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.
| Week of August 1st:
Some tidbits on MED2 this week. According to this post it looks like we'll be getting Dry Spell and Panic as very likely inclusions into MED2. The Beta test for Eventide is underway and while I'm not at liberty to discuss exactly what goes on in Beta (confidentiality stuff), I can say that there are some pretty interesting things coming out soon. We've been beta testing new/improved aspects of the client as well as the cards. Look for more information as we get closer to the time when they will be released. I think some people will be happy with the work done. But to temper expectations, neither of them are Leagues/Redemption (at least not that we're testing, I have no clue what WotC's doing internally for those). Week of August 8th:
We got a rather large amount of updates, fixes and changes this week. Enough so that I almost consider it SP 1.1. I'll detail the changes as well as some large problems introduced in this latest build in the Editorial section this week. Besides the recent round of changes, things are holding steady with V3 so far. |
| 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. Week of July 25th:
A boring week in MTGO land... no crashes, no new events, no news on MED2. Beta has started though, and that's good for some entertainment. |
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.
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. |
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Service Pack 1.1 Breakdown:
Fixes!
Fix: Serious Pairing Issues. A huge bug fix for tournament Magic. Previously MTGO wasn't following the DCI's comprehensive rules when it came to final round pairing. This has now been resolved.
Fix: Searches use updated Oracle wording. Another good improvement for sure. Previously it was searching on old versions and having issues with mechanic based searches as well. These are now fixed.
Fix: Tournament match scores are updated as games complete. This was a very frustrating glitch when playing in an event before this change. It would make it much more difficult to actually know what was going on in the event.
New features!
New Feature: Attack any in multiplayer. This really helps bring MTGO's Free For All mechanics much closer to those of our paper counterparts. There has been a lot of good EDH related feedback regarding this as well.
New Feature: Draft Recorder
For those who haven't seen it yet, V3 got another new feature this week. This time it's a completely user request driven feature as well. Ever since V3 was released people haven't been able to create an easy draft capture session. The previous tool, known as DraftCap from Blargware was incompatable with V3, and due to V3's dynamic card sizing during the draft it made determining the cards selected very difficult by using the normal methods.
But that's all changed now. The V3 development team has created a way to record a draft and put it as a selectable option in the client itself. The output is (thanks MTGOKaishin for the info):For vista: C:Users"Username"AppDataRoamingWizards of the CoastMagic Online.0
For XP: C:Documents and SettingsApplication Data"username"Wizards of the CoastMagic Online.0
However, it doesn't append the final deck like DraftCap could, so I'd recommend anyone who's going to do so save their decks as .txt and add them into the draft output at the end of the draft.
The output from the draft will look something like this (I removed the middle pack from this example):
Event #: 43571
Time: 7/20/2008 2:48:51 PM
Players:
************
*******
*********
--> hamtastic
****
***********
****
******
------ SHM ------
Pack 1 pick 1:
Devoted Druid
Tattermunge Duo
Disturbing Plot
Nurturer Initiate
Æthertow
Safehold Elite
Woeleecher
Memory Sluice
Giantbaiting
Blazethorn Scarecrow
Emberstrike Duo
Guttural Response
Inkfathom Witch
--> Mistmeadow Witch
Oracle of Nectars
Pack 1 pick 2:
Barkshell Blessing
Mudbrawler Raiders
Sickle Ripper
Parapet Watchers
Blight Sickle
--> Ballynock Cohort
Gleeful Sabotage
Kithkin Shielddare
Prismwake Merrow
