Volunteers Needed for ML Bot Beta testing (mtgo v4)!

Hello Botters,

If you have not heard yet,  Magic Online is featuring a Spotlight for the new Beta client. This means during the spotlight our current client will be disabled and we will only be able to use the new Beta client.

The Beta spotlight starts May 8th at 10am and continues thru May 10th till 10am. 

How does this affect Mtgo Library customers?

Your bots will not work for the duration of the Beta spotlight, but wait before you get upset there is some good news. We are looking for 5 Beta ML Bot testers to help us test during the Beta spotlight, I will get into that a little later. The better news is that we are ready for Beta, so this can hopefully ease your mind on that scenario. 

If I am not selected for the Beta spotlight ML Bot beta testing, what should I do during those two days?

Its been almost 6 months since ML Bot have gone down for more than 2 days, this is a perfect opportunity for Upgrades, machine cleanings, and New machine building. 

Upgrades: Easiest upgrades is memory ram, I suggest you run 2Gb of ram for each bot you are running. If your not sure how much ram you have currently in your computer, you can type dxdiag in your computers search bar (located above the start button once clicked). Open your case and see if you open memory slots, if so I suggest upgrading. 

Machine cleanings: Go to your local store that sells compressed air and buy a can or two. If you have a keyboard to your computer (a lot of mine are remote) take one of your cans and spray it out, also hit it with some lysol. The keyboard is one of the most bacteria infested items in your house. Then take the other can open you case an carefully spray out any dust that may have accumulated. 

Expand: My last expansion of 12 bots took me about two days to fully complete. This would be a perfect time to order your new computer and put it together for your new ML Bots.

Ok back to beta testing, if you are interested in signing up for beta testing ML Bot during May 8th -May 10th, you have to meet a few minimum requirements:

- Bots must operate under your supervision during v4 spotlight

- Bots consistently get 5+ trades / hour

- Are willing to send in feedback to us.

If you meet the above requirements, please send an email to me at staff@mtgolibrary.com with the bot names you would like to enter. If selected you will receive an email back with the instructions in a week.

Happy botting to all!

Teamstoge

Improved Wikiprice Updater

One of the limit of the current implementation of wikiprice (http://mtgowikiprice.serverlet.com/wiki.php) is that some bots get frequent updates and thus are always displayed on wikiprice, while some others do not. "BotA" could refresh its prices twice a day, while "botB" could refresh once every 2/3 days.

This issue is due to a number of factors, most important the uptime of your bot(s), but also the algorithm that refreshes the prices. Regardless, it's a loss of money for some bots.

Today we released an improved version of wikiprice that updates the bots more equally. If you used to have problem with wikiprice, this should fix. Please wait 48h hours and then search again for your bots on wikiprice!


Let me know!

Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

Limited Space (Part 2)

Last time I've discussed about the high cost of Storage on Solid State Drives and about the resources our Virtual Machines take while running ML Bots.
With all answers to that topic I can assume, as it stands, that most botting VM's are using 1.5GB to 2GB memory ram and 6GB to 10GB Disk space.
A safe "general" way of seeing the botting limitations of CPU is to set about 2ghz per bot (quad core 4ghz = 16ghz = 8 bots) although this may vary depending on which CPU you use (for example a Dual core 2.4ghz celeron wont be as good as a dual core i3 2.4ghz) or the configuration and operative system of your VM's.

Would you believe me if I told you that you can run the Host OS plus 16 bots on a 32GB SSD?
I've spent the last 5 days tweaking MS Windows XP and the VM's to run as lightly as possible, using minimum resources and disk space and found some nice tricks and tips which might help you doing the same.


Step1: Put windows on a diet
Programs such as nLite allow to edit your Windows XP installation disk and remove/edit the Operative System applications/settings/services. This allows you to install windows without Media player, internet explorer, calculator, defrag, support for Printer, Smartcards, modem drivers...(endless list).
Your windows copy will still be genuine as long as you're using your Genuine XP CD and Serial keys.


