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.V3 Month of May  Again, I will be shortening up the V3 section now that we're hitting our stride.
 

The scent of V3 in June reminds me of my childhood.  I spent countless hours sitting on the banks of a river.... blowing things up.

So far the first patch of June has not gone over well.  It didn't fix everything that it was supposed to fix (the art for the cards), and the card merge broke currently working cards (like Cabal Coffers, and the "Wish" style cards, and some of the "Enhanced" spells from the Ravnica block).  Also with this patch we get the information that there may be no progress in the backlog of bugs and fixes next week because of the events and not wanting to risk breaking things.  I can understand that trepidation, however, each week of pushing back fixes pushes back the time when we can start to get NEW things into the system, as well as return some of our old missing functionality as well.  On the plus side though, we did get Commander (aka Elder Dragon Highlander) back as a multiplayer format.  That alone almost balances out the issues that they caused with this latest patch.  Almost.

Week of June 13th:
We had our first real 'crash' type issue with V3.  According to the downtime notes this week they are pushing a patch to fix this issue going forward.  Tomorrow marks the start of the first release events on V3, and based on the popularity of the Shadowmoor set we should have some hefty server load this weekend, likely moreso even than the Nix Tix events a few weeks back.  I'm excited and nervous for this weekend.

Week of June 20th:
After last week's 'crash', things have been quite good, server wise.  Although there have been sporadic reports of issues from Comcast users as well as some overseas users.  However this appears to be outside of WotC's control and largely ISP related.  However, besides that (and the client based lag some users have), the system stood up to the stress very, very well.  No server lag or server crashes to speak of, not even during the busiest most heavily hit times of the events.  This week we heard another "oh yeah, that's a feature" statement regarding PE's and replays.  Namely that the lack of replays may become a 'feature' of playing online, since if they could stop deck scouting in paper Magic, they would. 

Week of June 27th:
Oh boy oh boy oh boy.  What a difference a week makes, eh?  So, here's the break down of the week: I jinxed the crap out of us.  The day after my last article (Saturday), we start to experience some hefty lag.  Games aren't starting, sideboards aren't showing up, and matches in general are pretty much toast.  Sunday they try restarting the game servers.  This doesn't fix the issue.  Monday they bring down the queues and restart the servers.  This doesn't help, the queues are down until Tuesday.  Tuesday they bump up the maintenance and try something.  It doesn't help.  The queues are down still and they try rebooting them again.  They do a Wednesday maintenance.  We come back up but the queues remain down.  They do some DB cleanup.  The queues are still down but at least the casual games are running fairly well again.  That brings us to Thursday.  Queues are still down, and apparently they're still no closer to solving the issue than they were on Saturday when it started.  That about sums up the turmoil from this week I think.

Week of July 4th:
So, the servers seem to be stable again... and the last statement we got from WotC mentions something about decks being stored and needing to be cleaned up.  Once they finished that up events started firing fine again.  Other than that, nothing much has happened this week.  Although the issue that the developers fought with last week came at the price of getting work on SP1.i, and it has been delayed at least a week and will be deployed on July 9th at the earliest.  Other than that, not much V3 news to report, which compared to last week, could be considered a good thing.

Week of July 11th:
No SP1.i this week.  Again.  As a consolation prize we do get a 5 hour downtime and a list of things that should be fixed when we do get SP1.  It seems that a few people figured that the 5 hour downtime was meant to deploy SP1 as a few seperate rants have started up since then.  A great summarization of the announced SP1.i fixes was done by Maxeel here: http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=16305040&postcount=40

Week of July 18th:
SP1!!!  It didn't change the world but it definitely didn't cause it to implode either.  I, among other, had some pretty low expectations in regards to the outcome of SP1.  I'm happy to say that I'm not disappointed with Service Pack 1.  To the contrary, it did everything they said it would, and didn't create any huge new bugs.  There is a very irritating bug in regards to trading that this patch brought us (namely that you have to click 'Reset' to see anything).  We did however get some new functionality that'll I'll be going over in the editorial section below.

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MTGO V3 Service Pack 1 Released!

First up this week is a break down of the fixes and updates and changes we got with SP1.  I won't go through all of them here, as there are a lot of them.  I will however hightlight a few of the more important ones that I've seen, as well as a few that weren't in the overall build notes.

