RIP MODO Dailies (let's fire some 8-mans off?)

[Barook]

Money isn't the issue. The online PTQ that crashed during round 9 on Sunday alone pulled in some $21,000. (700+ players x $30 without having any print, production, and distribution costs, no rental of a venue and no judges)

They are simply making money hand over fist with out having to be accountable to their consumer. Its all greed and ego running wild and free.

MODO is a cash cow. They make mad profits from it with basically no upkeep cost. Is it really too much to ask to invest some of that money to make a decent product? Who knows how much potential profit they lost due to a shitty product.

How much would a team of decent programmers cost for this project?

I don't understand how people can blame the victim in all of this. Kibler wrote about his experience, requesting the problem be addressed from a systematic level. Worth Wollpert and the MTGO team decided to effectively GUT all the tournament offerings as a response to degrading stability of their product, and now Kibler is the one to blame for all the ills and woes of the shitty software?

Newsflash: People can go full retard, especially when money is on the line and on the internet with nobody there to keep their stupidity in-check.

I see that whole thing as a way for Wizards to reduce the price support, thus cutting the support of daily events. Just wait for the article where they state that "daily events aren't fixable with the current architecture".

[Dan Turner]

Screw that I want Shandalar back. Give me expansions for $19.99 each to add to it and I would buy a new one every month.


I am still pissed about Tactics I had almost $500 in that and I got shit when it shut down. Sony could have at least gave me something in my wallet to use on other games.

I thinkt hey need to scrap thier online and start over from the bottom and re-work everything even the way the product is offered. (HINT MAYBE CODES FOR DIGITAL INSIDE PACKS) I think specialty items like dual decks should get a code for the digital version. I have no issues with the buying of packs to draft etc when i can turn around and trade them for real cards but specialty product should be digital codes from the real product.

[phonics]

I'm not sure they really want to develop it outside, though. There's a bunch of issues that come with that which could be avoided if they had a decent in-house team.

The big problem right now is that there's no relief in sight. The beta is somehow even worse than the current product - I mean, it's one thing for a beta to be to be unpolished because it's a beta, but Jesus Fucking Christ is that beta a train wreck. And the sad thing is that this program has exist since 2002 - eleven years and they STILL can't get it to be reasonable stable. If I was Dictator of WotC I would just sac the entire dev team, raise salaries, and bring in a new team that knows what it's doing to revamp the UI and back end so that the product is stable and nice-looking.

It's sad, really. You'd think after more than a decade of having a reputation for not being able to make good software to save their lives, someone at WotC would wake up and do something about it. But I guess the idea is that software is a secondary concern to the paper game.

Don't they only have like a couple people on the development team for magic online? I know it is much less than what is necessary for a project as large as magic online.

[Phoenix Ignition]

Based off of their press release thingy it looks like a lot of people are assuming Dailies are gone forever. It looks to me like they're going to just take em down until the shitstorm blows over so they can say they've been "working on it" and when they put them back up again they'll be able to pretend like it's fixed.

People saying they're going to sell their entire collections over this are funny though...

[mishima_kazuya]

Sold my collection....

AAANNNNDDDDD, as soon as LED's go under $50 a piece I am rebuying into ANT.

[Koby]

Based off of their press release thingy it looks like a lot of people are assuming Dailies are gone forever. It looks to me like they're going to just take em down until the shitstorm blows over so they can say they've been "working on it" and when they put them back up again they'll be able to pretend like it's fixed.

People saying they're going to sell their entire collections over this are funny though...

People may be overreacting, but if there's one thing that is constant, it is WotC's MTGO department cutting features and raising event costs while reducing payout.

The term squeeze doesn't do justice to the vice grip that MTGO has on its fans and consumers.

[Barook]

People may be overreacting, but if there's one thing that is constant, it is WotC's MTGO department cutting features and raising event costs while reducing payout.

