Jim Butcher has written a series of books about Harry Dresden, a wizard operating in present-day Chicago. Highly recommended. In the books, wizards have problems with modern technologies, including computers and the Internet. It must be true, because I am having plenty of problems with computers and the Internet whenever I do anything involving Wizards of the Coast. WotC customer service has been great at bailing me out, but…
After the week I had, it’s time to rant.
The Crash
This all started Monday morning, when I was finishing the original article. I was in final proofing. Then, suddenly, I saw a blue screen and these words:
*** Hardware Malfunction
Call your hardware vendor for support
NMI: Parity check / Memory Parity Error
*** The system has halted ***
The system was indeed halted. The article was — gone. After restoring everything, I had two paragraphs left. The decklists, the prose, the links — all gone. Four or five hours of work down the drain. What was there was corrupted.
I may recreate the article, but that never quite works. I can rebuild the decklists and recreate the links, but a huge part of writing is tweaking the text to get the language and flow just right. Once that is gone, it’s gone.
This one is hardly Wizards fault — it was my hardware that crashed. I was doing final proofing of the article on my computer at work (it was lunch time — I was off the clock, so to speak.) At work, I am first on the list for a replacement PC. However, I work for state government, so the budget for, well, everything, is frozen. Even though the gerbil that powers my PC is geriatric incontinent and uses a walker, I’m not getting a replacement any time soon.
Like I said, not Wizards’ fault. Let’s move on to one that is.
Inactive Forum Accounts
Last week sometime, I got an email, reputably from Wizards, that said this:
Dear Wizards Forums Account Holder-
We are contacting you because you have not logged into your forums account in over a year. Due to a change in our accounts system, your account may be deactivated.
We’d love to invite you back to see how vibrant the Wizards of the Coast community is. If you play any of our games, or just….
I immediately sent this response:
Did this really come from WotC? Is this a phishing scam?
The reason I was asking is because I was logged onto the forums, posting, as the message arrived. My forum handle is PRJ.
Wizards customer service sent me a response saying, basically, yes, it was us, but ignore it. (Aside: I wonder what percentage of my / StarCityGames.com reader base is old enough to remember seeing Roseanne Roseannadanna on SNL.) Shortly thereafter, I got an email from the same source as the original email saying “Sorry — we sent this email to all active, instead of inactive, users.”
D’oh!
Someone at Wizards screwed up. It happens. Barely worth mentioning if it hadn’t been the first in a long series of issues — but it was.
Before going further, I do want to complement the staff of Wizards’ customer service. I have contacted them several times over the last week or so. They have always responded promptly, and have been professional and helpful. Remember, they help people deal with the problems other folks have created. It isn’t the customer service folks’ fault that this stuff is messed up, so don’t bash them (or the ORCs online, for that matter). They are doing their best — and their best is pretty solid.
The people to blame are the people who send the “your account is inactive” emails to active accounts, but I might even give them some slack. Odds are that they are also overworked. I know how that is — our agency is trying to do all the work required while budget issues mean a lot of positions are unfilled. In our division, over one-third of the seats are empty, which means those of us left do a lot more work, in more of a rush, and we make more mistakes.
Which does not excuse the mistakes. Even the little ones, like this, have an impact. The big mistakes, like the Wizards website design, are worth >entire articles in themselves, so let’s move on.
Helpful Articles & Outdated Garbage
I recently started running formal and informal tournaments at a local store. (Plug time — Pegasus Games, Odana Road, Madison: Thursday night casual 2HG tourneys and sanctioned drafts, plus free play, FNM on Friday, etc.) Technically, I have been a tournament organizer for a while now, since Wizards made all the higher level judges TOs as well. Up until recently, though, I hadn’t handled the TO functions — I just played / judged at events other people had organized.
I had been playing at Pegasus, on and off, for a while, and I ran the Prerelease and Launch Party there. Trying casual tournament seemed like a good idea, so I went ahead and registered both a sanctioned draft and a casual-Constructed tournament. That went pretty well.
I also looked for some advice on a few areas of this process that I had not handled. I looked on the Wizards website. I found some articles and advice — some of which was helpful, and some of it was woefully out of date.
I found an article on running and using DCI Reporter that had to be about five years (and a couple versions of DCI-R) old. I found several things that just plain do not work. For example, I have found, and carefully followed, the instructions for downloading an upgrade for DCI Reporter that is supposed to allow me to run and upload casual events. I did everything that I was supposed to, and it does not give me the options it should. I’ve obviously screwed something up, but I cannot find out what.