Improvement: Wish List

This wasn't in the original build notes but did get a follow up post after I posted how to use it.  Essentially the Wish List features ties cards that you're missing from decks and cards that other players have available for trade together.  When you save a Wish List version of a deck it writes out the cards that you're missing.  Then, when you're in a trade you load the Wish List and it autoselects the cards that you're missing if your trading partner has them set to trade.  This is a great feature for filling in the missing cards from a deck and for trading a full deck between friends. 

Bug: Every new Trade

Right now, when you join a new trade you have to click on the "Reset" button in order to see your cards.  It appears that most bots have this worked around now though.

Returned Feature:
Timed games are the default.
Around the time V3 launched we lost the functionality that made all casual games timed by default.  This has been returned.

Fix: Searching in lists

Until now whenever you'd start typing in a list (say to type a card name for Pithing Needle) it would grab each character seperately so trying to type 'pernic' would make you wind up on the first 'C' card.  It now functions like most other applications where it will stop on Pernicious Deed.

Returned Feature: Boolean Searching

Typing in the following "search & library & remove" should return cards like Cranial Extraction and Splinter.  Until SP1 it did not work.  I'm happy to say that it once again works as intended.

Returned Feature: Sorting in Deck Editor

Artifacts and Lands are now sorted separately like they used to be in V2.

Fix: Loading .txt Files

Before SP1 loading a .txt file would load all the cards as foils.  Now it loads them as regular unless you have a foil version.

Fixed Card Bugs:

Gameplay - Blocking creatures with copy effects now display their original name when blocking
Gameplay - Cabal Coffers now correctly chooses which player's lands to count.
Gameplay - Cards that interact with card types will now recognize Tribal or Planeswalker
Gameplay - Fix for Jaws of Stone when the caster has no mountains.
Gameplay - Fix to prevent a long 'Choose a Counter' list from being cut off.
Gameplay - Leech Bonder now lists all counters on all permanents, even duplicate counters.
Gameplay - Mirror Golem will get Prot Tribal or Prot Planeswalkers when a card with one of those types is imprinted
Gameplay - Morph cards are now revealed at the end of games
Gameplay - Persist + Grim Poppet.Returning things to play with counters takes into account the other counters of the same type.
Gameplay - Primal Command is not explicit when declaring targets. Modified to make targets for shuffling graveyards, placing things on top of decks and gaining life more explicit.
Gameplay - River's Grasp - Hand not revealed if target creature becomes illegal. Fixed a section of code that finds the first player in a target list.
Gameplay - Wishing from sideboard fixed
Gameplay - Floating chat is no longer restricted by gametable dimensions, but rather by client dimensions.

 
Thread of the week: Rancored_Elf's Eventide Price List

I'm going off of WotC's site for this one because I think it's worthwhile to do so.  This price list is pretty accurate for what we can expect from the card prices as we get closer to Eventide's release.  The demand for paper cards towards the time EVE goes live on MTGO will have a very direct correlation to what we'll see as the big ticket cards.  If you want to know where to price your cards when that happens I'd suggest keeping an eye on this thread.

Mythic Rares... they're Mythic.  But are they rare?

By now, most players are aware of the changes coming about with Shards of Alara (for those who aren't, here's the rundown: Less cards per set, a new higher rarity, and a basic land per pack).  I was recently asked about what I expect to see happen in regards to Mythic Rares, MTGO and the price levels that these cards will hit if they're constructed playable at all.

I found a great breakdown of the situation on MtgSalvation.com's forums (linked) where JinxedIdol states:
"On second thought:
Mythic rares, I didnt notice at first how drastically rares have diminished in number.

Say we have 120 packs:
15 (1 out of 8) will have Mythic rares.. that means with 15 MRs, you will get 1 of a specific MR for every 120 packs.
105 (7 out of 8) will be Rares... that means with 53 rares, you will get 2 of a specific rare for every 120 packs. (or 1 in 60)

Mystic rares are just a little harder to find (just twice, not 8 times harder)

Compare this to Lorwyn, you will get a rare one in 80 packs.

I'm getting the point now. Basically some rares got rarer and some (as they say, staple rares) got less rare.
I guess its ok. Really some rares like Duals, Char, are too staple to be rare. Hopefully this experiment works. "

What this actually means is different to different people.

