It has been an interesting couple of weeks. Magic has had some real ups and positive developments, and a few downers. Let’s review.
Standard
I have been quite pleased by the current Standard format. A ton of decks are viable. You can find most of them in the Standard sidebar on the right, under the various SCG $5k lists.
The format encourages innovation. I keep trying new decks, based mainly on what I happen to open recently. For example, going through draft leftovers recently, I found my fourth Scepter of Fugue and Nyxalid, as well as a playset of Kederekt Parasites. I built a deck using the Parasites, Goblin Assault, and Gravepact. After a very little playtesting, the Parasites vanished. More playtesting brought me around to — well, Blightning Aggro. The other decks are not dreadful — they just can’t beat format staples.
Okay — they are dreadful. Standard itself, however, is a hit.
Lag City and Crashes
A couple of weeks ago, MTGO had a reoccurrence of one of its worst problems: serious lag. The time between clicking on something and having the program respond was so bad that I quit playing for a few days. Then Wizards fixed something, and the lag disappeared.
Lag is annoying, and harmful, but the speculation on exactly what is causing it can be amusing. It at least gives you something to do while you suffer.
The lag occurred during the first week of the Conflux online release. That would tend to indicate that the problem had to do with all the database transactions required to creates tons of new cards, since drafts and sealed events were happening pretty much continuously. Since every draft requires the digital “destruction” of 24 packs and 8 tickets, and the creation of 360 cards, this could create a slowdown. In theory, at least. However, after the fix, everything went really smoothly.
Well, until the last update. Now something else is broken. The MTGO client occasionally freezes, suddenly and without warning. I had this happen after my first pick in a draft. I had to use Task Manager to kill MTGO, then restart the program and log back in. The result was a series of marginal cards, as my second through whatever picks. I have been hit by the bug a few times since then, both in sanctioned and casual play. It’s annoying, but not much more than that.
The problem is that Wizards was having trouble reproducing the bug. They have a variety of machines running a variety of software in their test labs, but as this was written, it wasn’t clear that they had nailed it down. The next downtime and update is this Wednesday. I have my fingers crossed. [The problem has been solved by rolling back the code to a previous version. Hopefully, the programmers will sort it properly in time for a future update. — Craig]
On the plus side, I did file a refund request for the draft, and they did refund my money. And I can keep the cards I drafted. I have to give them credit for that.
Customer Appreciation Week
After the lag was fixed, Wizards apologized, and announced a series of special benefits for thier players. These included:
* Cut priced drafts
* Special Foil cards for anyone making purchases totaling $20.00 in the online store.
* Return of some widely-requested draft formats, like CCC
* Extension of sales for some card sets
* Ravnica drafts — Ravnica is out of print online
* Free Standard and Alara Sealed events with really good prize support
The response: the players complained, endlessly, about everything in sight. The players wanted more free stuff, more often, and in more variety. The players wanted to get Foil cards for purchases made in the past, and free drafts of all the other OOP sets. They didn’t like the times, or the mix, or that they weren’t all winning every match.
The nattering nabobs of negativity were out in force.
The best comment — apparently made seriously — came from someone feeling left out. “I just play casually, with cards I beg from friends. I haven’t spent any money on the game for five years. How come I don’t get appreciated?”
The week ended with the free tournaments. Wizards created four Standard events, each limited to 256 players, and four Sealed events, also limited to 256 players. The Standard events were spread out, every six hours of so, on a Monday. The Sealed events were spread out on Tuesday. I had to work Monday, but I was home for part of Tuesday. (Yes, I’m lucky. I worked hard to get a job with some flexibility — and I took advantage of that.) People were already a bit upset that the events happened on a weekday. (Of course, the big marquee events happen online on weekends, so people would have complained just as much if they had conflicted with those events.)
There were 256 slots in the event. There were close to a thousand people in the room waiting to enter when it went up. It filled fast. Really, really fast. And once it filled, there were still several hundred people with nothing to do but complain.
Sure, having bigger tournaments would have been nice. Maybe next time. However, the free events that we did have cost Wizards a bunch of revenue, both in terms of free packs and prize packs. All those free packs offset store sales, and the people playing in the free events were not paying to draft or play in other events. Not one-for-one, but it cost.
I like free stuff, but I also want Wizards to stay profitable, so they keep the game going indefinitely.
