramp up new staff. Our content and game rules development is already very efficient and has delivered solid card sets and enhancements throughout 2009. The pace of development has already picked up, and will continue to do so throughout 2010."
Ouch. Rough beats for League players. 2011 is a long, long way off. There's not much else to say about leagues though so I'll pick out a few pieces of juicy new info.
1) The downtimes are probably when the "archiving" is run.
2) Each deck, and deck change, is stored as XML in the DB.
I'll touch on each of these in turn. First, the "minimum" four hour downtime is making a lot more sense all of the sudden. Archiving out all the decks from the old deck submissions is likely the bottleneck for these downtimes.
Secondly, I love XML. For handing off data between apps, services, etc... it's a godsend. However, its verbosity is a major problem when it comes to mass storage or retrieval or heavy transferring... which is what WotC has now learned the hard way. Being able to transfer and export XML as needed is important, but it's way too problematic when it's being used like it evidently is. This is why relational databases exist after all. You shouldn't have to store XML in your own DB for your own apps to read. That's horribly slow and inefficient. You don't need to define your data when it's your data. XML export = good. Storing, using, and transferring XML for everything = bad. Generally speaking. To illustrate the problem let's mock up some pseudocode/cases.
You join an event, get a sealed pool, build a deck.
Open Packs
Add cards to player's account (yes, this happens when you join the event. You just don't get the pop-up until the end.)
Player Builds the deck.
Player submits the deck.
In theory, what SHOULD happen is that an object is passed from the Client to the Server that has Player.Name, .Account, .MainDeck, .Sideboard. MainDeck and Sideboard would be an ICollection of Cards, cards would have name, ID, Premium, Owned. Whatever.
The receiving server would check this list against the owned list of the player and return back a true/false.
That's what SHOULD happen (on a very, very rough level). What IS happening is that instead of an object, it's passing an XML decklist. Which has WAAAYYYY more data. Data held in TEXT form. Which needs to be parsed, cast into Ints, etc, checked STORED and returns a true/false.
If you look up "Bottleneck" in a dictionary, you'll probably see XML data transfer/parsing somewhere in there. Again, I'm not knocking XML, it's a fine way to markup data. But it has specific uses which do not include replacing normal practices for data hand-offs.
The good news? The good news is that the current batch of developers seem to understand that full XML decklist's are not the way to go. My only hope is that they don't even try to hand off the XML from Client to server in the first place, unless they're planning on having more than one medium for interfacing with this (meaning via a website, or another non-.Net client, etc).
All in all, this was one of the most enlightening, eye-opening and informative updates that WotC has released about V3 and what they're working on for the next version. We were told estimated dates. Hard-ish dates even for some of these things. We were given straight forward explanations as well as some hidden gems. While it's not all sunshine and butterflies, there are a lot of good things happening on MTGO right now, and from the looks of it, more to come in the next 12 months.
Discussion Items:
MTGO Status Update:
Pretty much what I audible'd into this week for my editorial section. Even though there's not a lot of "this is happening tomorrow" stuff, there's a lot of good details in there.
Lack of MTGO communication in MTGP Announcements:
A sadly meandering thread. However, the topics are all great to discuss. The Original Post was frustrated with the lack of MTGO plans in announcements, like From the Vault: Relics, etc. Something I agree with. Then it went into MTGO is neglected, which I used to agree with, but no longer do. And now it's meandering into a new territory of MTGO vs MTGP. A really good read, so far.
The definition of "is":
That's what this debate feels like to me.. (for those unaware of the joke, former US President Bill Clinton spent a great deal of time in a hearing debating semantics, and eventually reached the point of being the punchline of jokes like "That depends on what the definition of 'is' is." etc). Anyway, the semantical debate is overshadowing the initial topic, which is the complaint that Zendikar's Mythics have passed the point of excluding staple effects.
Out of Stock Update:
A well timed question by LoreBroker and a quick answer by WotC_K, look for some of these sets to be back in stock 'soonish'.
Card Price Tables:
Card Price Graph Discussion:
Standard and Classic both fell a bit, but luckily Extended is charging its lasers and recouped a bit of the losses. As for what gained? Extended and a little bit of Classic, although the other Classic based losses ate those small gains. For anyone who is prone to getting worried about this type of thing... this is perfectly normal given the time of year and what's happening to the game's formats. Meaning that as a big format change is gearing up, and a set is rotating out of Standard and Extended, prices naturally decline as demand weakens. This is all in preparation for the new set, which will rebound the Standard market a lot.
