Table of Contents
V3
Editorial Section
MTGO Discussion Items
Bugs
Card Prices
Conclusion
V3's First Month can be found here. I'm going to cover the progress week to week, then break them into months so as to keep this section somewhat manageable.
Friday, May 9th 2008 through Monday May 12th -
And the SPaghett1 has hit the fan, so to speak. It was announced on Friday that SP1 was not going to be released during the week of May 12th. Instead, they were going to start breaking down the patches into smaller weekly fixes. There has been a lot of concern posted about this on the boards. In an effort to keep this section as factual as possible, I've added my concerns to the Editorial Section. After this announcement we haven't heard anything more about what fixes will be in the first week's patch.
Tuesday May 13th 2008-
Late in the evening we hear about what we will see in the first week of downtime, or what has been termed SP0.1. To recap:
- Upgrade to the communication layer between the servers and the database
- Users won't have to log out after completing a trade to be sure of their collection and tradable quantities.
So, in theory, if all goes well we'll see nothing different but trading wont completely suck. /me crosses his fingers...
Wednesday May 14th 2008-
Today we got the DB upgrade and client side tradeable quantitiy fix... and they missed. It seems that either Gordon was mistaken with what was being patched today, or they were unable to see that trading tickets still doesn't work. I'm not sure which one, and quite frankly I don't really care anymore. The sad facts are that they continue to be unable to tell us what they're going to do and then do what they've told us. Even a simple communication->execution like the two points above was unsuccessful... I'm running out of words for these disappointments.
Thursday May 15th 2008-
Not really much to say today. We didn't hear anything official from WotC regarding the broken patch, and we all just sort of wandered around aimlessly. There was a lot of frustration still around regarding yesterdays patch. *sigh*
Friday May 16th 2008-
Today we get a work around regarding how to trade kinda-sorta normally. It's still not going to help bots and/or dealers. We also hear (finally) that they are aware of the trade bug and that it is a top priority to them. Good to hear, but without results it's just words. We will need to see movement here before we can get excited about this statement.
Saturday May 17th through Monday May 19th -
We get a statement from Worth regarding redemption in V3, and the plans to return it exactly as it was. Which is nice to hear, and I hope it comes back sooner rather than later. We also get the build notes for this weeks patch and more statements regarding the importance of trading, and other items. We also, somehow, run out of coupons for new accounts. Which is odd, I think.
Tuesday May 20th 2008-
Worth announces that Shadowmoor will be released on June 2nd, at the earliest. From initial reports, the Shadowmoor cardset has been very well coded and the beta for it has been rather uneventful.
Wednesday May 21st 2008-
It's patch Wednesday, and the moment of truth arives... will they redeem themselves after last week's patch? Or will they fall further down the rabbit hole? As the servers come up people rush in to test the fixes and find... success! I don't want to sound overly surprised by that, but, after last week's patch I expected at least a few pieces to break after the downtime. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that there were no critical, or even mildly problematic breakages. The only thing that started acting funny was typing in chat windows was causing the cursor to jump around. Other than that, solid. Wow.
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Last week I made quite a fuss over SP1, its disappearance, and the way that made me feel as a player and as a WotC supporter in general. So I figure it's only fair to show the flip side when it happens. Amazingly, the flip side was provided just one week later. I think people saw a different side of me after I found out the SP1 was delayed, then scrapped to be replaced with smaller bite sized deployments... and when one of those didn't seem to actually do anything I was, well, extremely frustrated. My confidence in the whole system behind the scenes was shaken, deeply shaken. I raised quite a fuss about the impact that that whole scenario had caused. Not only the negative impact to WotC's Brand Manager Worth, but to anyone who was defending WotC at the time. We had stood before the angry masses to say: "Something amazing is coming, it will fix a lot of problems!" only to have the football pulled away by Lucy and we go flying...
So that is where I was emotionally and logically last week. Spinning through the air yelling 'AAAARRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!' yet again. But what a difference a week makes. This week we had the following announcement from Gordon Culp, and the discussion thread here.
"We are working to steadily improve the client and the system each week heading into the Shadowmoor release and beyond. Thanks for your patience.
These build notes are tentative pending a deployment of the build during the maintenance period Wednesday May 21.
- Improvements in responsiveness to user actions while dueling. - we hope users see a difference in the response to play actions.
- Fix for game turn rollbacks after user DCs and GS restarts. - this one was difficult to test, but we have simplified the system and won't be assigning users to a new GS when they cannot make a GS connection. This should prevent tournament matches (and thus PE and Draft Events) from being disrupted by disconnecting or griefing players.
- New multiplayer duel scenes added - please use the large card version until we fix a bug with the graveyards in the more compact version.
- Replay fix part 3.
- Corrected an issue with Classified Scene behavior when a user has posted an ad.
- New account service is disabled when system is in admin mode.
- Planeswalkers look better when zoomed
- User can close the active scene by right clicking on scene tab.
- More database performance tuning
Independent of the build, we also found a solution for a big part of the tradable quantity corruption that has been plaguing traders. We will apply a hot patch during the downtime along with the build. We still see some issues with trying to immediately trade a card that has just been received, but the trading situation looks a lot better in our staging environment after this fix."