I had a few other questions, like “if I run two casual tournaments on the same day — a booster draft and a Constructed event — do I have to report them as one or two events.” (Note: casual tournaments report only participation, not results, and do not affect rating. Therefore, all I end up reporting is a list of participants.) I got the answers to those questions from the helpful folks at the Wizards TO forum.
Uploading Events
Part of being the organizer is reporting the results of events to the DCI. Sometimes, that is easy. Sometimes, not.
I have been responsible for eight events at Pegasus so far. I ended up sanctioning two of those under my own name. The rest were sanctioned by, or under the name of, the store owner: Lory Aitkens.
Sanctioning events requires logging into the Wizards website, clicking through to event sanctioning and clicking through a lot of options and pull-downs. It isn’t hard — but to sanction something under my name, I have to be logged in under my name and password. To sanction something under Lory’s name, I have to be logged in under her name and password. The same thing is true for reporting events. It’s no biggie, just the way it is.
I ended up reporting six of the events to Wizards. Some were simple — after the event, I completed the event in DCI Reporter, clicked on the Internet Upload button and the event was registered. Easy-Peasy. However, in three cases, the event would no upload, or it said it uploaded, but did nothing.
When an event uploads, the coordinator gets an email saying that the event was recorded successfully, or — if there was a problem — then the coordinator gets an email describing the problem. In two cases, neither outcome happened. The event uploaded, and Wizards did not send Lory an email — and the event continued to be listed as unreported.
I spent a couple days trying to puzzle this one out — then I emailed customer services at WotC. I was sitting at my computer, and called over to Ingrid (who was doing judgy stuff at hers) “Hey, the email address for WotC is [old address], right?” She said she thought that was right.
It wasn’t. Wizards changed their address a while back — I remembered the previous address. (And I won’t include that one. I had problems with it, no reason everyone else should, too.) I got a reject message. I tried another spelling / abbreviation, then another and another. Hours, and five reject messages, later, I looked it up and sent it off — and it went through.
In response, I received an exceptionally professional and courteous response.
Dear Peter. … I see in your email that you did not put dashes in the sanctioning number. Remember that if you don’t enter dashes in the sanctioning number into Reporter, it will seem to upload correctly, but then vanish into server limbo as it’s not a valid number.
Please check in the Tournament Setup area of those events, and add the dashes if necessary….
Yup — I had screwed that up. No dashes. I added the dashes, and the tournament uploaded correctly.
So why mention it? Well, a DCI sanctioning number has this format: XX-XX-XXXXXX. A DCI player ID number has this format. XXXX-XXX-XXX. In DCIR, if you include the dashes in a player number, the program rejects it. When uploading, if you exclude the dashes, the program rejects it — and doesn’t bother to mention the difference. Include, exclude — who cares? I just wish the program would make up its mind.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Pointless inconsistency is a sign of a disordered mind.
Michael Littman
Of course, taking shots at DCI Reporter is like entering a dance-off against a palsied elephant — it is just too easy. Enough.
You can also report results through the Wizards website, without using DCI Reporter. I did that twice. It was necessary once, when I was participating in one of the Constructed events. Usually, I don’t, because it is a conflict of interest / looks bad to have the organizer/judge/tournament manager/scorekeeper playing. In this one case, it was a non-sanctioned 2HG, and everyone (except me) was getting identical participation prizes. We also had 11 players entered into a 2HG event, and could not find a twelfth. Adding me meant the odd man out had a partner, and we didn’t have a team sitting out a bye every round. Having me play was the least bad outcome, and is perfectly acceptable under DCI and store policy. However, DCI Reporter would not allow it.
Okay, I said I’d stop bashing DCIR. Let’s bash online play, instead.
Rewards Emails
Wizards has implemented a new program to reward online play. You earn points for playing in events and for spending money in the online store. You get free cards. The more points, the more cards. Like this.
Wizards will even send us a personalized email to update us on the program. To quote Wizards: What exactly will be in the personalized newsletter?
Your personalized newsletter will show you exactly how many Magic Online Player Rewards points you have earned and what rewards you have already qualified for that month. In addition it will contain varying personalized game play and collection statistics about your account.
