Summary
Construction of the new Magic Online client is  running full-bore, and we are targeting late Q1 2011 for a game play  beta focused on the new 2-player duel scene. A beta for the full client  would follow when all the scenes have finished construction. We continue  to work on infrastructure improvements in order to ensure continued  system stability. We are starting to take on feature development  projects in addition to the infrastructure updates. The system is  continuing to perform well as the user base expands.

New Client
The new client is being built using Windows Presentation  Foundation (WPF). WPF was our chosen platform when the design project  began. We explored using Silverlight in the hopes of opening up more  access to Magic Online. In the end, we were unable to find  realistic solutions for several issues relating to integrating a Rich  Internet Application with our server infrastructure. The shared design  environment for WPF and Silverlight means that very little design time  was lost in that exploration process. WPF will offer rapid entry into Magic Online for new and existing players with a much lighter install and launch  process. WPF provides a richer set of user controls, which is helpful to  providing a solid user experience. The platform will allow us to  respond rapidly to usability findings. WPF also provides very good  support for QA testing.

Infrastructure Update
Our next major infrastructure project will be to deserialize all  of the digital objects. Currently the system stores all digital objects  individually in the database as part of the original system design. The  system currently does not use the serialization, and stacking like  digital objects will further reduce the risk of contention in the  database. As this is implemented, we will move away from having to  ‘print’ collated product such as boosters and store them in the  database. This eliminates the possibility of ‘running out’ of a certain  class of product. All of these changes will significantly improve the  scalability of the greater system, reduce maintenance downtime, and will  improve usability.

Q4 Maintenance
The single managed connection module that shipped in September  has given us a lot of information about the primary issues that users  have been reporting. Logging was significantly improved with that  module, and we have been able to isolate the majority of the most  reported issues to problems with temporary state management in the  client. Our client devs are intensly focused on supporting the new  client, so we have chosen to take some aggressive action to solve the  current client’s bad behavior on logoff and disconnects. We realize this  is less than ideal for a subset of users, but we feel that it is a net  gain for those folks who previously were having issues with empty  sideboards and not reconnecting to drafts after disconnections.

2011 Development Plan