Inescapable Brute
Safewright Quest
Mistmeadow Skulk
Wild Swing
Wound Reflection
Pack 1 pick 3:
Crabapple Cohort
Traitor's Roar
Gravelgill Duo
Torture
Fists of the Demigod
Splitting Headache
Barrenton Medic
Memory Sluice
Poison the Well
Foxfire Oak
Sapseep Forest
Fossil Find
--> Augury Adept
Pack 1 pick 4:
Sickle Ripper
Torpor Dust
Blight Sickle
Ashenmoor Cohort
Crabapple Cohort
Cinderbones
Apothecary Initiate
Fate Transfer
Crimson Wisps
Toil to Renown
Heap Doll
--> Kithkin Rabble
Pack 1 pick 5:
Gravelgill Axeshark
Sootstoke Kindler
--> Steel of the Godhead
Emberstrike Duo
Barrenton Medic
Whimwader
Giantbaiting
Viridescent Wisps
Deepchannel Mentor
Sapseep Forest
Cauldron of Souls
Pack 1 pick 6:
Torture
Torpor Dust
--> Barrenton Cragtreads
Ashenmoor Cohort
Thornwatch Scarecrow
Mine Excavation
Spell Syphon
Inescapable Brute
Spiteflame Witch
Worldpurge
Pack 1 pick 7:
Sootstoke Kindler
--> Faerie Macabre
Helm of the Ghastlord
Poison the Well
Ashenmoor Cohort
Apothecary Initiate
Whimwader
Horde of Boggarts
Thought Reflection
Pack 1 pick 8:
Gravelgill Axeshark
Rattleblaze Scarecrow
Toil to Renown
Thornwatch Scarecrow
Rustrazor Butcher
Aphotic Wisps
--> Mercy Killing
Enchanted Evening
Pack 1 pick 9:
Disturbing Plot
Woeleecher
Memory Sluice
--> Giantbaiting
Blazethorn Scarecrow
Emberstrike Duo
Guttural Response
Pack 1 pick 10:
--> Parapet Watchers
Blight Sickle
Kithkin Shielddare
Inescapable Brute
Wild Swing
Wound Reflection
Pack 1 pick 11:
Torture
Splitting Headache
--> Barrenton Medic
Poison the Well
Sapseep Forest
Pack 1 pick 12:
Ashenmoor Cohort
Apothecary Initiate
Fate Transfer
--> Heap Doll
Pack 1 pick 13:
Emberstrike Duo
--> Whimwader
Sapseep Forest
Pack 1 pick 14:
Ashenmoor Cohort
--> Spell Syphon
------ EVE ------
Pack 3 pick 1:
Shell Skulkin
Soul Reap
Nettle Sentinel
Fire at Will
Merrow Levitator
Battlegate Mimic
Odious Trow
Inside Out
Nip Gwyllion
Grazing Kelpie
Hotheaded Giant
Razorfin Abolisher
Moonhold
Noggle Hedge-Mage
--> Figure of Destiny
Pack 3 pick 2:
Desecrator Hag
Rendclaw Trow
Noggle Bandit
Stream Hopper
Fang Skulkin
Merrow Bonegnawer
Banishing Knack
Kithkin Zealot
Monstrify
Heartlash Cinder
Unwilling Recruit
Suture Spirit
--> Batwing Brume
Glamerdye
Pack 3 pick 3:
Soul Reap
Cinder Pyromancer
Riverfall Mimic
Scourge of the Nobilis
Nightsky Mimic
Jawbone Skulkin
Raven's Crime
Trapjaw Kelpie
Nip Gwyllion
Tilling Treefolk
--> Groundling Pouncer
Hag Hedge-Mage
Gilder Bairn
Pack 3 pick 4:
Nettle Sentinel
Flame Jab
Shorecrasher Mimic
Edge of the Divinity
Hoof Skulkin
Merrow Bonegnawer
Inside Out
Beckon Apparition
Monstrify
--> Noxious Hatchling
Crumbling Ashes
Altar Golem
Pack 3 pick 5:
Wickerbough Elder
Duergar Assailant
Stream Hopper
Gift of the Deity
Aerie Ouphes
Clout of the Dominus
Smoldering Butcher
Wilderness Hypnotist
--> Double Cleave
Grazing Kelpie
Idle Thoughts
Pack 3 pick 6:
Dream Thief
Shell Skulkin
Nightsky Mimic
Heartlash Cinder
Talara's Bane
Banishing Knack
--> Cenn's Enlistment
Slippery Bogle
Lingering Tormentor
Springjack Shepherd
Pack 3 pick 7:
Edge of the Divinity
Fang Skulkin
Gift of the Deity
Oona's Grace
Beckon Apparition
--> Slippery Bogle
Noggle Bridgebreaker
Raven's Crime
Soul Snuffers
Pack 3 pick 8:
Harvest Gwyllion
Duergar Assailant
Wilderness Hypnotist
--> Cenn's Enlistment
Drain the Well
Hobgoblin Dragoon
Antler Skulkin
Phosphorescent Feast
Pack 3 pick 9:
Shell Skulkin
--> Merrow Levitator
Odious Trow
Inside Out
Nip Gwyllion
Grazing Kelpie
Moonhold
Pack 3 pick 10:
Stream Hopper
Fang Skulkin
Merrow Bonegnawer
Banishing Knack
Kithkin Zealot
--> Monstrify
Pack 3 pick 11:
Nightsky Mimic
Jawbone Skulkin
Raven's Crime
--> Trapjaw Kelpie
Tilling Treefolk
Pack 3 pick 12:
--> Shorecrasher Mimic
Merrow Bonegnawer
Inside Out
Crumbling Ashes
Pack 3 pick 13:
Stream Hopper
Smoldering Butcher
--> Wilderness Hypnotist
Pack 3 pick 14:
--> Shell Skulkin
Banishing Knack
It records your picks, the draft number (great for refunds) the time (again, great for refunds) and the other players. There are folks who are working on script conversion utilities, once those are done and posted publicly, I'll link them.