Card Price Graphs:
Chrome Mox chart
Tarmogoyf chart
Force of Will chart
Dark Depths chart
Ajani Vengeant chart
Ichorid chart
Mox Diamond chart
Wasteland chart
Ranger of Eos chart
Lotus Petal chart
Ranger of Eos chart
Grove of the Burnwillows chart
Divert chart
Lotus Petal chart
Dark Ritual chart
Diabolic Edict chart
Innocent Blood chart
Quirion Ranger chart
Rhys the Exiled chart
Hurkyl's Recall chart
Reflecting Pool chart
Vindicate chart
Ball Lightning chart
Reflecting Pool chart
Twilight Mire chart
Wake Thrasher chart
Windswept Heath chart
Time Warp chart
Mana Drain chart
Aluren chart
Scapeshift chart
Goblin Chieftain chart
Rugged Prairie chart
Runed Halo chart
Windbrisk Heights chart
Fulminator Mage chart
Altar of Dementia chart
Siege_Gang Commander chart
Karplusan Forest chart
Cloudthresher chart
Tournament Section:
I'm going to change the pace for a week, and go over the paper Zendikar pre-release I went to. It had been about four years since I've shuffled up paper cards. But me and my wife Tami decided to go for old time's sake and see what fun could be had with the old cardboard crack. (For those interested, she took 4th, and probably would have won the whole thing had she, um, started each game with seven cards instead of six.... not mulliganning. Just. Didn't draw to seven. And still took fourth. What a woman!)
I'll summarize my pool: almost no removal, pretty much no tricks. Green had the only creatures of strength, but I had three other spells and no ramping. The two bright spots of my pool were 3x New Looter Guy, and umm. I guess I had one brightspot. Oh, the 4/4 flyer for four was good too, but not enough to win the day. *frown*
However, despite my abysmal pool I had a great time at the pre-release. Slinging paper cards is amazingly fun.. oh how I've missed it! But enough of my grousing, let's get to the matches!
Elizabeth "Liz" - B/R Aggro
It was this match that illustrated the weakness of my deck in the Zendikar format. Creatures with two or less toughness are DOA to all the common removal in the set. To have a chance you need at least half of your creatures to survive shock range. Looking at my playable colors made me realize that I had far too little that could survive two turns or even help me win. I did win one game of the match where she was mana screwed. Yay me?
Matt 4 Color
Matt was running 60 cards across four colors. The interesting/sad thing was that his deck was about as powerful as mine, he just had stretched the mana a bit too thin. He was one swamp away from turning a tight game to his favor. Which reminds me... Needlebite Mosquito is a fine card in Limited. And oddly enough it can kill a Baneslayer where a Halo Hunter cannot. How embarrassing.
?? - R/G Aggro
The Red Expedition is surprisingly powerful in sealed, I saw it coming in for 7 damage a few times in the prerelease and kind of makes you have to have a first striker to really fight it... only the first strikers tend to die to the common kicked Red Creature, which puts a bit of a wrench in the plans of the defending player. I know this because I died to this. Also, the 7/1 token maker that goes 14/1 really punishes the player with little to no instant speed removal. Which was me, evidently. Ouch.. these were painful games. The plus side is that my deck actually one a game of this match the way I built it to. The minus side is that it didn't matter in the slightest.
Scott C Knudson G/R Aggro (w/ Lotus Cobra + Goblin Guide)
Scott was my favorite opponent of the day, and a great guy, and his deck was very very coherent.
Game 1 was a blowout from a turn 2 Lotus Cobra. After playing against the cobra my opinions about it have changed a bit. It's a great card, to be sure, but I don't think it's going to be as flat out insane as I was expecting. It's very good. Great even, but not stupidly broken as I had feared. Actually, the card that surprised me in these matches was Goblin Guide. 2/2 Haste for {R} is so far above the curve that it gives me a nose bleed... the 'drawback' (heh) of letting them draw a land every third attack is, well, not that big of a deal after all it turns out. What's that old quote "go ahead and draw cards... you're still dead"? Something like that anyway. Well, that's what this felt like. I had drawn a couple cards off the guide, but it didn't matter, because I had taken 6 points off of him before I could deal with it... and then the cobra... and then... well, you get the idea.
Game one was decided on the Cobra and aggro.
Game two I got the win off of mana issues.
Game three a Scythe Tiger hits me for nine before I can stabilize. Scott gets back into the game after missing a turn three recovery mana source and starts to drop threat after threat while I'm still struggling to handle the tiger... before I can do much of anything... I'm dead to a 3/2 red intimidator (hey look, unblockable...) that's getting +2/+2 landfall off of the Landfall equipment.