Step2: Disable Useless Services

Services are windows applications that run on the background, although these might only result in 75-125Mb Memory usage, when you multiply that by 8 bots, it becomes more substantial.
Not all services can(or should) be removed from Windows installation disk. Some services such as "Windows Installer" are required to install .Net Framework on your VMs and you can only disable them after the installation of .Net . Which leads to the next step.





Step3: Need more space to Install .Net Framework

Using a USB Drive or Creating a second Hard Drive on your VM can be the solution, The setup file and extraction directory can be on the temporary (or USB) drive giving up more free space on the Drive C: to install .Net Framework.

Other option is to Compress Windows, Programs and Documents folder (decompress .net framework folder within windows/) as these will very rarely be used by your Bot (apart from when loading up windows)

With a Small Disk (such as 1-1.5GB) where will I find room to fit MTGO Folder you might ask?Thats on Step 4.




Step4: What about MTGO Folder?
Mtgo Folder can be reduced to under 150MB if you remove all the unnecessary files that ML Bot doesn't use. Store Icons, Card Pictures, Avatars, Decks Images, Symbols, Cards frames,DirectX installer, etc .. are just some of the many things you can delete from your MTGO Folder and save 500MB+ space.
The fact that MTGO wont load these images on the start of every trade might actually speed up your bot!

Step5: Can I run MTGO Library Bot without MTGO Installed?
You Might think that this is a silly question, but the answer is YES you can! In fact, this tip will allow you to run all your VM's from your Hard Disk drive and keeping the fast MTGO loading speeds.

All you need to do is to install MTGO on your Host(on a SSD), Share the MTGO Folder in the network and all your bots open MTGO from the network. This not just allows you to save 200Mb-700Mb space on each VM but also saves you from reaching Internet Download limits that your ISP might pratice because this way you will only need to update MTGO once (just make sure all bots don't do it at the same time, have not tested what happens if they all do). In my tests Loading MTGO from VM stored in SSD (MTGO_NET.EXE) took 7 seconds, while opening it via network (shared folder in SSD from host) took 9 seconds. Not the fastest but if you have a small SSD and wish to move all the bots to the HDD this is a good solution.

Conclusion
I am running 7 bots at the moment. Each of my VM's is now running with 1.5Gb ram (rarely goes over 1gb usage), No pagefile. All VM's have a 2GB disk and have MTGO installed (850MB free Disk space). At the moment the Kicker.exe is taking quite long to light up the "launch" button (main host takes about 12seconds, older bots about 15-20sec and now about 25sec) which is causing to show up the HW/SW warning sometimes. This is something that I might have to tweak or some service that I might have disabled that would actually speed this up. If you have any tips for me on this issue or would like to share your tips in savings resources with others, please comment!

Feedback

Last time Albert has asked for suggestions for what should be added features for Library v4, with an emphasis on features to make the bot more self-sufficient.  At the time of this writing, the requested features seem to fall into the following categories:

Auto-transfer: The ability to move product from one bot to another.  Features here include micro-sessions, conditional transferring based on collection status, and the ability to refill after trade sessions. 

Pricing: Currently, the pricing model is static.  You want card X, it costs Y, in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion.  This model is evolving.  You see it in retail stores, where if a customer has a loyalty card, there is a percentage discount applied to all purchases.  Why can’t Library have such a feature?  This could allow for partnerships with clans.

Another feature is to adjust the price based on the number of cards on the bot or collection.  This feature can adjust itself to rapid fluctuations in the market that might not be reflected in the wikiprice.  A card which has 32 copies in the collection would be priced differently than if there are only 2 copies of said card available.

Remote administration: This is a feature which I would like to see expanded.  This feature would allow the user to administer changes to the bot through the web portal rather than going into the bot itself, shutting it down, while making changes, be they large or as simple as ticking a check box to allow for trading cards from a new set.  This would have the advantage of more uptime for the bot, it also allows for server-side backup of settings so recovering a bot from a crash or upgrading a machine is painless.

These are wonderful features and need a total rewrite to implement.  These are not things which can be added by adding a dozen lines of code.