The term squeeze doesn't do justice to the vice grip that MTGO has on its fans and consumers.

It's pretty much a lose-lose situation for everyone:

- significantly less people playing Constructed, thus lowering demand for singles and supply for boosters
- Draft gets more expensive due to more expensive packs, while the lower demand drives down prices for singles
- less people play, so less money from tournament entries for Wizards

If that's partly a business decision, then Blizzard is going to tear them a new one as far as online CCGs are concerned.

In the wake of yesterday, I've looked up what's the deal with Hearthstone - while it's completely void of the strategic depth Magic has to offer (kinda like Standard), it

a) is free to play (which is a huge factor)
b) is fast with lots of action
c) has a quite gimmicky presentation

The casual crowd is going to eat this shit up like it's fucking candy. Partly because Blizzard still has a decent reputation among the casual crowd due to their golden age (despite sucking nowadays). Random streamers easily reach 10k+ viewers and once the Open beta starts in December or January, all hell is going to break lose.

[phonics]

It's pretty much a lose-lose situation for everyone:

- significantly less people playing Constructed, thus lowering demand for singles and supply for boosters
- Draft gets more expensive due to more expensive packs, while the lower demand drives down prices for singles
- less people play, so less money from tournament entries for Wizards

If that's partly a business decision, then Blizzard is going to tear them a new one as far as online CCGs are concerned.

In the wake of yesterday, I've looked up what's the deal with Hearthstone - while it's completely void of the strategic depth Magic has to offer (kinda like Standard), it

a) is free to play (which is a huge factor)
b) is fast with lots of action
c) has a quite gimmicky presentation

The casual crowd is going to eat this shit up like it's fucking candy. Partly because Blizzard still has a decent reputation among the casual crowd due to their golden age (despite sucking nowadays). Random streamers easily reach 10k+ viewers and once the Open beta starts in December or January, all hell is going to break lose.

Mtg players can only dream of having a interface that is as buttery smooth as what Hearthstone has. It really shows how archaic the mtgo client is in comparison.

[burtonbaron62]

It is easy to see why a game like Hearthstone is much more polished than MTGO. It is because Blizzard is a software company. Their core competency is building software. WotC and Hasbro do not have the in-house knowledge to build insanely complicated software. And, don't fool yourself, MTGO is a very complicated piece of software.

I have seen many people say: Just write a new MTGO! In my opinion, this would be extremely expensive and risky. WotC has two real options for creating a brand new MTGO, and neither of them are very appealing from a business standpoint.

First, they could start their own in-house software dev team. They may have some of this in place already, but, obviously, they need much more. By doing this they are exposing themselves to a ton of on going cost. Programmers are not cheap, and programmers that can pull off a project the scale of MTGO are straight up expensive. They are going to have to pay all these guys for at least a couple of years before a new product is ready, and they will have to continue to pay them pretty much indefinitely to support and maintain the product.

Second, the could hire an outside company to develop the thing for them. This is also really expensive.

Bottom line for WotC is that they are going to have to spend multiple millions of dollars to truly rewrite MTGO, and this process will take at least a couple of years. And, the project, like most software projects, is likely to go way over budget and time, and could fail entirely. This is a huge risk.

The path they have chosen seems to be to fix the old system. This will not be easy either.

I think WotC is in a really tough spot with MTGO. They are entirely dependent on a legacy code-base that is likely going to very difficult to fix. But, building new a new system is going to be very time consuming and expensive. They are going to have to spend a boatload of time and money no matter what they do here.

While I agree that MTGO is basically crap by today's standards, I think a lot of people vastly underestimate the amount of time and money these kinds of software projects take.

[Barook]

It is easy to see why a game like Hearthstone is much more polished than MTGO. It is because Blizzard is a software company. Their core competency is building software. WotC and Hasbro do not have the in-house knowledge to build insanely complicated software. And, don't fool yourself, MTGO is a very complicated piece of software.