Thanks to Scott for being a great opponent!
Lesson's Learned from the Zendikar pre-release....
Firstly: The sealed pools seemed to fall into one of two categories. They either built themselves (Aggro-ish R/G, R/B, B/G, etc) or are cobbled together from three or four colors to hit 20ish playable creatures and spells.
Secondly: It's a very fun format. There weren't a ton of "I win" cards floating around. Although Vampire Nighthawk might fall into that category. He's out of Disfigure and <Red Kicker Goblin> range... which brings me to:
Thirdly: three toughness is mandatory if you want your creature to survive the common removal options (<new shock>, Disfigure, <Red Kicker>).
Fourthly: Intimidate is pretty good. Losing to unblockable black is old hat. Losing to unblockable red (if you're not in red too) is a strange feeling indeed, and not one that I found enjoyable.
Fifthly: Allies are surprisingly potent. Tami nailed down quite a few wins off of the synergy of allies (and the new Wrath... and the nighthawk... and well... more awesome cards).
Sixthly: I am very much looking forward to having Zendikar online. There are a lot of fun cards in the set that can be built around. But it also has a decent amount of linear strategies as well (*cough*VAMPIRES*cough*), but by and large, this will be a set to build around for the next few months.
Props: My opponents. Made me remember why I love the game.
Slops: Children running through the store... not sure what that was all about...
Conclusion:
What a great week of MTGO news and information and discussion! Lots of interesting things to discuss and digest. Oh! And a follow up from last week's "Zendikar Treasures". It's official and confirmed, Zendikar DID have treasures. It's also official that they are NOT coming to MTGO. Just to throw that out there. (I asked Worth, he told me so).
7 down, 7 to go... just like every week!
~Erik
28 Comments
Your optimism has the potential to be infectious, but I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid. That Development Update is a lot of talk designed to disguise the fact that there's not a lot of action:
The Phase One deliverable is specifications and a prototype, a necessary prerequisite so the external resources can use user-centered usability studies to drive refinements.
Mmmm, close your eyes and it feels like you're playing it already!
Silverlight? OK maybe it has promise. Or maybe they saw the newest shiny and are completely overengineering yet again, creating a flashy clusterf--- that meets all the latest buzz talk but fails to actually, you know, work. The most measurable benchmark should be re-enabling Leages, something that was already working, and what we've seen since v3's release is that for every month of work the expected date gets pushed back by 3. They're losing ground!
OK so I'm a bit cynical and pessimistic here. But why? Well, how about XML in the database!!! That just boggles the mind. It would be a laugh riot to tour the headquarters. Whenever they need to save a Word document, they must print it out and take a digital photo, then store that! This is why I need more than a pending diagram and a promise for user-centered interfaces.
Promises and internal measurements get no credit with me. They're easily replaced and forgotten with the next update. I'll wait until the improvements are real and functional and *then* I'll praise the work.
I have to disagree here. I'm typically and consistently cynical about MTGO development, but this announcement is a step in the right direction. Many members of the community are smart enough to see good software, or are even in software industry themselves. For WotC to give us information as though we are all 13 years old is insulting and demonstrates that much of the Business of MTGO is poorly run. It's further insulting that for the last few releases, it has been record breaking. This says two things: 1) player base is increasing, and consequently 2) profits are increasing. With the increased revenues, we are still seeing bubkis in terms of actual client performance (UI improvement where art thou?). This announcement at least spells out what is in the works on a technical level, which gives the technically inclined players such as Hamtastic, a good sense of how far we are from where V3 needs to be in terms of the player experience.
I'm not holding my breath for these improvements, but I sure am glad to know that someone at the mothership has thought about them and created a player memo to that regard.
I commend you for sticking to your principals and not buying the hype until its in your hands. Its the same thing I advise during each and every new sets rumor season for exactly the reasons you mention.
Luckily, we have an easy to judge metric for this. The prototype is said to be displayed this month. If it works, well, great. If not, well, we know what will happen then. Yelling. Screaming. Threats. Etc.
Regarding overcomplication... Completely possible of course. Whether or not WPF/Silverlight is just a flash in the pan techno-hype is still to be determined. I'm not going to decry them for using a technology that forces abstraction... To the contrary! I find it a good idea that they are forcing themselves to keep the layers sepaperate. There's still plenty of room to screw things up of course, but the tech they're using reduces a lot of the typical blunders I've seen developers walk into. Again, time will tell. But thankfully we have a timeframe to expect these things, which is not something we're used to seeing.
And I'd like to comment about your word doc example...