I’ve been one of the writers of this blog for about two years now and I would like to know what topics would my audience like for me to discuss on these pages.  Do you want some theory or practical articles?  Do you wish more articles based on LITE or PRO versions?  Please leave your suggestions in the comments field and please set me know how many and what types of bot you run.

For those who wish to contact me through email, I can be reached at MTGOthrillskibot@gmail.com.

A self-sufficient Bot

Recently I received an email from a new customer of mine saying that he got a new job and that he has no time to keep up with the bot. This user started with ML Bot one month ago, and opened 5 bots.
While I was very happy for his new job, I was at the same time very sad. I was so sad not because of the "lost customer", but because his email showed me that I "failed" in one of my primary goals:

Make ML Bot as self-sufficient as possible, with no or few maintenance required. 15 minutes every 2 days should be sufficient to keep the business going. Probably your bot won't profit at its maximum possibilities, but it will still go and profit.

The purpose of this post is twofold:
1- rebate the concept that I designed ML Bot to be as much self-sufficient as possible.
2- trigger your opinion (& possibly ideas) on how to make it event MORE self-sufficient: where you find holes, where you would like some adjustment and so on. It's an open post, and I strongly encourage everyone to comment

Regarding point 1:
most of the development here at mtgolibrary.com goes towards 'automation'. Back in 2007 we introduced the Online Control Panel to monitor the bots from remote. In 2009 we added the emails at the end of the trades and the possibility to edit the credits. One month ago we launched the Unlimited Pricelist to have all the bots with updated prices. Generally speaking, a great part of the development process was meant to simplify ML Bot and to make it as much self sufficient as possibile. Finally, the bot itself is stable, has no bugs, can recover from MTGO crashes, can run for days and days without any human input.

Regarding point 2:
Just feel free to comment and tell me your ideas! We are coding ML Bot for MTGO v4, so this is the right time to give suggestions! If possible, try to keep the suggestions focused on "how to make the bot more self-sufficient"


Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

Limited Space (Part 1)

With the current high cost per GB on high performance SSD Drives, shrinking our precious bots/virtual machines disk usage is crucial for success and keeping the spending on the minimum.
Every now and then I do spend some time tuning my virtual machines for performance and try to keep them as much low resources as possible (using less memory, disk space, cpu).
From removing pretty much every windows service and application to deleting all cards images from MTGO folder, there are unlimited places to cut down resources and improve your bot's performance but until today I hadn't though of something way simpler that would give me a massive advantage.

So my questions to everyone that uses virtual machines to run MTGO Library bots are:

How much memory (RAM) do you set for each Virtual Machine?
Do you use any Pagefile within the VM OS (shouldn't on a SSD)?
How much disk space do you use per VM?

I'll come back to you with mine on the next few days.

Dragon's Maze - new mechanic

The new set - Dragon's Maze is on the way so it is good time to get familiar with new mechanic. The Dragon's Maze set features a new twist on split cards. Split card is a card with two different spells printed on the same card giving you the option to cast one spell or the other. With the Fuse mechanic, you don't have to pick just one. From now on, you have an option to cast both halves as a single spell by paying their combined cost.

Additionally, the mechanics from Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash will come back. As a reminder: in a slot of basic land in Dragon's Maze we may find the ShockLand. Next week I am going to tell you few words about drafting Dragon's Maze.

MTGO Library Bot 5.76 has been released

As many of you probably know, ML Bot cannot handle items with the collector number greater than 999. Such a high number is OK for all the sets save for the problematic PRM set: the Promotional set, in fact, groups many re-preinted cards and here the collector number can easily go > 1000 (for example PRM Rubblehuck has cardnumber 1085).

ML Bot 5.76 is still not able to handle those cards but it includes a mechanism that we will use in the future. As soon as the entire ML Bot community will use a version of the Bot >= 5.76, we will release an updated pricelist (the file "CardsMTGO3.txt") properly modified to support the missing cards. The new pricelist will contains lines like:

01 000 01 000 00188 GTC M Prime Speaker Zegana# 5.540 18.040 3.870 12.630

instead of the current:

01 000 01 000 188 GTC M Prime Speaker Zegana# 5.540 18.040 3.870 12.630

adding two extra digits to the cardnumber (in the example 188). ML Bot will always be backward compatible with the old format, but we will release as official pricelist only the new format.