I can also sympathize with the WotC folks that were manning the customer complaint lines that morning. I was working side events day one at Worlds in Paris. That was the day that Wizards expected a light turnout, and had a total of 256 seats for all side events that day. The first event was a PTQ — and my early line count hit 900. Not so good — but we did the best we could.
The complaining and b*tching had not ended by the time the second event rolled around. The numbers were, if anything, even bigger. The same things happened, and the gripping was just as bad. Now, however, they had a new gripe. Some of the same names that made it into the first event made it into the second event. Now people were talking about how “the whole thing is rigged” and “you have to know someone at WotC.”
Okay, this one I can explain. My title at work is Telecommunications Analyst, after all. The secret to getting onto the event was to be ready for the tournament to appear, with the program open and active — and to have a very fast Internet connection with a very low latency. It was just like multiplayer shooters online — if you had a long router, or a slow router or two in the middle, you were dead before you could even react.
God help anyone connecting via satellite dish.
Here’s my favorite comment from that discussion: “Wizards, please move the servers to Australia. I hear the scenery is 10x better, and it could really cut my ping times. KBAITHNX.”
For the third event, Matt Tabak tried to get creative in an attempt to solve the multiple entry issue. His plan was to mute the room, then, at the scheduled start time, have everyone who wanted to get into the event type CAW, once, as a comment. He would then copy the chat into a spreadsheet, remove everyone who had already played in a free event, then enter the first 256 new players in the third sealed event. Matt repeated these instructions twice.
Matt overlooked something that, as a highly experienced Magic judge, he should have known. That is the simple fact that Magic players cannot follow instructions. No matter how simple, or how often they are repeated, they cannot follow instructions. They didn’t, people typed CAW repeatedly, and it became impossible to strip names out of the chat log. Matt had to abort the try.
I can sympathize with Matt. I’ve had days like that.
In addition to the free event, anyone entering got a free textless Terror for thier online account. Once it became clear that a lot more people wanted to enter the events than could actually play, Wizards decided to award textless Terrors to every active player, whether or not they could make it into the event. Wizards made the announcement, and the very first post, in reply, was a complaint.
“This is terrible. I got my four Terrors, and now you are destroying the value by printing many more. That’s terrible. I’m gonna quit this game.” That may not be verbatim, but it’s close.
This Week is Bad, but I Don’t Care
Work has been rough. I’m finishing up not only my own taxes, but my Aunt’s as well. I managed a depressing 1-3 record in the weekly Standard tournament. I’m sick as a dog. However…
The sponsorship list came out. I’m going to Hawaii. As a judge, but I still get to go to the big show.
*big grin*
Alara Block Limited
I have been drafting a fair amount of Alara block recently, both online and in paper. This follows a couple months of playing a lot of Master Edition II and Mirage / Visions / Weatherlight Limited online, as I tried to get missing cards from those old sets. I did fairly well at those, but the formats were far less enjoyable than Alara. Alara is just more fun. You have far more options, and far more intricate positions. For me, it’s a big hit, and I usually don’t like limited all that much.
I guess it helps that I had Master Transmuter, Sigil of Distinction, and assortment of Capsules and Sanctum Gargoyle last week at FNM. Stupid good pools are always nice. However, even in the events where I don’t have the nutz, it is still fun.
Magic Online Championship Series & Player of the Year
Another hit — Magic Online has finally made the big time. Players can now qualify for monthly “season” championships. The next seven season champs, plus the player of the year, get to play an 8 player event at Worlds in Rome this fall, for serious money. It is not quite the Pro Tour, but it is by no means chicken feed.
To qualify for the season championships, you need 15 points. You get one point for winning a draft or 8 player Constructed event. You get three points for making Top 8 in an online premier event.
Player of the Year is the person with the most points in the period leading up to the Rome event.
That is all good. Well, almost all. I looked at my first week of play. I had managed to enter five drafts, and won just one. The second week I have not had time to enter any. I am not going to qualify for the season champs tournament, much less win the invite. Work is not compatible with a lot of play time. On the flip side, work is compatible with income, which means I can afford cards and packs.
The season champs series appears to have a downside, however. Drafts come in three flavors: 8-4, 4-3-2-2, and 321Swiss. In the past, the really good players had played in the 8-4 drafts, which had better prizes, better players, and better signals. Mediocre players played in the 4-3-2-2, since the more marginal pool of players, and wider prize distribution, gave them a better chance to winning something. The mediocre to bad players, including me, tended to play in the 321Swiss pools, because you could not be eliminated.
