Trade Duration in Trade Log

Starting right after the downtime, all the ML Bot 6.20 and 6.21 users will be able to view trade duration in the Trade Log.
The feature has been requested for a long time and it's finally there! Now you'll be able to see who keeps your bot always buys :-)
Withdraw are timed as well.

Tradelog + Cardlog

This had been requested for a long time: the possibility to switch from "TradeLog" to "CardLog" and see the profits on singles.

From yesterday (I guess many of you received wrongly formatted emails because of that :-) ) every card in the TradeLog has a direct link to the CardLog!

This was ML Bot 1.01

I found a screenshot of the first version of ML Bot, year 2007 :-)
It was like that!!

Albert
staff@mtgolibrary.com

Remote Control of the ML Bot

We host a series of articles from our friends blog http://www.mtgeconomist.com , a blog dealing with mtg and mtgo economics.

You can read the original article here: 

http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/mtgo-library-control-remoto-del-bot-parte-6-3/


Previously we took a look at all the settings of the bot. The main problem is that you have to be in front of the computer which is running the bot in order to make any changes in their behavior. To solve it, in this article I will explain how to view the status of your robot, statistics from sales/purchases and even how to make a remote control of the bot.

Control panel on the web

MTGO Library provides an additional service to the software that controls our digital cards store. This control panel can be accessed through our session on the bot website. Upon entering, you will see a page like the capture below.

This section is the “Dashboard” or main desktop where you can access to all available information remotely. As you can see there are 3 different areas:

• Top menu: Access to all bot updates and its price list, as well as the renewal of the licenses (Lite and Pro). 
• Side menu: Mainly displays performance statistics of the bot, however you can also make some changes from here. These options will be discussed in a future chapter because it is more related to strategies when creating your own chain of bots. 
• Main section: Here it is shown the corresponding section selected from one of the previously commented menus. 

Within the left side menu options, firstly there is a series of display options with both, bot information and statistical data:

• Dashboard: Displays a screen capture with the operating system of the bot. Below it is a bar with connection status of that computer. On the right side you can see a summary of the following information from bot: bot status (online/offline and if it is with a customer); status of the Magic Online client (online/offline); 
• Transaction fee or commission due to the bot transactions; date and type of the last transaction; license type (Free/Lite/Pro) and expiration date; and the total value of the collection managed by the bot.
• Trades log: on ​​top of this page there are diagrams with the latest sales statistics representing the total value of trades, number of trades of the most frequent customers, percentage of buyings against sales… Afterwards, there is an advanced search engine transaction, and below there is a list of the transactions for the last 24 hours. In the summary of each transaction you can see its mode (buy/sell/trade), total value, customer name and its date. If you want to see the details, you just have to click on the bar of the transaction to see the following information: 
• List of cards exchanged with their individual price 
• Total value and the value without the customer accumulated credit 
• Tickets received 
• Previous and current customer credits 
• Tickets available on the store after this transaction 
• Fee generated by this transaction 
• Total fees after this transaction (debit to MTGO Library) 
• Links to screenshots generated just when the bot confirms the transaction

• Cards Log: This section is very useful when you want to track the benefits of a specific card. After searching a card, this section shows all its buys and sales with their values attached. The site also summarizes the profit or loss made by this card. Thus, by using this information you can decide, for example, to change the prices of a particular card. 
• Collection History: Summary of the total value of your collection divided by rarity. It is updated every 24/48 hours and, although it is useful to get an idea of ​the value for your stock, often these data are not very accurate. For example, there are some days that I have had almost no sales and my collection changed its value around +-200 tickets. 
• Transaction Fee: List with each renting fee generated and deducted by one of the official MTGO Library accounts. These accounts remove fees by taking tickets from your store every time its the renting fee exceeds the value of 1 ticket. 
• Multimonitor: Current screenshot from each of your bots. It also shows their online status and the commission generated by each one independently. Remember that for every bot you have to pay the fees generated by their respective transactions.