ML Bot 5.76 fixes also a problem with the #PP_sell# command for the Classified Messages/Trading Room, unable to display the Boosters properly.

Percentage Corrections & Estimating Potential Profits

Hello friends,

I'd like to take a quick moment to say "Thank You" to everybody that helped with the Personal Percentages spreadsheet. I've had a chance to catch up on a few things and perform some much needed updates. There is also an additional tab called "ProfitLossCalc", which I'm sure many will all find useful when looking to quickly assess a profit/loss.

New Features:

• Updated drop-down menus to match updated percentages inside of MTGOLibrary
• The ability to preview card costs and calculate potential profits with/out fees
• based on type of license (Pro = 0%, Wiki-Ads = 2.5%, and No Wiki-Ads = 3.5%)
• There is no longer an "N/A" or a "Value/?" in fields where the formula can not calculate a number; instead they will appear blank and update as you enter data
• Ability to calculate profit or loss of trades while considering, if any, above mentioned trade fees

Now, let me say that if you are already familiar with the sheet and just want to get started, you can download the file here.  If you're interested in what's new (aside from above bullets) and/or this will be your first time using the sheet, read on.

Updated Drop-down menus

With the recent updates there have been a lot of great new additions to MTGOLibrary. One such addition, is the ability to select percentage corrections in increments of 1. This makes it easier than ever to set prices for your bot. You can now select increments starting as low as 1 inside of the PrecentageCalculations.xlsm

To Fee or Not to Fee...

There are 2 different modes that MTGOLibrary bots operate in, Pro and Lite. Beneath each of these modes, there are 2 ways one can run a bot. Either by paying a percentage of all transactions or by buying a subscription.

While the 2 operating modes are quite different, the methods of paying for their use are the same. The first way is by purchasing credit. This method of payment is done via a "licensing fee" which is based on a percentage of all your transactions. In this later method, for each transaction the licensing fee is deducted from your purchased credit. This is the method most smaller bots and low transaction bots will choose to run in, making this tab particularly important for them.

Now, depending on whether or not you choose to have the Wiki message displayed to your users at the beginning of a trade, will determine what your licensing rate is. Those that choose not to display the message pay a licensing fee of 3.5% on all transactions. Those folks that choose to display the message pay a licensing fee of 2.5%.

If you're interested in seeing how much a card will truly cost you (the cost in tickets + the licensing fee), you can now view that from the "prices" tab. Everything is as before when it comes to entering the information, except there are 3 more columns on the end. These display your profit with no fee, your profit with a 2.5% fee and your profit with a 3.5% fee.

In an effort to help determine how much one made on the sale for a particular card, there is the "ProfitLossCalc" tab. This tab will take buy/sell price, license percent and a quantity. Given this information, it will calculate if you made a profit or lost money (as seen in below screenshot).

For example, if I enter a price of 28.758 with a license fee of 2.5% and buy a quantity of 3, it will really end up costing me 88.431 total. When I sell those 3 cards at 31 each (with same 2.5%) I will bring in 90.675, a profit of 2.244. 

Care to see how much you could make if you had a subscription to the pro version of your bot? No problem, go ahead and just delete the 2.5% in each of the Buy and Sell Fee boxes. There you go.

Interested in getting started with the new sheet yet? Great! You can download the latest version here.

As always, I'll look forward to your feedback. Email, MTGO, Google Chat, Skype...whatever works for you I'm on them all :)

Cheers,

Jimmi

MTGO: b1nary0mega

The 'b1naryb0t' network

Profits! How to calculate them.

Hello Fellow Botters,


Today I will talk about calculating profits. Everyday, about 3 times a day I get and email, Pm, or Skype message asking me "how do you calculate profits"? I have been thinking about it for sometime now and I came up with a way to figure this out by combing a few tools already available to us.