Returned Feature: My Games. It's not 100% back to normal, but it's getting closer and closer. Right now the data is held client side as server side is still causing too much overhead.
Bugs!
Bug:
-1/-1 counters and layers. There are some instances where a creature with a -1/-1 counter on it and 1 toughness won't die.
Bug:
Viewing Seton's Desire in your collection crashes the client. A strange error, this one is. However, searching for, or attempting to view that card in your collection will crash your client.
Bug:
"sac" land frames are wrong. A glitch with the graphics files makes these look really bad right now. According to Dhuse, a fix for this should be out with the next code push.
Thread of the week: Unofficial 8/6 Build Commentary -
There are a few reasons that I'm highlighting this thread this week. The first reason, is because it has a prime example of WotC listening to its customers and implementing something based 100% on their requests: the Draft Recorder. While the current version isn't as slick and savvy as DraftCap was, it's a solid example of something the new developers were able to accomplish in V3 that we never could have gotten in V2.
Also in this thread we have multiple replies from WotC folk (Worth and Dhuse) interacting with the community... and getting insulted for their efforts. I hope that by now, many understand my position on most things: I'll yell when I think it's necessary, I'll praise where I think it's deserved. I'll call out problems where I see them. In that same vein of wanting to get things done for the love of the game I ask one simple thing of everyone: be civil when criticising. Criticize away though, I do it a lot. Posters like Midnight_Angel, Argumentitive Silence, martinlongbow and others criticize WotC frequently; sometimes quite bluntly even. However, they (usually) remain civil while doing so. But then we have posts like this, which lead to replies like this. There's a vast difference between criticizing WotC and attacking them. The former has led to many, many improvements in MTGO. The latter leads to a withdrawl of WotC communication. Everytime you wonder why WotC's won't comment on some important item, look at the first quote above. That's why. Every time someone insults, attacks or flames a WotC staff member, their desire to stop by and chat with us diminishes.
Again, and I can't stress this enough... don't quit criticizing! Just be civilized when you do it. Avoid name calling, avoid flaming WotC staffers. It may feel good to do it and you may feel like you 'told them what for!', however, you've also just made it more likely that they'll stop talking to all of us in the future.
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Unofficial 8/6 Build Discussion AND 8/6 Build Notes-
I've linked this first one about half a dozen times in this article already, and the second one about as much. Both are very good resources for what happened this week. Also of note: far, far, far more things were added and fixed than were broken this week. Yes, we had some things broken due to new changes. However, many more good things came out of this week's code push than were broken. A far cry better than two months ago when they couldn't seem to even break even with code changes. A good step. A very good step, in my opinion. We're not fantastic, and we're not in a fairy land of magical four-winged flutterflies or anything. But we are seeing progress in large batches.
