Extended sell & buy price consistency

Yesterday we updated the server to handle the Sell (and Buy) price consistency "over" the maximum protection values of 100%. You can now choose 110% and 105% . What does this mean?

Setting a value higher than 100% (for example 105% or 110%) results in trades with a profit. Please note that if your protection percentage is set too high for too long you risk not selling the card, and therefore not re-buying it at the market value. This may result in a lower than normal inventory rotation and an overall loss in profits. Remember that some cards fall in price and if you don't keep up with the market you may be holding onto the card for too long.

For the original article about price consistency (introduced one year ago), please read here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/04/price-consistency-feature.html
For the manual, please read here: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/11/control-panel-v4-buysell-consistencey.html

MTGO Library Bot 8.74

ML Bot has a built-in mechanism that restarts MTGO if its memory usage is more than 1.5 GB. This is necessary because MTGO tends to consume a lot of memory and after a while a restart is much needed.
The threshold "1.5 GB" was fixed, meaning that it was "1.5" regardless of the size of your collection and the total memory of your machine. This does not always fit well. In this case, one size does not fit all.

ML Bot 8.74 uses a dynamically computed threshold based on your collection and on the total amount of ram in your machine. 8.74 avoids restarting MTGO when it is not necessary and keeps the restarts at the lowest possible number.

MTGO Library Bot 8.47

Today we release ML Bot 8.47, a major software update we have been working on for almost two weeks.

The updated bot client fixes a number of small & big issues, but the most important changes are under the hood: we redesigned and recoded the internal data structures to be faster and cheaper in ram usage. What does this mean in practical terms?

• First of all, the bot will easier to maintain and debug. This means a better sofware in the long run, exactly what happened in 2013 with the new website (the new site was easier to maintain than the old one, and this lead to faster development)
• Ram usage drops from 400 MB to 100 MB. The new bot version uses less ram (see image)

• Buying mode is slightly faster
• Next week we will introduce the reload of the prices in background so the bot won't be "stopped" for 1-2 minutes while reloading the prices. This is possible because of the new data structures - this was not possible before

Please note that the pricelist "CardsMTGO.txt" format slightly changed (see here for reference), you may want to adjust your software if you use automated price generation. PersonalPrices.txt and PersonalPercentages.txt did not change.

We hope you'll enjoy the release! 

Online Price Editor

Let's pretend you are away from home, with no laptop, without your Magic Online tools, and you realize there is something wrong with your pricing and need to fix quickly. For example this weekend ONS fetch lands dropped drastically due to the annoucement of them being reprinted in Khans and if you didn't change your price quickly you would have bought them all at around 30-40 even though they are selling for about 30 now.

Before today, you couldn't do anything. You could just sit there and watch your bots burn your tickets.

Today we launch the online price editor so you can adjust your prices in few seconds from anywhere and deliver the updates to your bots, immediately. The editor is specifically designed for smartphone and tables, so you can use wherever you are.
You can access the editor from the Online Control Panel, after login, clicking on "Personal Price List" and then "Create a personal price list" (the blue button).

MTGO Library Bot 8.19

ML Bot 8.19 has just been released and we have a couple of great new features under the hood!

• First of all, the bot is faster in accepting trades and sending the welcome messages, up to 2.5 seconds faster than 8.18. The average time between the accept of a trade request and the spamming of the first message is now 3 seconds. If you have a fast pc, it could be around 1.5 - 2 seconds-
• If you came from 8.18, the update to 8.19 should just take few seconds instead of 1 or 2 minutes: we reintroduced the fast updater we had on v3
• Last but not the least, we made the "automatic buying mode" (the bot entering buying mode without user input) optional. There is a checkbox (see image below) where you can choose wheter the bot automatically enters buying mode or stay idle waiting for user input.

ML Bot 8.01 is ready for MTGO v4

Hello Botters,

today we release ML Bot for Mtgo v4, please be sure to download and test it. You may continue to use ML Bot for v3 until July 16th, when Wizards will turn it off but please spend some time now downloading the new bot and make sure it works properly on your machines. You don't need to do exhaustive tests, you just need to make sure it is working and it is able to complete a test trade.
The v4 bot is stable and works the exact same way as v3. If you decide to use ML Bot v4 this week please report any issues to us immediately, possibly with a screenshot. You can reach us on our LiveChat directly on our website or email us at staff@mtgolibrary.com.
If you need an updated windows 7 64 bit VM with Mtgo v4 and all the updates installed you can use the following vmware 10 image http://176.58.109.146/WIN7WM.zip

Please don't leave the bot unattended, run it when you can watch it a little bit.

You can download the ML Bot "v4" installer from the homepage of www.mtgolibrary.com or from your Online Control Panel. The old v3 installer has been removed so now you can only download the v4 installer. 