I have seen many people say: Just write a new MTGO! In my opinion, this would be extremely expensive and risky. WotC has two real options for creating a brand new MTGO, and neither of them are very appealing from a business standpoint.

First, they could start their own in-house software dev team. They may have some of this in place already, but, obviously, they need much more. By doing this they are exposing themselves to a ton of on going cost. Programmers are not cheap, and programmers that can pull off a project the scale of MTGO are straight up expensive. They are going to have to pay all these guys for at least a couple of years before a new product is ready, and they will have to continue to pay them pretty much indefinitely to support and maintain the product.

Second, the could hire an outside company to develop the thing for them. This is also really expensive.

Bottom line for WotC is that they are going to have to spend multiple millions of dollars to truly rewrite MTGO, and this process will take at least a couple of years. And, the project, like most software projects, is likely to go way over budget and time, and could fail entirely. This is a huge risk.

The path they have chosen seems to be to fix the old system. This will not be easy either.

I think WotC is in a really tough spot with MTGO. They are entirely dependent on a legacy code-base that is likely going to very difficult to fix. But, building new a new system is going to be very time consuming and expensive. They are going to have to spend a boatload of time and money no matter what they do here.

While I agree that MTGO is basically crap by today's standards, I think a lot of people vastly underestimate the amount of time and money these kinds of software projects take.

Time wouldn't have been an issue if they started to fix their shit years ago.

Money an issue? About what sums are we talking about here realistically? Back in 2007, MODO was "somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business." Sure, the game grew more popular since then, but we're probably talking about tens of millions $ pure profit here. Reinvesting some of that to get an actually stable product to lure in more people doesn't sound too bad.

[Rocco111]

Can't agree more with burtonbaron62...

Besides if we talk about Kibler's article, he went a tad too far (like, really actually). It is indeed understandable that he was pissed off when he got the crash. Anyone in his shoes would have been too. Now because he is Kibler, he raises his voice louder so he got the attention of WotC. Fine, too. But then, saying things like 'If I wasn't paid to play the game, I would have uninstalled it on the spot' or 'they should do like Riot' (typical comment from someone having no clue about software dev, ok) to later say something in the line 'And I know what am talking about 'cause am trying to sell my own digital ccg' (wtf your previous statement then?). This is just crap and pointless. It could even be seen as disrespectful towards the people giving him money for his videos or to support his game (a Kickstarter project).

Finally for those thinking that MtGO is WotC's flagship, it is not. Never was. And might just as well never be. WotC is making 'printed games' and is using digital games to support and promote its core business (printed). End of the story. For those not believing it, just look at all the games and softwares based on their licenses. Eventually they have put some extra efforts in MtGO because it was the first software able to really mirror the end-user experience provided by the MtG and to be well-received by the players. This led WotC to promote the game more than the previous ones and to even include it in its marketing plan with the addition of sanctioned tournaments (see Kibler's article).

Now is Hasbro ready to open the vaults and to pay a team of devs/developing studio to create a 'MtGO 2' along with the acquisition of servers able to compete with those of any MMORPGs? That is the real question. Personally, if I look at Hasbro's policy when it comes to video games (i.e. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, for a good laugh), I must say I have serious doubts about this. They will patch and repatch and that's it...

[burtonbaron62]

Time wouldn't have been an issue if they started to fix their shit years ago.

Money an issue? About what sums are we talking about here realistically? Back in 2007, MODO was "somewhere between 30% to 50% of the total Magic business." Sure, the game grew more popular since then, but we're probably talking about tens of millions $ pure profit here. Reinvesting some of that to get an actually stable product to lure in more people doesn't sound too bad.

I am assuming a lot here, but... Years ago the MTGO system was able to handle the demand. The game has grown a lot, and a combination of the servers and inefficient slow code has caused stability issues while the system is under heavy load. My guess it that MTGO was never designed to handle thousands and thousands of players simultaneously. Years ago this was not an issue, and therefore WotC had nothing to fix. Now they do.

