MTGO v4 Preview (Part 2 of 2)

Last time I discussed a fluke occurrence during the 4.0 preview weekend.  Today I am going to discuss the obvious conclusion: that there is going to be a Magic Online 4.0 and more importantly, how that will affect us.

The first thing to realize is that the changes are just cosmetic in nature.  The client, what we see, will be getting a new interface, trade windows, login screens and so on.  Changes on the server side, if any, we will not be seeing.

What this means is that for us, things will not change much.  We’ll simply update as usual and bam, it works.  For a few others, they’ll have to download the new executable, run it, and they’ll be making trades shortly thereafter.

There is another advantage to this interface change: when the change happens, there will be no bots on Magic Online.

But didn’t you just say that all we had to do was update the bot and we’ll be back online?

Yes I did.  See, when 4.0 comes online, all the bots, coded for the 3.0 interface will not work.  At this point, all the bot owners will be demanding that a new version be released immediately if not sooner.

For professional programmers, this should not take a long time.  The bulk of the time will be spent on making certain that the 4.0 bot is rock solid than anything else.

But for the script kiddie bots and poorly coded bots and those part time bot creators, it will take them a long time to get up to speed.  What this means is that the first bot program to make the jump will have a monopoly.   With far less competition around, this means that this will be a golden opportunity to expand our client base as MTGO Library will be the only trade bot available.  I like the sound of that.  Do you?