Before we get started you will need to download MTGO Tool that was created by Sebastian B. a few months back. You can download that (Click here). Next you will need to download and excel file calculator that I created you can down load that (Click here).

This profit calculator takes into account price fluctuations and it will give you a total profit dollar amount for your chains (up to 6 bots per chain)

Ok so lets get started:

Step 1:  Download your CSV file from your Magic Online bot account.
Go to collection -----> Select all -----> Right click and export.

Step 2:  Open the MTGO Tool (Run in administrator)
Load your current CardsMTGO3 file and load your CSV file you download in step 1.
You will use the results of this in step 3.

Step 3: Input data into ProfitCalc.xls
Use the chart below to help you.

A). Input data from your Csv file using the MTGO Tool (step 2) week 1
B). Put any price corrections you use with your bots
C). Input data from your Csv file using the MTGO Tool (step 2) week 2
D). Put any price corrections you use with your bots.
E). Total profit between week 1 and week 2 ( keep in mind it might not all be in actual tickets, some could be in collection growth)
F). Input the (+/-) difference from base amount of tickets in the bot/chain. What I mean by this, each bot should have a base amount of tickets that you want on it at all times, for instance you might want 500 actual tickets on there at all times, 500 would be your base. So if you go to your bot during this profit calculation and 550 tickets are on there then you would insert 50 in this field and take 50 tickets from your bot. So basically reset your bot to your base ticket amount and insert the difference here.

You can do this once a day, once a week, once a month, or once a year, just keep in mind you need the beginning information and the end information for what ever your duration you choose.


This takes about 10 minutes to complete with a single bot or 30 minutes for 5 bots. I made a calculator for single bots and for chains up to 6 bots.


I hope this helps everyone.

Have any questions email me: jason@mtgolibrary.com
Skype: mtgolibrary.support
Mtgo handle: teamstoge

Card Log - What is it?

Some time ago a new feature on the MTGO Library website was offered to us.  The Card Log can be accessed through the Control Panel. The Card Log is a useful tool for tracking trade information and statistics on a card. 

New features can be intimidating to make use of without training so we will take you through each field and explain what you need to do and how this tool can be used to improve your ML Bot experience!

Blue - Card Name
This field requires the name of the card you wish to track trades of. It is not case sensitive, but does require the full card name. You cannot search for One Thousand Lashes by using the term "Lashes". However, you could search for One Thousand Lashes using the search term "OnE ThOuSaNd LaShEs".

Orange - Set
In this field you specify from which set the card in question belongs to. One Thousand Lashes belongs to Gatecrash exclusively so you would set this field to GTC. If a card has been printed in multiple sets you may wish to search each set it has been printed in.

Green - Buddy 
Buddy is an optional field that allows you to single out an individual and what trades of that particular card that buddy has made with the bot. This can be a valuable tool for tracking down specific support questions for a user, or tracking unusual trades from an individual.

Red = From/To 
From/To is another optional search feature that allows you to limit your search to a specific period of time. This could be useful to track changes by using two card searches over different periods of time. One week versus three months could give an insight into whether a card has recently become popular.

Purple = Bot
In this option you can specify whether you wish to search for trades taking place on a single bot, all bots attached to the account, or all bots attached to a chain. This is useful if you're having trouble with a single bot or run different kinds of bots that require different forms of attention.

Orange - Purchased/Sold
This result field provides useful data on the amount of cards you have trade and sold. This field also includes average, minimum and maximum buying prices.

Teal - Average Profits and Profits in Last X trades
These two boxes will show you the average profit per card you will make as well as the profit you have made over the last X trades. This field is particular useful in finding out if a card has been priced at a value that has cost your bot to lose on trading that card.

Yellow - Trade Details
Last of all this field will show you specific trade information on when it took place, what bot was involved, to whom it was traded to, if it was a purchase or a sale and what it was purchased/sold for.