I'll admit, after last week's miss I decided to reserve my judgement for AFTER the patches were running. Once bitten, twice shy baby. |oo| <--Rock!!! *ahem*. Great White's sage advice aside, I even posted that I would withhold my accolades until after they were working, which is fairly atypical behavior for me. The piece that scared me to no end was the last paragraph... "hot fix" + MTGO = explosions... usually, so I entered the duck and cover position and prepared for the servers to come back online. After an extra thirty minutes they were up. I decided to pick up an order from MTGOTraders that I had made during the downtime. And.... it went swimmingly. No issues at all. Apparently there are still issues with trading, getting, retrading, etc... however for buying/selling things seem to be okay, in fact, almost back to normal. We're still missing filtering options, and there are still some issues with multiple back and forth trades, however, this fix alone will probably make Shadowmoor's release better enough.
So, not only did this patch fix what they said it would, it also didn't break anything that was working (except typing in chat windows for some reason, it skips around). This is what I was desperately hoping to see happen. This is what I, personally, needed to see. Progress with regress. Accurate statements about what would happen and then seeing it happen. I realize that for many, this one 'win' will not balance out the books to WotC's favor and they'll still give them a hard time. I accept that. In fact, it's good. I need people with whom to debate. *grin* This one win gives me enough good things that I can start to use them as examples for how WotC is turning around piece by piece. Of course, we'll need to see more weeks like this one to really get a foundation of confidence. But for now, this is a start. I like to think that I give credit where credit is due, and to that end I'd like to thank Gordon Culp, and the developers for stating explicitly what they were fixing and for getting the fixes in properly. A great step forward.
As has been said by many so far, there's still a long way to go with this client. Were' still missing functionality, and there are still glitches in many places that need to be fixed. But I now feel a bit more confident that they will be able to do so.
Speaking of V3's status, now that we have some changes I though that it seemed like a good idea to revisit it:
 | Trading Features: Since we just had the trading patches applied this week, I figured what better way to start this than with the Trading Features report! Some very good progress this week. In fact, we're almost back to normal. We have some work to be done with repeated trades, but overall, a good week. |
| System Features: This week we got replays back, well, back again. So far. We'll see if we can keep them around without getting them turned off for impacting system performance. That's the key. And I jinxed it. They're down again now. {f}{n} Also this week we got a few more 'free' PE's, which showed a lot of improvements based on what we've heard on the boards regarding them. I imagine that by next week we'll have them on as well. |  |
 | NACS/Store Features: NACS and Store are lumped together, and so far it's still a ways off from its previous functionality (unless I've missed something). |
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V3 UI Design Contests:
I've written about client modifications before, and it seems like more people are getting into it now. There was a player 'bragging rights' competition, and now there's a fully funded UI skin competition with about $1,000 going to the winner. You can get more details here. I've already dedicated a full section to this before, so I won't repeat it all here. But I will say this: there is a lot of room for modifications to the client through just the images available. I've made the client much more palatable to myself and others with only a few hours of work, and I'm a scrubbly amateur when it comes to this UI stuff. I look forward to what some people with real talent for it can accomplish.
Foils, foils everywhere, but not a pack to crack...
I started a poll here: V3 FOIL POLL to get some feedback on something that I seem to be confused about. When V3 was being beta tested, one of the most welcomed changes was the new foil effect. Since the release of V3 however, there have been more and more complaints about the foils not remaining the same. I thought that people generally liked the foils, but now I'm not so sure. So I wanted to get some yes/no/maybe-so feedback in the form of a poll to see if there really is a majority on one side or the other. All feedback in the thread is welcome of course, and I'll thank everyone in advance for voting!
Speaking of foils and the UI, I finalized a version of the static foil that I like far better than the default static foil. It's located here, and here are the instructions to install it.
- Right click on the link and select "Save Link as..." (or "Save Target as, if you're on IE).
- When prompted where to save it, browse to "C:Program FilesWizards of the CoastMagic Online IIIGraphicsModels" and save it, overwriting the old file (if you have an issue you can always repair your installation later).
- Make sure that you have your foils set to "Disable Foil animation" in your Menu->Settings->Game Play scene.
League Discussion -
Leagues, and the lack thereof. Also, format fixes as well as discussion of shortcomings of the previous league system. Unfortunately, there's been no official WotC communication about what is in store for V3 leagues as of yet.
Redemption Concerns -
Another general concern thread created for discussion of some of the top issues in V3.
General Magic III Concerns -
Another general concern thread created for discussion of some of the top issues in V3.
Communication from WotC -
A great thread maintained by Algona. This thread has a compilation of the statements that various WotC staff have made for the past few weeks. A must read for anyone interested in what WotC has been up to arouind the boards.
Why a profanity filter?