Lack of Lots on eBay -
Luckily before this all started happening I got some data out for a new section in my price section. However, that still leaves us with the little problem of OUR LOTS BEING REMOVED FROM EBAY AGAIN. This happened before, when WoW gold farms were being cracked down on. That decision magically (heh) reversed and we were allowed to sell lots again. The first time this happened was back in February of 2007 (over a year and a half ago now... wow). Anyway, this isn't the first time this has happened. Unfortunately, we never got any confirmation from WotC about what, if anything, they did to fix it last time.
Draft Recorder -
I'm listing this seperate thread since this is a really awesome addition to the basic usage of MTGO. To have a draft recorder built into the client itself is a great thing.
Worlds Qualifier -
A nebulous statement of more statements to come regarding MTGO and World's interaction. Whatever it is, it should be interesting.
Sportsmanship concerns -
Do you feel that players concede too quickly on MTGO? Or that they're not acting very sportsman-like? Add your thoughts to the thread linked above. |
| Secondary Market -
About a month ago I waxed philosophic about the state of MTGO's economy right now. The above thread has the Cliff's Notes version. Who Controls MTGO's Secondary Market -
Some really insightful discussions regarding the nature of the 'free' market of MTGO. Since everything originates from WotC, and WotC controls formats, scheduling and potential demand, how free is our free market? Downtime Announcements going to UTC -
This isn't a huge deal, but it shows that WotC is listening to the posters of the boards when they can. This has been suggested quite a few times before and looks like it's finally going to be done now that there is an official person who handles announcements for the down time. MTGO Server Status Link Now Works! -
Many a joke was made about the MTGO server status window and its extremely optimistic views on the term 'up'. The widget has been remade and actually, really, seems to work this time. Bookmark this site for future use! Set speed too fast? -
A good discussion about the difficulty of keeping up with sets on MTGO as well as MTG in general. |
| 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. 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. MED2 Compiled Information -
What do we know about MED2? Click the link above and find out! |
| 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! 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. 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. SP1 Discussions -
Now that SP1 is out, the discussion of what it fixed, broke and added can begin! MTGO Usage Stats -
I've stopped collecting my numbers as either someone was doing it faster, better, or both. The above thread has the quick and dirty numbers for the SHM release events as well as the post event information. |
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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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I'll start out the section with a new handful of charts regarding bulk ticket sales on eBay. These charts display the following information: Price per ticket for each sale, the number of sales in the week and the number of tickets per sale.
Last Week's numbers:
This chart shows the week to week information about the overall average of the bulk ticket prices.
So, what can we take away from all of this data? The only clear item I was able to glean was that the price per ticket averaged higher in the large quantity lots than it did on the small quantity lots. Other than that, there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to the lots that I've been able to see yet. However with only two points on the chart we're a long way from being able to see any clear patterns yet. I expect to refine and streamline some of this correlation as I see more data.
Ham Jones!
The good news/bad news is exactly the same as last week: Classic and Extended increased (quite a bit, actually) and Standard fell sharply again. Good gains from Classic and Extended cards helped this week's numbers from looking disastrous. The great thing about increasing old set sales is it's a good sign of faith in WotC. There's no redemption for those cards, and no use besides older and eternal formats. To see increased demand in those cards indicates a lot of faith for the future, and I'll take that as a good thing any day.
Movers and Shakers tables:
The 'buh?' of the week this week is the huge surge in Meddling Mage as well as Vampiric Tutor. I would assume that MED2 anticipation is responsible for the hefty upswing in the Classic based cards.
The falling prices aren't really that surprising. The high end cards are dropping due to less Constructed demand mixed with a soon to be rotating Standard format. Players getting rid of their 'goyfs and other Time Spiral block cards are very likely pushing down the prices of the cards right now. Expect further declines in the next few weeks and months.
That's it for this week! I hope you all have a great triple 8 day. Hopefully the layout looks better now that it descends chronologically in each section. Thanks again for all the feedback!
0 Comments
Ham, I've been too busy and haven't had the chance to log in and actually try it out.
But, did the "final round matchup fix" actually get rid of the weighted matchups for random matchups
(ie the way the DCI says it's supposed to be) or did they just fix the "undefeated player 1 matched down
to some random spot and undefeated player 2 matched down to some other random spot" bug?
How are the prices from this chart determined?
was planning on getting Goyf's soon.. under 20 is my price point.. i expect those to be powerhouses for as long as they are legal.