Cool idea — I can track where I’m at. This should even pump sales — if I am a couple points short of a level close to the end of the month, I could make a few additional purchases to make sure I hit the level and get the card. At least, that’s the theory. Wizards will send out its first such email on July 30th. However, this month the “July reporting period” ends with the downtime on July 29th. Any purchases after that time will be credited to the August period.
Two points short for a card? By the time you find out, it is too late to correct it.
Multiple Identities Email
This was the event that really got to me — and one that is not yet resolved.
Dear Wizards Account Holder-
We are contacting you because your Wizards account has multiple personas. You may be using personas to switch “identities” when posting in the forums.
We are making a change to our accounts system that no longer supports personas. Because of this change, all non-default personas will be “orphaned.” This means that all forum posts created by those personas will retain the screen name of those personas, but you will no longer be able to modify that content or post from those personas.
We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. To ensure that you have selected the persona that you want to keep, follow these instructions:
To view or change your default persona:
1. Log in with your email address here. If you don’t remember your password, you may request a password reset.
First, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t have multiple personas. I post, and have always posted, under the handle “PRJ.” However, I decide to check. I click the link. It takes me to the forums log-in screen.
This screen has always worked a bit wonky for me. I get the Make a New Account / Sign In boxes. The Sign In box asks for email and password, and a box you can check if you want to log in automatically for two weeks. When I use this form to log into the forums — more often than every two weeks, whether I check the box or not — I always go to another screen that asks me to enter three security questions so I can change my password.
Happens every time: when I click log in to the forums, I get the log in screen, then the security questions. I never answer them, I just hit back page on the browser panel twice, then refresh, and I’m logged into the forums.
This time, I made a bad choice. I was a bit worried that this might have been a phishing scam. Yes, I know that no one makes big money by stealing forums accounts, but sending me an email about second personas didn’t make much sense. I decided to click “reset password.” If it worked, I could always change it back. If nothing happened, I could ignore the email.
I got an email from WotC saying that they had a request to change my password, which I could accomplish by clicking the link. I shut down my browser, rebooted (for other reasons — it is an old machine) then clicked the link. The Wizards website said that my password had been reset and a confirmation email sent to my account.
It didn’t arrive.
Now the log in for the forum accounts is my email address, and all the other emails have come to this address. The email with the new password has not. I contacted customer service, and after a half dozen emails, I still have no password, and no way of logging into the forums. I have tried. I have gotten the standard language a couple times, and other responses. I have checked spam filters and so forth. No password. Nothing.
I’m not a happy camper.
Early Format Change-Over
I have had a bunch conflicts and so forth interfering with my valuable Magic-playing time. I have had relatives staying over. I have had to help my aunt, whose house suffered some wind damage. Etc. I had not had a chance to play a really fun Standard deck enough. The deck won two 25+ player events in paper, but it has 4 Wrath of God and 4 Treetop Village, so it is no longer paper-legal any more. I had planned on playing it online, but the relatives and stuff ate the early part of this week. As for Wednesday and after — see this announcement from Wizards:
Magic 2010 becomes legal in all appropriate constructed formats after today’s downtime. This means that these formats will allow you to use older cards with the same name as a card in Magic 2010 after the downtime, even before the set goes on sale!
Along with this, Tenth Edition is no longer legal in Standard and other formats which base their legality on Standard.
The online prerelease is this weekend. Until then, I can’t play my old deck, and I’m not sure what to do about the new one. I was going to play Baneslayer Angel in that deck, but I don’t really expect to bust one at the prerelease (one specific Mythic in six packs — right.)
I’m not going to get into the rights or wrongs of this — the program can support one set of format legalities at any given time. With the prerelease happening on the weekend, they are choosing the version that allows those cards, but still. This was just another disappointment at the end of a long week.
Update
It is Thursday, now. I’m 40 hours over deadline. Wizards customer support has finally gotten my new account password to me. I have had to go through and reenter all my security questions.
Side rant: I hate these. What is the name of your first pet? Is that the guinea pig I had as a really small kid, whose name I could never spell? The family dog? The first dog I owned all on my own? Same with the street where I grew up — I could offer a half dozen defensible answers, and I hate having to keep track of which answer I gave which website. Whatever — I gave answers for them all. They may or may not have matched those I gave last time I went through this.
I answered the questions, checked my account, and found that I did have one additional persona. I haven’t used it for a decade, but it exists. Then I tried to update my password. I got the following message.
We have encountered a technical difficulty. Please close your browser and try again.
PRJ
“one million words” on MTGO, unless that is screwed up, too.