MTGO Academy in the Summer: Community Cup and More!

Hey y’all!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted an article of any sort, but don’t fear: I’m still around and alive. I’d like to start writing and recording again this summer, but for now (while things are still so busy in the background), I’ll be taking this time to talk about what’s going on around MTGO Academy in the near future!

The 2011 Community Cup

For those of you who follow the news on the Mothership, the main point of this post may already be old news. For the others, I (ChrisKool) have been invited to the 2011 Community Cup! I would like to thank whomever nominated me; it’s a great honor to represent MTGO Academy and the Magic Online community in the battle against Wizards. With the well-rounded community roster, I’m sure it’ll be a cool event for everyone to enjoy!

Also, congrats to Limited Resources (and our own) Marshall for being invited to this year’s Cup! Speaking of Limited Resources, the show will be changing shortly since Ryan has been hired by Wizards to work on Magic Online Version 4 (as announced in the latest Limited Resources podcast)! It’s been more than a good week for the LR folks, and we wish them the best of luck moving forward.

This year the Community Cup trophy will be dedicated to past Community Cup participant (and Magic Online community pillar) Erik “Hamtastic” Friborg, who recently passed away. Erik contributed a weekly column to PureMTGO for many years called “State of the Program,” focusing on recent events and price trends, and also participated quite regularly in discussion on the Wizards of the Coast Magic Online forums. MTGO Traders has set up a benefit for Erik’s son, Bruce, to help pay for his college education. We implore you to check out the page and donate, if you are able, to ensure Hammie’s son has a bright future.

The details of the three formats represented in the Community Cup formats can be found here. Threads for helping the community team are available in the WotC forums; you can navigate to them via the following links in order to guarantee a community victory: Unified Modern Constructed, Unified Standard Constructed, Scars of Mirrodin Block Draft. Also, you can discuss the new Constructed format, Modern, on the WotC forum here; let the Powers That Be know what you think of the proposed format. (If things are well-received, Modern may become a sanctioned format. It sure looks more interesting than Extended to me!)

Summer MTGO Academy Projects Revealed!

Our fearless leader Marin, the rest of the MTGO Academy crew, and I have been hard at work with our alchemy kits in our secret dungeon to bring the Magic Online community improved resources, more options, and new content for this summer!

First, we have a new content/copy editor: A.J. (PlanetWalls). He is a long-time friend of MTGO Academy currently pursuing a doctoral degree in a field that consumes him with writing but has played Magic (and Magic Online) for many years. (It’s a match made in Serras Sanctum for sure.) A.J.’s contribution has already helped MTGO Academy to begin tackling larger projects while maintaining a relatively steady level of content, but after the Community Cup, we will begin gradually adding more written and video contributions, and with greater regularity. I look forward to it, and I hope you all will enjoy it.

Next up, MTGO Academy is finishing up beta-testing our new online bots! If you’ve ever used Academy_QuizBot to flex your Magic knowledge (and snag some free swag in the process), you’ve already helped us out with development. MTGO Academy’s bots aim to offer an easy-to-use interface and competitive pricing in the online marketplace. We will make another announcement including the bots’ usernames when they’re in full swing, so keep your eyes peeled! (Also, know that all remaining bot credit from MTGOcardtraderbot will be transferred over to our new bots.)

Then, if you remember from our last status update, we’re still plugging away, creating a swell deck tool in order that Magic Online users may quickly swift through the myriad data available on WotC’s winning deck lists pages (which can be quite time consuming if done manually). The deck tool is nearing completion, largely thanks to the tireless efforts of its developer Neil Michalares, a name that might be familiar to you if you followed last weekend’s StarCityGames Open. (Neil finished in 9^th with Soul Sisters Redux.) We hope to have the deck tool live before the Community Cup and will announce when it is available for use!

Lastly, Marin and I have been writing and writing and writing to finish up our “special project.” If you’ve been following the recently completed “Rags to Riches” series, then you know that Marin traded up from an open Rise of the Eldrazi Booster (with the low-value rare Consume the Meek) and 2 Event Tickets to a 250+ Ticket foil Force of Will. While I don’t have the same feat to boast, I have traded up to a nice Magic Online account and worked in a paper Magic store in the past. Sometime last winter, we were discussing all that we’ve learned about Magic and Magic Online and how valuable the information has been. The logical conclusion was to write about it! We hope to have everything finished and edited before the Community Cup, but we want the final work to be something that we are both proud of (meaning that a delay would be acceptable to us in order to guarantee higher quality). I hope to post a huge sample (and simultaneously a fantastic beginning Magic Online player resource) before we go, though!

Thanks, everyone, for the support over MTGO Academy’s fledgling lifespan; we look forward to continuing to help Magic and Magic Online grow to be the best game that it can be.

Cheers!
Chris