Someone recently got in trouble for typing profanity in the Casual/Casual room. Which started a rather long debate about what the Profanity filter really means, what it applies to and how it works with the Code of Conduct. Essentially, it boils down the to Code of Conduct hasn't changed. Typing vulgarity anywhere is still prohibited. Which makes the ability to toggle the option for seeing it seem strange to have. However, it exists, but it doesn't change the fact that you can still be reported for swearing. -Bumping since it seems to have come up again, 05-16-08-
Infobot returns -
If you like to trade, or just want to know how much a certain card would cost you, then this is the service for you. Infobot was a frequently used bot in V2 for getting quick price checks, and seeing what different dealers were charging for the card. I look forward to seeing it in action on V3, but for now, it's a web service.
Go back to V2?
A topic that's been brought up a couple of times has been going back to Version 2 of MTGO (Along with the crashes, the lag..)
Redemption Concerns
What are your concerns about the redemption setup for MTGO. What would you like to see done with it?
Top 5 Magic Online Concerns
Use this thread to vote for your top five concerns.
Free stuff?
What would YOU like to see WotC do for a 'phree' stuff event/gesture?
Spending habits, post V3?
Some interesting discussion about the spending habits of posters since V3 launched.
Which card describes V3?
A fun contest about what card summarizes V3. Give it a whirl!
Card economy in V3
Worth posted a statement in this thread that I feel should be read from top to bottom. Good information for those worried about MTGO right now.
New Trade bugs
This hurts a lot. Not just the dealers and bot owners, but the casual trading as well. And even more so, trading at the release event will be majorly impacted. They're running out of time to get this functionality squared away.
The Thrifty Djinn!
DonTheMage has started a blog that was inspired by his desire to play MTGO on a "World of Warcaft" budget (which for those not used to the game is $30.00 up front and $15.00 dollars a month. His blog is linked from the thread I've linked and looks to be a fantastic endeavor.
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Bugs: Client
| 04-20-08 | Can't /join rooms | Closed |
| 05-02-08 | Trades don't update Collections properly | Mostly Closed |
Bugs: Card Related
A great thread has been started here that has a lot of bugs in V3 listed and validated. If you've seen any card bugs in V3, I'd love to see them posted (after they're submitted via the http://wizards.custhelp.com web form, of course!)
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Ham Jones! After a month of traveling the world this chart is back! Below you'll see where we are now with each format representing itself. We're just above $3,500 for a full set of cards and most formats continue to fall, except Classic based formats which had a small gain this month.
Next up is the card movers and shakers. And what do we see here? Some funny stuff, that's what. Of the top 15 gaining cards this week, four of them are non-basic lands. And the number five mover? Magus of the Moon. It seems that some people are preparing for Shadowmoor in their own little ways, either by buying up multilands, or buying up the hoser de jour, or both!
The IPA firesale continues it seems. The upcomming rotation, the general difficulty in trading and other items are forcing the market for these cards lower and lower. And I still expect them to fall further and further still.
I made some major changes to the way I'm collecting the data for this section. Hopefully the extra work pays off and more people will find something of use in this data. Personally it's been interesting to see the actual trends in the data as this project has progressed.
 | Drafts/hour per Day Alrighty! Here is the average per hour per day so far. I have the hourly numbers here if you'd like to see them. I've made them open in thier own windows so that they don't stretch the screen out of the article. They're big, and I'll probably keep it as a weekly large chart, and post the day by hour average here. This data is from Saturday 05-17-08, 00:03 through Wednesday 23:03. Starting next week I'll provide the data from Thursday-Thursday so we can have even more points of data.
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| Players per room Like above, these numbers are the averaged data per hour per day. I have the raw data here if you would like to view it. Nothing really surprising to me, weekend numbers are high, weekday numbers are a bit lower, and Wednesday's downtime impacted the numbers here as well.
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And here we are, the end of another week in the world of MTGO. Some really good things happened this week. Some confidences regained and some progress made. A lot of good discussion has happened in regards to MTGO as well as the MTGO boards in general. For those who are interested in the behind the scenes stuff of the MTGO boards, I'd recommend acquainting yourself with the Boards Business forum... it's a doozy!
I also invite anyone and everyone to come post in the Tranquil Thicket. It's main goal is to give MTGO players a place to hang out, chat, and be silly outside of the MTGO application. Get to know other players, talk about other things you like and just generally mingle with others. It may be intimidating to post in there at first due to the inside jokes, and current friendships that are there, but the whole point of that forum is to give us a place to talk to one another that we can't really do in MTGO itself. I hope to see more folks posting there!
-hamtastic
0 Comments
Yep! Card prices are up to date as of the 19th (things have probably moved around since then though). I'll make sure to get the date in that chart as well!
~Erik
all of your columns are too large for my screen. 1024x768 for me
I love my Fridays, it gives me two of my favourite things to check out online, Mr Orange's The Magic Show, and Hammy's State of the Program. As usual a great job summing up the week Hammy, and you know I'll always be there trying to kick that ball too, I know she is going to hold it there for us eventually, it just means not faltering when everyojne laughs at us after the falls.
I see the user stats on the bottom of the page are from this recent week- are the card prices updated as well? I didn't see any dates on the horizontal axis. Also, the percentage change is between which two dates? Sorry- the geek in me really wants to know...