There are some minor differences between the old v3 bot and the new v4 bot.

• First of all pricelist CardsMTGO3.txt has been renamed in CardMTGO.txt and the format has slighly changed. The old format was:

01 001 01 001 324 VMA R Volcanic Island# 14.780 29.900 9.900 20.030

while the new format is:

105#324#VMA#R#Volcanic Island#14.780#29.900#9.900#20.030

The new format uses "#" as separators and adds two code numbers (in the example 105 and 324) as first fields. Please do not change them otherwised the bot won't be able to load the pricelist properly. These two numbers are respectively the setnumber (VMA is "105") and the cardnumber (Volcanic Island is number 324). Till 16th July the bot you could download the old pricelist and the new pricelist: we added a button to do that.

• All the prices have been moved to the "prices" subfolder: there you will find CardsMTGO.txt, PersonalPrices.txt, PersonalPercentages.txt, CardsForAdvertisement.txt and SpecialBuddy.txt and the debug file CardsNeededAndCollection.txt. You can open that folder from the bot GUI too. If you have scripts that access these files, you need to code the "/prices" subfolder.
• Pause command is now "CTRL+P" instead of "CTRL+A", because "P" is supposed to mean "Pause"

There will be many updates this week. The new bot has been deeply tested but, like any new software, it is still "young" and some minor issues could arise. We will be 24/7 on Livechat, you just need to reach us there.

Please also make sure you read the previous articles about v4:
http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/07/mtgo-v4-and-ml-bot-requirements.html
http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.it/2014/06/our-plans-for-switchover.html


Enjoy,
Albert

The new MTGO v4

Two days ago Wizards of the Coast released an update for Mtgo v4. The update mainly addressed the  trading interface, changing old features and adding new ones. You can read the full article here: http://community.wizards.com/content/blog/4102121

We are happy with this update - this is probably one of few updates that really improves the trading system and that will benefit traders. The v4 trading system is now very close to the v3 one. We had to change some things our v4 bot to adapt it to the new interface but this is a work we were happy to do.

Among the most notable changes, the new mtgo v4 introduces the good old wishlist: you can now load a .dek file and mtgo will automatically grab the cards for you. The chat is now automatically docked to the right and, in case you lose it, you can simply click the "Chat" button on the bottom-right. Finally, the trading interface is in a new windows: this means that you can access the Classified Boards while trading and change your BUSY / OPEN message easily.

Here at mtgolibrary we think that the update was much overdue and we are happy it has been delivered. Our faith in mtgo v4 is now a little higher!

WebShop APIs 2.0

Last week we released the WebShop APIs (http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/05/introducing-webshop-apis.html) with the idea to ease the creation of webshops.You botters loved that and gave us many feedback, thank you :-), we did not expect such a warm welcome.

Yesterday we released "version 2.0" with the goal to simplify the usage. The most important API request, the Inventory one, has been rewritten and now contains plain card names and bot names instead of numerical identifiers. You don't need to build two tables to decode the correspondence with the real names.
The parameter of the request is no more "set_number" but directly the name of the set, for example THS or BNG.

The result is a Json text, for example:

<...>

{"card_name":Eidolon+of+Countless+Battles,"set_name":BNG,"rarity":R,"bot":xxx,"foil":1,"buy_price":0.726,"buy_quantity":3,"sell_price":1.26,"sell_quantity":0},{"card_name":Elite+Skirmisher,"set_name":BNG,"rarity":C,"bot":yyy,"foil":0,"buy_price":0.003,"buy_quantity":3,"sell_price":0.017,"sell_quantity":0},

<...>

MTGO Library Bot 6.85

ML Bot 6.85 is a minor update fixing a problem with the AutoTransfer of boosters. The picking of the boosters was not working correctly and so the bots were unable to transfer all the boosters they needed.

Spotlight Beta testing

Hello Botters,

V4 Beta testing has resumed! 

With the Mtgo v4 spotlight coming up May 7th -10th we have decided to run a private ML bot v4 beta testing to qualified customers. If you would like to apply please write to staff@mtgolibrary.com a brief email how you could be a beneficial tester for ML Bot.

Applicants must meet the follow criteria:

- Have the ability to watch for error/bugs and report them
- Must run more than 8 bots.
- Have been using ML Bot for more than 24 months.
- Not hold ML Bot accountable for any bugs or losses.


The new bot software will have all same great features as the old software, auto-transfers are improved and will have few new secret features.

All applicants will be picked based on availability and longevity of botting. One benefit is that you will be one of the few bots online during the Spotlight.


Happy Botting!

Jason - Teamsotge.