History of deck names

Have you ever wondered from where the deck names come from? Some deck names are clear to figure out, such as Affinity. It was named after Affinity mechanics. Other decks include few capital letters, for instance BUG. These letters come from the name of colors the deck uses. But, great majority of decks owe the name to its inventor creativity. Let me expand on several mysterious deck names:

The Rock refers to the wrestler's Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. The deck originally used Phyrexian Plaguelord card and Dwayne Johnoson resembled this card.
Solitary -  in other words "Enchentress". Deck based on enchentments. Partly it was named after card Solitary Confinement, but mostly because playing the deck was pretty much like playing Solitaire. You don't really care what your opponent does, and it takes forever to win.
Death and Taxes is a reference to the creatures it runs, almost all of whom extract some sort of "tax" in the form of a debilitating ability. It is also a reference to the saying saying "Nothing is certain but D&T".
Zoo because most of the creatures were after animals: Kird Ape, River Boa, Savannah Lions etc.
Caw Blade. The falcons makes sound "caw", like cat does "meow". The blade is for equipments in deck.
Temporary Solution was about finding sliver bullets for different types of danger
Eva Green was named after actress, which inventor of the deck liked the most.
Ponza named after Italian fastfood "ponza rotta".
Solar Flare named after major Dragon Ball's technique, because Angel of Despair looks like Krilin.
Team America. The name was a reference to the vast differences between European and American legacy metagames, and was a homage to a lot of cards that rarely see play in America.

Do you know the other deck names history? Feel free to share with us.

Unlimited Pricelist Downloads ends tomorrow

Just a quick reminder for those who forgot about it.

Tomorrow will be the last day we'll be offering the Unlimited Pricelist Downloads at 8usd/month.

Starting from Saturday, the price will be 12 usd/month or 15 tixs/month. (the increase will thus be +50%).

Don't miss the chance to subscribe at this exceptional price!

MTGO Library Bot 5.75 has been released

ML Bot 5.75 has been released. It contains a fix for a connection problem happening on Windows XP. ML Bot 5.75 basically bypasses Windows XP when connecting to the mtgolibrary.com server.

Windows 7 / Windows 8 users were not affected by the problem and for them ML Bot 5.75 is absolutely the same as 5.74

400: Now what?

It’s been a week since the trade limit went from 75 items per trade to 400 items for trade.  So what has been your experience?  Have you experienced more trades or fewer trades?  Have you traded more cards or fewer cards?  Have your profits increased or decreased?  Do you even know the answer?

I’m not saying that you should have a card-by-card exchange report ready at a push of a button.  If you are running the bot part time or as a way to play MTGO without too much effort and just run the bot on auto-pilot, then this does not apply to you.

For many of us, running a bot chain is a business.  As a CEO of your business, you should be intimately aware of general trends happening to your livelihood.  While we know the trade limit has been increased, after a week, you should be able to ascertain trends…be they increasing something, decreasing something, or having no effect at all, which in of itself should ask questions.

I wrote a spreadsheet for each bot which was designed to handle trade logs.  Basically it counted the number of trades in a day, the number of rarities trades and in the case of my LITE bots, profit per day. 

Using this as a template, let’s say that for the month prior to the increased trade limit, I would average 10 trades a day encompassing 450 cards.

If after a week, I noted that I average 6 trades a day encompassing 450 cards, then I can say that the switchover means fewer trades for me.  But since the amount of items has stayed constant, it means more uptime for the store.

If I notice 10 trades but encompassing 750 cards, then I would deduce the switchover has helped my business because the increase has led to more cards being traded.  This is a good thing.

If I notice no change, then I would deduce that few, if any, of my trades are draft dumps (buying mode) or set gatherers (selling mode).  I could then analyze my bot and see why I am not transacting any large quantity trades.  Inventory too low?  Not enough tickets?  Too restrictive in card selecting?

The point is that no matter which answer applies to you, you gain information which you then can act on; but you can only act on that information if you actually have that information.

MTGO Library Bot 5.74 has been released

ML Bot 5.74 is now available, fixing many little bugs.

