Recent Developments:
Build 117 is currently in production. Builds 113 and 117 this year have added fixes for the primary issues that have been cited in customer requests for compensation. Build 116 contained all the WorldWake updates and content. The tradable collection update restriction that was included in build 117 was needed to address an increasing number of large trade collection requests that were failing and reattempting multiple times without ever succeeding. This was causing other server requests to be delayed and this sometimes led to minor lag incidents. We don’t have any desire to impede trading activity. We do need to ensure good performance for all system activities, particularly during a set release. We will monitor the trade collection updates and raise the 2500 unique object limit or eliminate it when we can. Keep in mind that this is a restriction on how many different items are being updated, not the total number of digital objects. If you had a million RhysticCaves, you could still update the tradable number of them all using the set all to tradable/untradeable functionality.
Long Term Projects:
Summary – Good progress continues on the Client UI Redesign effort. The studio continues to increase its staffing levels as construction efforts start up on the Collection Server and on the new client. Our single managed user connection project is behind schedule. However, the scope of that project has expanded to include some significant improvements to the efficiency of match starts, so there will be value in the delay. We still hope to deploy the updated trade/collection management service in Q3.
UI Redesign – 3 of 8 of the client design phases are complete as of Jan 4. The design team is now working concurrently on the various collection management scenes including the deck building functionality. This work is proceeding to schedule. We are currently processing proposals to construct the 2 player and solitaire duel scenes from external vendors. The design and construction efforts will have their own timelines. The design effort on all the scenes required to support game play is operating to a dependable schedule and that effort will achieve a complete design early in Q3. The construction effort and timeline for the entire new client project will become clear after we get through construction of the duel scene. We expect to use outside resources to construct the production version of the client based on the prototypes that we are building in house.
Infrastructure Update/Single Managed User Connection – This project fell behind schedule in Q4. In order to simplify the integration of the single managed connection to our Game Server Hosts, we will be adding in some of the work that was planned for late 2010 relating to the set of actions that occur when a game starts. The expanded implementation will decrease load on the system while enabling the use of one client connection. We are looking at a Q2 deployment, after Rise of the Eldrazi.
Collection Server – Work is underway on the construction of the Trade Collection Server project. We hope to deploy this major update before M11.
Stability and Growth – MtGO will be getting a major environmental upgrade in March. Our database servers and storage area network will be upgraded to the latest greatest gear, and we will be upgrading the system to the latest version of SQL Server as well. We will get some passive performance benefits from these upgrades, and will also be updating our code base to take advantage of the latest version of SQL Server. The new hardware is expected to help us shorten our maintenance periods over time.
Overall, the studio continues to mature and become increasingly productive and efficient. The greater Technology Department at WotC is working more effectively as a unit, and our Operations folks continue to do a great job maintaining, upgrading and supporting our many systems and environments.
Gordon Culp
Director – Magic: the Gathering Digital Studio
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