We have a digital document storage solution here at work. It imports tiffs. End users were getting emailed tiffs, printing them, scanning them, to get them into the DB. That was the only way to get data in, they assumed. Inefficient processes are almost always preceded by ignorance of some minor detail.
And lastly, avoiding the kool-aid is noble, just be careful to not die from dehydration along the way. ;)
WPF/Silverlight does not FORCE abstraction. Everything I can do in XAML I can do in C# and vice versa.
You could argue that it encourages shoddy code because of the tendency to load up a form's .cs files with all sorts of logic were it doesn't belong. Unless you have a strong MVP or MVVM pattern going its just a big ball of mud.
The way your wording it is just wrong. You can write a big mess of garbage with WPF/Silverlight just like you could with any other programming languages/technology. WPF/Silverlight does not correlate with quality at all.
That's a great point gnawph! There is no way to prevent stupudity, not in programming nor in everyday life. :)
The only way to get good code is from competent coding, and the only way to get competent coders is to hire/contract experienced programmers.
That's pretty much going to be the only thing that makes the next version better than the current version.
XML was the basis for the Open Magic Data project on sourceforge I was proud to be a part of (Though all I did was write the help for the one client we had going (Deck Mentor)). I have to say as the basis for a deck editor it seemed pretty darned quick once it loaded. Of course the load times were fairly large (at least on my old machine at the time). I can imagine thousands of decks being stored in XML form and the amount of space that must take up. I am impressed that they aren't using some kind of SQL backend instead.
Thanks for the translation there Hammy. In other news kudos to actually going out to play paper magic. Its been a few years since I did anything but shuffle proxies IRL and only that to entertain the gf. Sounds like you had fun. I imagine you will get to do plenty more of that in Austin.
I have to ask...why the drop in Scapeshift? Seems like it would be more popular now, not less with the possibility of massive landfall triggers.
>why the drop in Scapeshift?
Because it already had a run up, and this is the post-hype dropoff.
Ah Okay that makes sense.
In the software lifecycle, waiting for 2 years for leagues is the equivalent of saying, "This isn't gonna happen." With all the changes, new card sets and rules, database and client management changes, they will probably still be working out these kinks in 2011, which will probably push the leagues back even further (2013? -end of the world is in 2012, if you believe it!).
Why don't they just come out and say it, because I'm getting tired of the "promise" of leagues, only to find out it's just not even on the radar. Just dump the leagues and get it over with so I can move on and dump MTGO. I don't think I want to wait until 2011 (more than likely much later than that) just to get back to what I like about MTGO in the first place.
Might as well be my swan song...
I have to agree with your sentiment MechtaK. I've been waiting for Leagues since I came back to MTG:O and discovered that they had vanished.
It's no longer the loss of leagues that winds me up. I can accept that, for whatever reason, they are dead and gone. It's a shame but life is like that.
I'm just getting mighty fed up with WotC treating me like a child and telling me that it will all be ok 'tomorrow'. In this case 'tomorrow' is a couple of years down the line but the actual time frame doesn't matter. Please, someone at WotC, grow some and announce that Leagues are a part of MTG:O history. I'd have a little bit more respect for you then. Not much but a little....
Leagues, and multiplayer that actually works. The dream.
What's wrong with multiplayer?
Well for starters in 2hg the game starts your opps to your right or left not above you and to your right or left and your ally is above or below you...not the way it used to be.
In tables, you should change "percentage change" to "relative change" or make it a percentage. Also, cutting to 2 significant figures would make the table nicer.
Agreed. It threw me off when I looked at the "percentage change" and it was a decimal. I wondered why he bothered listing cards that had their prices change only a fraction of a percentage point until I realized it was relative change.
2011 !!!!
im a even going to be around for that? why or why!!!
any new news on lifetime rewards yet?
Leagues aren't coming back. 2011 means "never." Just a couple months ago leagues were in the 2010 plan. You better believe they'll be pushed back again. It has been proven that MTGO can survive just fine without leagues and seeing how unprofitable leagues are compared to the other formats - they won't be making a return.
Leagues weren't profitable? Could you share the math that led you to that conclusion?
I don't see why leagues wouldn't be profitable. I very rarely have enough spare time of an evening to play consecutive rounds of drafts or sealed. Leagues are the only limited I've ever played online, and I'm pretty sure there must be enough others like me for it to be profitable. The leagues always seemed to be pretty busy to me..
BDirg was saying it is less profitable relative to other limited formats--he probably shouldn't have used the term "unprofitable," but the point about relative profitability may still be valid.