After the huge success of the Unlimited Pricelist subscription launched last Friday (here), we decided to redesign the function that downloads the pricelist and make it more robust. After each download, the bot now checks for the integrity of the pricelist and do not use it if it isn't ok (this happens for example when the internet connection breaks).

We also disabled and checked by default the checkbox "Seller/Buy consistency" in the General Tab, as this a feature that should always be on. The "Regular/Foil consistency" remains up to you.

R&D Challenge

WotC is giving away easy booster packs. On Friday, April 12 players will have opportunity to challenge Magic Resaerch & Development team at their own game. Bring the Standard legal deck and play against current and former R&D members, including Mark Globus, Erik Lauer, Tom LaPille, and Ryan Spain. You may be paired with one of them. Score 9, 12, 15 match points to get 5, 9, 18 Return to Ravnica booster packs, respectively. If you have some spare time at 12:00 PM (PDT) on Friday, April 12 participate in this event.

Unlimited free pricelists - avalaible now !

Mtgolibrary.com is launching a new tool, the Unlimited Pricelists.

- The current situation

Before today, one had to pay 0.200 tixs for each download of the pricelist. For example, if one has 3 bots and each bot updates the prices every 6 hours, the account globally downloads a total of 360 pricelists per month. At 0.2 tixs / download, it's 72 tixs / month, a lot of money. To prevent the expense one can adopt a number of strategies, for example reducing the numbers of download per day (1 per day instead of  4) or switch some bots from PRO to LITE.
In fact all the solutions are suboptimal, and I have to admit this has been a big problem so far.

- Unlimited pricelists
From today, you can now sign for Unlimited Pricelists. What is it? In a nutshell it's a subscription that allows the download of the pricelist for free. The subscription applies to all your bots, regardless of the number, even to bots you will add in the future.

The cost, valid till next Friday,  is 8 usd/month or 12 tixs/month: in the majority of the cases this is much less than the sum of the 0.2 downloads mentioned above.
*** UPDATE: Just a quick note, because I received many emails with the same question: the Unlimited Pricelist applies also to the automatic downloads from the bot. ***

- Benefits for the botter
The benefits for the botter are mainly economical - paying less for more pricelists. Having a bot always updated with the prices means a better market for the collection.
I won't talk more about this, I think every botter could explain the benefits better than me.
.
- Benefits for mtgolibrary.com
Altough -economically speaking- the Unlimited Pricelists seems a non-sense for mtgolibrary.com, we don't think so. We discussed a lot before the launch, and the general feeling is that we can offer a better product and that having "bots more updated on the market" will benefit us indirectly (for examples with more trades, or more PRO licenses subscriptions).

- Single downloads
Of course the old 0.2 downloads still hold. We don't force you at this, just think to Unlimited Pricelists as a new tool strapped on your belt.

New Features for MTGO Library V4 (Part3)

In these series I will share my wishes (and yours) of new features that we want on MTGO Library V4. Some of these have been 'promised', others are yet to be revealed and 'requested'. Feel free to share  your ideas about these new features discussed or to give new ones for the next posts. Thank you.

Pricelist

What can be improved?

• Removal of the Buying Prices from price list
• Buying price becoming a set fraction of the selling price.

Is it possible?

 It would be easy to implement and to code. For example if Auriok Champion is priced at 11.67 and you had a buying price of 80% (-20%) , your bot would offer 9.336 for that card.

Pros and Cons? 

As pros we have the fact that would be easier to configure and understand the profit margins of your bot.

The bad side would be the cards that require bigger or smaller profit margins. Cards that have a more regular and stable value, for example, a card that as been always worth around 10 event tickets, is likely to have a buying price of 8 and sell price of 10.0, while a card that as a inconstant value will have a bigger margin like buying for 6 and selling for 10.

Will this feature be in the MTGO V4?

 I have no idea as this feature would bring both advantages and disadvantages.

What are your thoughts on this feature? Would it have any use for your bots? Any new features you would like to see discussed for next part? Leave a comment bellow!

Next feature Hint: Type of Buyer(Wishlist vs Reading Collection)

New feature: Unlimited Price Updates.