Below these statistics options there are some sections which modify the data the bot works with:

• Credits: Displays the available credits for each client who has done transactions in your store. Each customer on the list offers an option to show all his transactions, as well as the possibility to edit their credits for any reason. 
• Messages: Allows you to change the text of the advertisement shown in the “classifieds” section on Magic Online. This option is very useful if you want to remotely change your advertising. Changes are made every hour, so it may take you a bit to see the update of your advertisement. 
• Sharing Credits: If you have more than one bot, from here you can make to share the credit between themselves. This means that a customer will have available the same credits in your entire chain of bots. 
• Blacklist: Finally, your session on MTGO Library website allows you to add users to a blacklist. Thus, a client on the blacklist cannot trade cards with your bots. You must be very sure to add someone here, and you should only do this if that customer has persistently abused from your stores. This explanation covers all the options you can handle from MTGO Library site to control your stores without being in front of the computer which runs the bots.

How to make a remote access to your bot

As you can see, although the control panel of MTGO Library website has many functions, it may happen that you wish to directly manage any of your bots for pausing, restarting, changing the custom price of a card… There are many methods to solve this problem, however I will explain in detail the one I use: LogMeIn.

Why I use this service? There are many reasons, but the most important are:

• Its basic version is offered for free 
• Very fast and easy-to-use interface 
• Easily manages a lot of computers from a single place. It may be used from different platforms (PC Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad) 

The last point is very important for me, as it allows the remote control of the bot from your phone when you are far from home (obviously you should have an internet connection).
The steps to start using LogMeIn on the computer you install your bot are the following:

1. Create an account at LogMeIn
2. Login to your account on their website and, from the “Home” section, select “add computer” 
3. Download their application (Free version) and install it on the computer which runs the bot. It will ask you the computer name and if you use a proxy for your connection. 
4. That’s it! In order to use the remote control of your bot, go again to your “Home” section and you will see your computer on the list. Click over it and type the username and password of the user of that computer. 

Conclusions

With these tools you have a complete remote control system for your bot, so you can manage its behavior at any time. This feature is very important because sometimes you have to fix prices of cards, pause the bot, perform maintenance tasks, know the sales/purchases of your store…

The next chapter of this series will show you some of the most common strategies to create your own chain of bots.

You Make The Card 4

Three times in the past, Wotc allowed the Magic community to come together to collectively design a Magic card in a process called "You Make the Card". And You Make the Card returns once again!

In first week we could voted on card type and in total over 88,700 votes were casted. Land received 26,56 % votes to 26,53 % Enchentment. The vote was extremely close, almost a tie between land and enchantment. Because the vote was so close, WotC did a runoff vote between the two highest vote-getters. We don't know the results yet. In future votes, the top vote-getters are within two percentage points from each other, WotC will conduct a similar run-off vote. Soon we will find out whether either Land or Enchentment goes to the next round. Then, another poll will be conducted until the card is created.

In previous editions of You Make The Cards players created:
Forgotten Ancient, printed in Scourage
Crucible of Worlds, first appearing in Fifth Dawn
Vanish into Memory, in Coldsnap

Uptime Bar & Blacklist

We introduced yesterday two new features on the Online Control Panel: the Uptime Bar and the Blacklist.

The Uptime Bar is a log of the status (online/offline) of your bot. It records the online/offline availability of your bot and show it for the last two days. A blue bar means that the bot was online, while a red bar means that it was offline.

The Blacklist is, as the name itself says, a tool to prevent specific users from trading with your bots. Use it wisely :)

The Uptime Bar is available directly in the Dashboard while the Blacklist is available with a click on the proper button on the left.

MTGO Library Bot 5.66 is out

The new version of ML Bot, 5.66, has just been released.
It contains a number of fixes but, most important, it fixes the Collection History.

As many of you have noticed, the "old "Collection History:

• did not contain Boosters and Event Tickets
• did not take into account the number of items when computing the total value of the collection. A collection with 1 Force of Will had the same value of a collection with 4 Force of Will
• did not update on a regular basis

The new Collection History instead contains the number of Event Tickets and Boosters, sum correctly the multeplicity of the items in the total value, and is updated every day at 4pm GMT+0

Collection History

Collection History is up again! For those who have never used it, Collection History is the tool that evaluates the value of your collection and tracks it over time. Knowing the value of your collection is fantastic, but tracking it over time is even better, it gives the possibily to quantify easily gains and losses.