Money is always an issue. I write software professionally, and have to provide estimates, but a system of this scope is way out of my league. I hesitate to speculate on what MTGO 2.0 might cost. But I would say, conservatively, you would need at least 3 dev teams, front end, back end, and DB. Let's say you need 1 senior dev for each team. 3 guys at 100k+ (at least). Then each of those guys would supervise smaller teams. Let's say 3 more sub-teams of 10 people each with a leader. So the leader gets 70k+, and each of his guys get 50k+. 3*100k + 3*70k + 27*50k. That is $1,860,000 a year just for your dev guys.

Now since you are Hasbro, you need a bunch of bureaucrat types, so need at least 3 project managers, one for each team, and HR stuff, and secretaries for the big guys. Let's call that 500,000 a year. Then you are going need a hot shot server / networking team to build your back-end infrastructure (which is also really expensive). I have no idea what that costs. Lets call it 1mil initial cost for hardware and another 500,000 a year for the staff (at least). Plus you are going to need QA guys, but they are cheap 250,000 a year as a guess.

So they are looking at 3,000,000 dollars a year just to get going. This project is probably going to take at least 3 years to be released. So, 10,000,000 just to get a new version out 3 years from now. I would say that is a low estimate. Plus, now WotC is a major software company, and they have to learn how to do that well, which is really hard. If they farm out the work to a third party company, triple the price tag.

I could go on, but I should be coding myself! All in all, software dev is REALLY expensive and hard to do. Keep in mind that ~40% of software project fail outright and need to be scrapped or are abandoned. A lot of risk too!

[Koby]

I am assuming a lot here, but... Years ago the MTGO system was able to handle the demand. The game has grown a lot, and a combination of the servers and inefficient slow code has caused stability issues while the system is under heavy load. My guess it that MTGO was never designed to handle thousands and thousands of players simultaneously. Years ago this was not an issue, and therefore WotC had nothing to fix. Now they do.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

In 2008, the server stability was so awful crashes were an everyday occurance. That is when V3 was released to alleviate them. Demand exceeded server capacity at least once already. The current situation is no different than it was five years ago.

They have had the same issues to fix 5 years ago.
They have the same issues to fix today.

They just don't want to spend the money to fix it properly.

Suppose it does cost $1.86M annually to develop the right program.

One MTGO PTQ can draw at least 700 players, as we saw last weekend. That's 700*30 tix = $21,000 face value. For one event. That doesn't account for on-going drafts, a multitude of (now defunct Daily and Premier events), 2-man & 8-man queues, and Release events. This also doesn't account for direct sales through the MTGO Store for tix and packs.

A couple million dollars of liabilities to develop a program that could expand on revenue seems like a drop in the bucket for a company with as much sales as Wizards of the Coast.

[burtonbaron62]

Nope. Nope. Nope.

In 2008, the server stability was so awful crashes were an everyday occurance. That is when V3 was released to alleviate them. Demand exceeded server capacity at least once already. The current situation is no different than it was five years ago.

They have had the same issues to fix 5 years ago.
They have the same issues to fix today.

Yeah, I don't know too much about MTGO history, as I hardly ever play online (save Cockatrice)! Since this is a long standing issue, they should have started long ago. However, this speaks to the underlying issue that WotC is not a software company. If they want to become a software company, it basically means starting a whole new division. I suspect they really don't want to do this.

They just don't want to spend the money to fix it properly.

This is the part of the problem, but at the same time you can't just throw money / people at a software project and hope it is going to be okay. You really need to develop your culture, infrastructure, and process. That can take many years. If WotC really wants to do MTGO right they can either become a software focused company, hire a third party company, or fix what they have. All of these options are either very expensive, short or long term, or very difficult.