Hello fellow botters,

I have a great announcement to make, starting April 5th (tomorrow) ML Bot will be offering unlimited downloads of the pricelist, for all your bots, at one fixed price. No more worrying about old prices or struggling trying to balance the number of downloads to keep competitive: you can have all your bots download the pricelist as often as you want.


The unlimited price list applies to all your bots, including future ones and regardless of the number.
The price you are wondering? 12 usd a month or 15 tickets a month, but there will be an introductory price for the first week (from April 05th till April 12th) of just 8 usd or 10 tixs.

How does this help me?

This new feature will allow you to download prices every hour unlimited, therefore keep your card prices in the current market. This will keep you safe from sudden price fluctuations that can potentially cost you money. 

Is it cost efficient?  

Yes, for  92% of ML bots this is a better option than individual price updates. I created a chart for pricing that shows you what you would pay without Unlimited price updates! (the chart refers to 12 usd, not the initial 8 usd price).
  

To me this is a no brainer, April 5th I will be signing up my account for this new great feature and gain the peace of mind. Have any questions? Email me. 


Modo handle: Teamstoge
Teamstoge@gmail.com

Happy Botting!

MTGO Library Bot 5.73 has been released

ML Bot v.5.73 has just been released, supporing the new set DDK (Duel Decks: Sorin vs Tibalt).

As usual, the updated pricelist is available for free in the update process and/or available in the installer.

Eye-Cloud

Last month, the hard drive which powers my bot chain decided to physically fail.  As you might expect, this was not a fun experience for me.  Fortunately for me, I run my bots in a virtual machine and had recently taken a backup.  So while it was time-consuming to create a host machine and configure the virtual machine host, the bots themselves were unaffected.

This got me thinking… what if I had not had a recent backup?  Not only would I have had to install a host machine, I would also have had to install each and every bot.  This is not the most exciting task to be doing.

Even if one starts from a Master Bot virtual machine, one must go inside each virtual machine and configure each one individually.  Yes, Library makes this task a little easier.  The server holds the advertising messages so I can retrieve them.  Library also makes a backup of its settings which is very useful, just not so useful in cases where the hard drive physically fails.  How could I use the backups that Library creates so that I can retrieve them when I need to?

If one is willing to spend a little time tweaking and has a little bit of programming skills, one can solve this problem using the Cloud.  For purposes of this discussion, the cloud refers to online storage.

Many companies offers a base level, typically five (5) gigabytes from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Dropbox, and a lesser amount, but more than enough for our purposes, from a plethora of smaller companies.  So how do you do it?

You choose a service you like and sign up.
Install their drive synchronization program.
Select the MTGO directory and configure as needed.

Once this is done, the synchronization program will update whenever there is a change, be it from Library itself or whenever you change Library’s settings, like prices or number of cards to collect.

So once you have a backup, how do you restore?   After all, a backup is useless if you can not do a proper restore.

Restore the Windows Library runs on, be it a virtual machine or a physical machine.   Make certain to include MTGO.
Install the drive synchronization program.
Copy the files from the Cloud drive to your local drive.
Launch Library as normal and you’ll be back online.

MTGO Library Bot 5.72 supports 400 cards

I hope you spent a good holiday and had an happy Easter!

As announced on Friday, today we release ML Bot 5.72, officially supporting trades up to 400 cards.

We took the change to improve a lot of small things, first of all the speed of reading the 'You Get'/'You Give' columns. We also improved the quality of the OCR because it sometimes failed (and so the bot had to read everything again....).

We also slightly changed the "card list" messages the bot prompts while trading (messages like |2x Watery Grave 3.00) to make them more readable. We changed the way the bot alternates the blue and black colors and the usage of the symbols. All this was necessary because a huge list with 400 items can quickly became un-readable.

ML Bot 5.72 fixes also a minor problem with the bot GUI, sometimes not saving correctly the "free download pricelist at updates" checkbox.

Hope you enjoy this update, and welcome to the new 400-cards limit!