For collectors who want the entire set I'm going to speculate that a worst case scenario is $15 more per set of Mythic + Regular Rares.  I got this by making the 17% of the cards 1.5 times more expensive (50% higer) and the rest of the rares 1/3rd less expensive (33% less).  As I mentioned though, that's the worst case.  Based on what is said to be printed as a Mythic Rare the actual impact (assuming 1.5 and .66, respectively) is about 70 cents more.  Since the cards that are supposed to be Mythics are Legends, Planeswalkers and "epic" spells I chose Lorwyn and used the Legends, the Planeswalkers and the Command cycle as the new baseline.  To collect a full set of rares based on what we've been told is very close to the same as it is now.

For players, on the other hand, it really depends on what ends up being playable.  If another Garruk-esque Planeswalker comes out and is in demand, we're looking a very pricey card.  But not likely more than what a Tarmogoyf or Mutavault are right now.  But if that happens I also expect the normal rares will drop quite a lot, and thusly drop the cost of any staple regular rare to the point of compensating the increase in the chase Mythic Rare.

It goes back to common theme I bring up: no in print set can maintain an opened per pack value that's greater than the retail cost of an unopened pack.  There will be a balance, at the very least, of an average rare+mythic rare of 3.99.  But quite likely, the balance will be lower than that, as it pretty much always is.

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New website: Draftbetter.com
A new site for people to see and discuss draft walkthroughs.  I've walked through a few of them and so far it seems to have some good information about SSS drafts.

Budget Deckbuilding Contest! -
Hollow0n3 has a very restrictive contest brewing on the MTGO Message boards.  Think you have what it takes to win it?   (Bumping this since it's almost over)

Is Casual Prismatic Dead? -
A recent forray of a player into the world of regular Prismatic Casual play left a poster wondering... is Casual Prismatic dead?  Add your thoughts to the thread!

Is Casual Classic Dead? -
Similar to the Casual Prismatic thread, this question asks about the health and popularity of the Classic Casual format on MTGO.

SP1 Discussions -
Now that SP1 is out, the discussion of what it fixed, broke and added can begin!

Request for comment regarding lag -
There has been relatively little official comment about the lag some users are seeing.  This thread contains discussion about the lack of information.

A new League site is in the works -
The lack of actual leagues is starting to wear a bit thin, and I've started work on a site that can handle some casual play coordination.  It's still really rough yet and I'm only taking some sign-ups for it by hand right now.  But if you're interested in helping test out the functionality please join in my Preconstructed Deck League in the link above.

 
What to do with Commons -
Ever wonder about things you could do with the excess draft dredge commons?  Some pretty nifty ideas have been shared so far in the thread above.  Add your voice or idea!

Burning non-renewable resources -

This thread brings up the fact that MTGO is using up its ability to draw in new or lapsed players by enticing them with old cards.  When they use up all their MED's and old sets we will be in a state of stable, static, MTGO sets being a month behind paper and nothing new in sight. 

 
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.

Taking a break + Mailing Lists -
When yet another poster mentioned that they were leaving until <insert reason to play here> I decided to step up and make something happen.  Rather than waiting for them to come back I've created mailing lists to which interested people can subscribe.  Instead of letting them go away and hope they check back peridiocally I wanted to be proactive about letting them know when their favorite format is back.  Leagues List, Multiplayer List

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Bugs: Client

 
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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Haaaaammmmm Jonnnneeeeessssssss!

Card prices were down again this week, except for Extended, which saw some meager increases.  But again, not enough to stem the bleeding from the Standard card pool.  Classic lost a very small amount again.

So what does that mean for the value of your collection?  It means it's still falling, just not as fast this week. 

Some pretty obvious decreases, as Shadowmoor drafts continue to fire at a consistent rate, pumping more and more of those cards into the system.  We've seen the prices fall back down again now that we have the rest of the release events finished up.  If anything, it might be justification to run the release events for less time to keep the prices from falling too low by the time they're done.

The increases, again, pique my interest.  Some cards are obvious tournament staples.  Others... not so much.  Shield of Kaldra?  Serious?  Mmkay.  Get down with your bad self, Kaldra!

- hamtastic