July 2008

The State of Leagues and Redemption.

There are ongoing lively discussions within our walls about the priority list for the features that are missing from Magic Online. The reality is that there are also technical considerations that can and do affect the order in which features get developed. The prioritization of Leagues vs. Redemption is an interesting case. Leagues have always been higher than Redemption on our feature priority list. There are compelling cases to be made for each feature to be highest in the list based on what we have observed since the V3 launch. Leagues offer an important alternative to tournaments and drafts. Redemption is a critical part of the economy in Magic Online.

This is where the greater state of the system and its architecture intervene. We are working on a collection server that will solve enough of our architectural constraints that we will be able to continue to increase our ability to support more customers and provide significantly improved usability relating to digital object management (trades, deck building, deck validation, delivery, pack opening, redemption, etc...). We can't/shouldn't get Redemption working before we complete the collection server. Finishing the partially implemented Redemption feature as it was initially designed would set back system performance (more large escrows will hurt the system).

Work on the collection server is ongoing. I don't have a date for its completion. I do know that the collection server will not be done in time for Eventide at this point. Redemption is an integral part of collection management, and thus will be completed as part of the collection server project.

Development on Leagues has been held up by the post-launch stabilization effort, and now by the collection server project. While Leagues and the collection server's scope are not the same, Leagues will be easier to implement after the collection server is up and running. We will also be able to depend on better system performance for the new functionality that will come with leagues. The same goes for Leagues and Redemption, implementing them without first fixing the collection situation would degrade overall system performance.

For Eventide, we are working to increase the number of play options within the draft, tournament and casual play structure that we have in place now. We are working to add some additional tournament rooms to the system for the Eventide release period. The goal will be to provide more play options for casual and competitive players. I will provide more details as soon as I am sure this work will be competed in time for Eventide.

Other features that need attention and their status:

Clan Chat - the SP1+ deployment allows us to start working this issue now. At least part of the problem is stemming from clan invitations that are initiated while the target is offline.
Trade - again, SP1+ being out of the way will allow us to look for short-term relief to the client side collection corruption issues that are behind the bad trading experience. But the collection server is still going to be the long-term answer to improved trading. We will implement a new trading UI along with the new server.
10th Edition Theme Decks in the New Player room - we will restore the format that was removed in SP1+ in an upcoming build.
UI Look and Feel - We are working on both long and short-term solutions in this area with our new UI expert. But that is another story for an upcoming blog entry or announcement.

We will provide specific dates as soon as we have them.

Greetings from Renton,

SP1+ continues to be tested by our QA team. I have been going through the issues lists to compile build notes, and I figured I would list the client related items that are on the list so far. These items were pretty easy to find and have descriptions that will not offend anyone. I still need to make a full pass through all the actual dev check-ins in our source control system to make sure that I capture correct notes for all the 150+ items that are in this build.

My previous posts about SP1+ have attempted to temper expectations, and you will note that we aren't solving major usability issues with this build. But the sum of all these fixes should be a more stabile client, with fewer annoying bugs.

Fix for bad cursor behavior in text entry fields.
Wishing from sideboard is now fixed.
[ Wilderness Elemental ] will no longer die if no non-basic lands are in play.
Thieves auction will now bring all perms back into play.
You should now receive an error message when you try to add an additional buddy when your list is full.
Cards in Avatar zone will no longer stack
Repaired a bug that caused a 'disposed game object exception' in the draft room causing the game to shut down.
Repaired the "Cancel edit" in the trade areas that caused the loss of the scroll bar and scrolling capabilities.
Phases changes are no longer written to game log to reduce spam
CSV files will now differentiate between foil/nonfoil
Home & End keys pressed in edit boxes during acct creation will no longer cause the scene to change
Auto submitting decks in round 1 brings cards back in sideboard in round 2. (Is this a description of the bug or the desired behavior?)
Long "Choose a Counter" lists will no longer cut off the name of the last counter.
List boxes should not skip first element when scroll bar appears anymore.
Adding or removing cards after a confirm should now unconfirm, as it had in 2.5.
Storage lands from TSP no longer have the wrong frames [Calciform Pools, etc]
A bug where Doubling Season didn't affect plainswalker starting tokens.
Clan names are no longer cut off when it's "too long".
Clan Captain will now get confirmation on invites.
An issue that caused a bad result after multiple card drag and drop followed by "Add 4" has been corrected.
Multiplayer: Conceding while prompted to declare blockers will no longer stop the game.
We repaired an issue with Collection Filters causing a trade error.
We corrected an issue that made the game crash when Reparations was used with All Suns' Dawn
Vigean Intuition now allows Tribal or Planeswalker to be chosen as a card type
Mirror Golem can now get protection from Tribal or Planeswalker
Wish List button in trade no longer overlaps text
Save Wish List option should now appear in Graphical View.
We have reduced frame size in the docked chat containers.
Mousewheel should no longer flip pages in collection view.
Deckbuilder should no longer defaults to card view.

There are a lot of server side changes that won't be listed individually in the final notes, particularly relating to ecommerce. Among general performance and efficiency fixes, we have attempted to improve the usefulness of the store's error messages.

July 2008