I have to say, for truth's sake, that the tool is not perfect yet. The old values of the collection are often unprecise and do not reflect the real value. Also, the collection does not show the amount of tixs and the amount of booster - all things that we will correct soon.

A nice add-on is the possibily to "group" the collection of your bots in a unique history. This is useful especially if your bots autotransfer: if so, the value of a collection can go up and down, and computing the value of the entire collection (the one amongs all the bots), can be a nightmare. "All Bots" and "Chains" radio-boxes gives the possibily to sum up all the values at one time

What will come next

I want to share with you some plans regarding mtgolibrary.com and what we will see in the future.

Regarding the functionalities of the website, next week we will release the Collection History log. We redesigned it and included much more data. Towards the end of the next week we will also enhance it charts and graphs to "visually" understand  the evolution of the collection over time.

Then we will re-introduce the Card Log. The Card Log will not just show the trades regarding *that* particular card, but also an analytics of the price: you bought *this* for *x*, sold it for *y* and so on...

We will redesign the Buddy Log too. Following the philosophy of the Card Log, the new Buddy Log will contains analytics computed on the specific buddy: how many trade he/she did, how many cards, tixs involved and so on...

Last but not the least, some other little functions such as the export of the Trade Log in Csv (thanks Markus) and an overall speed-up of the Trade Log itself, currently too slow.

A quick note on the bot for v4 too. The development is almost complete, we are currently testing it on our private accounts. I have to say Mtgo v4 has a lot of bug and it is very slow, but the bot already does a great job taking care of all these caps.

New webserver is running!

The new server is up and running, everyone should be able to login as usual. Still, if you have any problem, just send me an email (staff@mtgolibrary.com) and I will be happy to help :-)

The new server is not just a nice UI - it's a whole new server, with new code, build with the latest technologies to offer stability and performance. But - most important - it's easy to expand and plug new functionalities. In the close future you will see many new features, things impossible on the old server. We are ahead of a very exciting period.

To close, I want to show you how responsive the new UI is: you can view the website on a large 22'' screen as well on a tiny smarthphone - and it will always render properly.

Prepare for something big....

Later on, between Tuesday and Wednesday, mtgolibray.com will have a short downtime for maintenance..... let's prepare for something big.
Sorry for the downtime btw, that will be necessary



Albert

Intermediate and Advanced settings

If you have been running the bot for some months, you should have grown a good collection with around 3000-4000 rares/mythics. This is very good, yet not the final goal. For a bot to be sustainable, it needs a larger collection, thus it's the time to accelerate and grow more. I prepared some settings: you can download them here (user.data) and here (buyerSetting.data).

After you reach 10'000 rares/mythics, you can then switch to these settings: here (user.data) and here (buyerSetting.data)

 Instructions:
- stop the bot 
- download the files 
- copy the files in the bot folder, overwriting the old ones 
- launch the bot and set again your bot name, mtgo password and mtgolibrary.com password 

 These settings are safe and will work well in the majority of the cases. You can of course play with them and change them at your needs. If you need help or have any question, just ask me at staff@mtgolibrary.com

Beginner's bot settings

Just got started with ML Bot and want some quick-and-easy settings to bootstrap and grow your collection? I prepared for you the right settings: you can download them here (user.data) and here (buyerSetting.data).

Instructions:
- stop the bot
- download the files
- copy the files in the bot folder, overwriting the old ones
- launch the bot and set again your bot name, mtgo password and mtgolibrary.com password

These settings are safe and will work well in the majority of the cases. You can of course play with them and change them at your needs.

If you need help or have any question, just ask me at staff@mtgolibrary.com

Pro Vs Lite

The only difference between Pro and Lite versions of ML Bot is the pricing system.

The Lite bot will let you choose a unique price for "category". For example, all the common foils will cost 0.5 tixs, all the regular mythics will cost 2 tixs (and so on). There are 20 categories of cards.

The Pro bot uses instead a pricelist, and prices each card it own "real" price. For example Flameshot will cost 0.080 and  Rhystic Scrying 0.073.