After all, one of the main reasons I recommended leagues to anyone with any interest in playing limited was that the bang-for-buck factor was so high. For about 35 tickets, you could have all-you-can-eat limited play for a month, with a shot at prizes.
Without leagues, I have turned to drafting, which I probably do 6-8 times a month at this point. That's 18-24 packs and 12-16 tickets into the system that before was a flat 8 packs and 2 tickets. The question is, am I typical, or is StealthBadger more typical, i.e., someone who is simply not going to play limited at all except in leagues? What about those who played in a league *and* drafted regularly?
I'm not sure, but even if you could prove without a doubt that leagues cannibalized some more-profitable business from limited players, I don't think Wizards is out there feeding us lines about enabling leagues at some point with no real intention of ever doing it.
Leagues will be back. When? I don't know, but the continually-sliding ETAs from Wizards aren't a devious ruse designed to hide the fact that they never intend to bring them back, it's simply unrealistic scheduling leading to unreliable information being shared with players.
Could the argument be made that leagues aren't AS profitable because with the lack of leagues more people are playing or forced to play other events instead?
If you have option A and B, and neither are very profitable, if you cut A everyone goes to B and now B is very profitable. Maybe you can't say A was totally unprofitable, but by cutting A you certainly made B much more profitable, especially if B was already making you slightly more money than A to begin with.
RagMan
Bah sidetracked by a phone call while writing and my point was already made by Godot, thanks =)
Leagues allow players to spend a lot of time on Magic Online without spending a lot of money.
The problem is that if there are too many people playing "cheaply" the costs to run Magic Online go up compared to the profit they are making off of it.
If we suddenly got an influx of 5000 players who did nothing but play casual games, Magic Online would slow to a crawl, Wizards would have to add infrastructure to support the added player load, and they wouldn't be making much money off of the added players. While Leagues aren't that bad, they have the potential for a scenario where Wizards would have to add a lot of hardware for not a lot of gain.
I doubt that argument is going to kill leagues, but I'm fairly confident that it is the reason Leagues are not a very high priority to Wizards.
Ragman and Godot did a good job of explaining my point. If entering a month long league cost 30 tix (7 pack + 2 tix?), then WOTC makes the same profit from someone playing UNLIMITED games per month or that same person doing two four hour drafts. I would also bet that the number of people drafting more than twice a month because leagues aren't around is much greater than the number of people who completely avoid limited because leagues aren't around. Depending on the disparity WOTC could actually lose money by reinstating leagues if enough people move to leagues and stop drafting.
You better believe someone at WOTC did a cost/time analysis with regards to leagues. If there was profit to be made there (such that it was worth the time/bandwidth investment to recode and bring them back), you better believe they would bring leagues back as soon as possible.
Remember it's a business. Profit first, player satisfaction second.
I believe that leagues make it easier for new players to get into the game. Perhaps new players can be attracted to the game at a quicker rate with leagues than without leagues.
On the other hand, if new players are being attracted to the game at a rate that is pushing the limits of the underlying infrastructure, then it makes plenty of sense to push leagues off to such a time that they can be comfortably handled.
The correct wording of Bill Clinton's quote is, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0
I started the thread on the WOTC board about why doesn't WOTC always mention how MTGO is affected by each Magic announcement. I really appreciate your chiming in on that thread and supporting the intent of the thread. I should never have titled it as i did though, so I'll take some blame for it getting sidetracked.
Leagues are profitable. However, they may canibalize some current drafting profits. Example, I play 1 month long league, buying 7 packs + 2 tix, or I draft 3 times, 6 tix, plus 12 packs. (I can't remember the league pack/tix requirements, and I don't draft often, but you get the drift) Leagues are much larger player wise and maybe they bring in more revenue, but only WOTC knows for sure.
If you factor in labuour and equipment and staffing, WOTC simply may not be in a rush to put in leagues because they are meeting their profit targets. That is what most corporate decisions are based on sadly, corporate profit targets.
I'm not sure that it's possible to say that a person unable to do leagues will turn to drafting and therefore spend more money and increase the profits.
I used to be a member of a clan that was League focused and sadly those people simply do not play any more. Some left when leagues didn't return, the rest drifted away slowly over time. I was speaking to one a month of so ago and he no longer even checks back to see if leagues have returned.
Now, I can understand the logic that states the software can support X players so we want them to be spending as much as possible. That's business. I just don't think that many players moved from Leagues to drafts (Like Godot). I think that most of them left to be replaced over time with new players.
Not that it really matters.
who would love leagues but now has to draft. i love drafting, but the $ i spend oy!
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