Now, however, it appears that this is changing. The desire to score points, either to hit 15 and qualify, or to compete for player of the year, is shifting the better players into the lesser queues. In the past, the 321Swiss queues had very few players with ratings of 1700 or better. Recently, however, I have seen a lot more players with 1750 to 1800 and higher ratings in 321Swiss. That could be a problem. It is nice that Wizards is offering big money, but it might make sense for them to stop giving out qualifying points for the 321Swiss queues. The incentive for good players to play more drafts is great, but not if it makes the more marginal players that frequent the 321 queues stop playing.
The Online Championship Series is a big hit. Giving points for winning 321Swiss drafts — not so much.
Seeing Ratings Online
I wrote about this on another website, and provided the rating numbers (without names or identifying info) as evidence . Another writer went further, and analyzed the average ratings of players and expected winnings verses rating for the different queues. A few days later, Wizards changed the program so you cannot see the ratings of other players. Coincidence? Causality? Who knows. The stated reason was that some players were bullying other players because they had low ratings.
I have seen such bullying, and even been subject to it once or twice. It has no place online.
The reactions of the player base has been mixed. Some players are happy. Some complain about the change. A few are seething — but some of those are always seething about something. However, I do want to address a few of their comments.
“I use ratings to judge my opponent. If they are highly rated, I play tighter. If they have a low rating, I run more bluffs, etc.”
In the real (paper) Magic world, you don’t get to see your opponent’s rating at the start of the match. There may be other clues — a play mat with a bunch of PTQ Top 8 pins, a dice bag, etc. — but not their actual rating. In the paper world, you have to make your judgments based on how they play and react. With ratings hidden, you will have to make the same judgments online. Of course, in the paper world, you may recognize players and know how they play, but that’s also true online. Just like I recognize players at FNM, I occasionally recognize player names online.
“I use ratings to avoid bad players when playtesting.”
This one is slightly more legitimate, in that playtesting against bad players with random decks is not all that useful, but this may be one of the problems that Wizards wants to avoid. I have two online accounts, and both are rated around 1620 in Constructed. That is mainly because I have played almost no sanctioned Constructed events. My rating does not reflect my skills. In any case, the best way to avoid playing against randoms is to playtest with friends or guildmembers.
“I use ratings to avoid scammers.”
This one is legitimate, and Wizards will need to provide something, if it continues to hide ratings. Most dealers — most players, for that matter — take pains to avoid scammers. The worst scam is to buy tickets that someone has bought with a stolen credit card. The buyer can get burned in that transaction. To avoid this, many dealers will only buy from players with evidence of use of the account — to wit, a rating other than 1600. Ratings change over time, so ratings of 1600 across the board could be evidence that this is a brand new account, bought to trade in scammed TIX or good, and due to be closed in a day or two.
Wizards needs to find something that will let dealers spot scammers, but that won’t lead to bullying. Good luck to them.
Stronghold Release Events
One final note — the Stronghold online release events will be starting shortly after this goes up. I’m looking forward to this — I like some of those old cards. However, I’m in the minority, and even I have to admit that the number of Constructed-worthy Stronghold cards is pretty limited. Turnout may be low.
Wizards is also changing the way that Classic sets, like Stronghold, are released online. With Mirage block, the cards went on sale, then stayed on sale indefinitely. Very few players bought these cards, and the Mirage block drafts almost never fired.
This time around, Wizards is only going to sell Stronghold packs in the store for a couple weeks. After that, it will leave the store until Exodus is released next fall. That means that you have to buy it now, or do without.
I’m not sure I like this. I could see Stronghold cards being in perpetually short supply. A few traders did offer Mox Diamonds on Monday – the day the set came out. They put up the few they had at $50.00 each, and sold out in seconds. They are now listed at $60.00, but the online stores don’t have any in stock.
However, packs of Stronghold will be available via drafts. Between the end of the Stronghold release events and the Exodus release, you will be able to draft Stronghold in two ways. The first will be NIX TIX — you just supply the packs. The second is NIX PAX — you just pay 15 TIX, and you are given the packs. This might work, but I worry that the queues will never fire. Mirage drafts were up for a long, long time, but I still have a draft set that I could never get rid of.
Time will tell.
PRJ
“one million words” on MTGO