I am not trying to make excuses for MTGO. It is clearly bad. But, as a software guy, I feel people often trivialize the extreme difficulty of, not only creating software at the complexity level of MTGO, but also fixing a legacy code-base. All the money in the world isn't going to get you awesome software if you don't have the right people, plan, and team culture.

Suppose it does cost $1.86M annually to develop the right program.

I believe it would be a lot more than this. My lame estimate is $10M to get the software released.

[phonics]

Mtgo has been out for over a decade, and prints money better than any other game out there. While modo is complex, it is relatively simple compared to things like any modern game engine. It isn't really a software problem either, the game mechanics pretty much work fine, it is the interface that is just so bad.

[apple713]

I believe it would be a lot more than this. My lame estimate is $10M to get the software released.

I'm really curious about this I have no idea how you even get to the 10M$ number. Lets say you hire 25 software developers at $100k/year which is like 15k above the median. If it takes a solid year to develop thats only 2.5M. You could probably even hire 35 developers for the 2.5M cost.

The company that owns Wizards is Hasbro. Hasbro's market capitalization is 6.84B... A $10M project isn't very much. Especially since WOTC is one of the most profitable sectors of hasbro.

If MTGO was made properly and supported very well it could be a great compliment to paper magic. They have the ability to support legacy and vintage events something that paper magic doesn't really allow. Maybe they should actually award planes walker points for playing online. Even at Half the amount that you earn paper magic points or something. There are a lot of ways to promote it that i feel like they haven't done.

[burtonbaron62]

I'm really curious about this I have no idea how you even get to the 10M$ number. Lets say you hire 25 software developers at $100k/year which is like 15k above the median. If it takes a solid year to develop thats only 2.5M. You could probably even hire 35 developers for the 2.5M cost.

You have to consider that you need more than just the dev people, you need hardware people, networking people, PM people, QA people, the actually hardware, dev machines, software licenses, etc. MTGO 2.0 would also likely take more than a year to develop.

The company that owns Wizards is Hasbro. Hasbro's market capitalization is 6.84B... A $10M project isn't very much. Especially since WOTC is one of the most profitable sectors of hasbro.

It isn't necessarily totally a matter of money. Hasbro is a game publishing company and WotC is a game development company. I don't know what kind of software development staff they have now, but if they wanted to in-house MTGO 2.0 it would basically mean WotC would need a software division. This has a lot of long term implications and costs for the company, and I am not sure that this is what the want to be doing.

[apple713]

It isn't necessarily totally a matter of money. Hasbro is a game publishing company and WotC is a game development company. I don't know what kind of software development staff they have now, but if they wanted to in-house MTGO 2.0 it would basically mean WotC would need a software division. This has a lot of long term implications and costs for the company, and I am not sure that this is what the want to be doing.

This is probably the issue. Unless they are willing to expand into the software development sector, they are half assing the MTGO interface with the few resources they have. However if they were to invest in a software development segment they could launch a MTGO for all of their card games. While it's probably worth it just to do so for MTGO having all of their card games up and going would surly bring in enough coin. to fund the project.

[Barook]

Based off of their press release thingy it looks like a lot of people are assuming Dailies are gone forever. It looks to me like they're going to just take em down until the shitstorm blows over so they can say they've been "working on it" and when they put them back up again they'll be able to pretend like it's fixed.

People saying they're going to sell their entire collections over this are funny though...

Legacy staples are suprisingly stable so far, hell, some stuff is even rising since the announcement. Maybe because people love the format.

It's funny how Standard tanked like a champ, though, since nobody wants to play this PoS without price support. Take a note, Wizards.

[Koby]

Legacy staples are suprisingly stable so far, hell, some stuff is even rising since the announcement. Maybe because people love the format.

It's funny how Standard tanked like a champ, though, since nobody wants to play this PoS without price support. Take a note, Wizards.

Be careful not to associate temporal changes with long-term trends. We're less than 24 Hours going into a Legacy Grand Prix. That might have an effect on prices moreso than the lack of Daily Events.