MTGO Library Bot 6.83 - introducing "Profit Protection"

ML Bot 6.83 has just been released. There is nothing new here at a first sight, but it prepares the field for the "Profit Protection" tool we will introduce tomorrow!

Please stay tuned because this will be something big :-)

Wikiprice now showing chains!

Yesterday wikiprice was not working properly, online and offline, because we were deploying a new feature, the grouping by chain.

If a bot belongs to a chain, it will appear in blue with a little "+" sign on the left. Click it to expand the chain and get the details. This is useful because chains share the credits so you can shop in any of the grouped bots and your credit will follow you. This will also save vertical space on your screen so you can view more bots at the same time.

Enjoy!

MTGO Library Bot 6.74 - make 4x tradable

As promised few days ago, we released today ML Bot 6.74, introducing a much-awaited feature, the "make 4x tradable" option. The new option is available on the General Tab of the bot GUI.

So far, you could only choose to "make all your cards tradable" at the end of the trade, but this looks unprofessional to customers especially when your collection is not balanced and you have, for instance, 10x of a card on a bot and 1x on another. Now you can choose to make "4x tradable" (or 1x, 2x, 10x, 32x) and cards in excess will be hidden. All your tixs will be still all tradable, they won't be capped to 4x.
Talking with a botter some weeks ago, he told me that the psychological on customers is huge: they say 19x tradable and don't buy - they say 4x and buy.

Technically speaking, the bot performs the required actions between trades after 20 seconds of  inactivity from customers. This is an empirical rule to assess that the bot is not busy trading repeatedly with a customer. Please note that this behaviour is slightly different from the old "make all tradable" that was performed at the end of each trade.

**UPDATE: if you have a large collection, Mtgo will limit to 2500 different cards the "make all tradable option". If you are experiencing this limit, just wait tomorrow and we will release a workaround **

4x... coming soon

We are excited to announce that we are working on a new feature that will be available this week... something that will definitely boost the way your bot(s) are perceived from customers....

More to come.

mtgolibrary.com moved to a new server

Hi all,

if you had had some issues with the server yesterday it was because we moved it to a new location. The new server doubles the computational power so you will see an overall increase of speed on the whole site, and a minor increase on the bots too.

Fast pages will load more or less as fast as before while heavy pages (like the Tradelog, the Cardlog and the Inventory) will now load much faster.

Just to give you some numbers, the new server is Linux based, has 128 GB ram,16 processors, 1TB hard drive. Enjoy!

Albert

Inventory

Yesterday we released a new feature available on the Online Control Panel, the "Inventory". It is a place where you can browse the inventory of your bots, search for cards and get their price. The idea is to know every item you have and where those items are located.

"Inventory" is still in beta and will be reworked during the coming weeks to offer a faster and a more complete experience, possibly integrated with the Trade Log and the Card Log. If you have any idea about what would you like to see there, please write us at staff@mtgolibrary.com or reach us on LiveChat.

Please note that Inventory works only with ML Bot greater than 6.66

Improved Oversell Protection

We have just deployed an oversell protection improvement (see here for the original article).

The Oversell Protection let you choose the names of the bots that will be affected, as well the "width" of the oversell threshold: "4x of a card among all the bots", or "just among the chain?". You can now easily destroy a rule by clicking on the "delete" link or remove a single bot by clicking the "x" close to each name.

The concept of "active/unactive" rule has also been removed and now all the listed rules are active - this should make the page easier to read, especially when multiple rules are created. Having the bot name listed makes also clear who is affected, and by which rules.

CSV and EXCEL tradelog export

Yesterday we introduced the tradelog export to ".csv" and to ".xls".

You can use them to export all your trades in a comma-separated-values or in Microsoft Excel format for further analysis.

MTGO Library Bot 6.47

ML Bot 6.47 has just been released.
This is a maintenance build fixing a CPU problem happening on some computers. The problem caused the CPU to stay constantly to 50%-100% even when the bot was "waiting for trade". Now the CPU usage will stay at 5%-10%. This is important if you run multiple bots on the same machine, for example using VmWare or VirtualBox, and in general in the cases where the CPU is shared with other application.

Having a less working CPU will also mean lower electricity bills and fewer overheating problems.

Many thanks to BestDeal for helping me out with this.

Wikiprice is now on a new server

Recently we had some problems with wikiprice, mainly due to the computational power of the server and the heavy traffic. Today we had to keep wikiprice down for 8 hours while we were migrating to a new server.

We moved wikiprice to a new server that doubles the amount of ram and uses ssd hard drives. We also optimized the code. So: new server, more ram, ssd hard drive, code optimization: all should result in a very stable wikiprice with an uptime close to 100%.

The first thing you'll see it that the pages load faster. Oh, we also changed the graphs a bit, and added a login section for a plethora of things we'll add in the future