MTG Changes

~
Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

Going forward through this article, I may very well sound like an 'old guy', which is rather true - I will be 50 in just a few short months.  This is mentioned only to provide a brief context of my experience with the evolution of technology and change itself.  I was born very far North (Arctic Circle north) at a time when cutting technology was chainsaws and the latest improvements in snowmobiles promised smoother / safer rides.  When serving in the Armed Forces, I was one of the first to use an electric typewriter in my Battalion.  Through my academic endeavours, I had witnessed the first computers (think floppys and diskettes) and did actually own a 'bag-phone' which plugged into the cigarette (now 'accessory') socket.  

This is all mentioned to provide a sort of way-marker in my reading of the ever-evolving Magic: the Gathering site that Wizards of the Coast has been maintaining and improving over the years.  Today's article to MTG Realm is posted as a new iteration of the Daily MTG has now gone up.  Here is a progression what the MTG webpage looked liked from when we first started reading it.

Early 2000 / 2002

Pure nostalgia.  I had spent a lot of time reading Magic Arcana, as well as some authors, whose content may very well be considered 'racey' by today's standards.

Circa 2004

My 56k dial-up modem is now considered ancient technology.  Look at all the graphics - enough to make one's self dizzy.  Brian David-Marshall and Adrian Sullivan dispense strategy and wisdom for players.

In 2007, Wizards of the Coast had addressed the rapidly growing fan community's desire to further engage on a more social level.  Randy Buehler was the tip of this spear, but unfortunately, bad timing had these fans busy on Facebook and Myspace resulting in Gleemax closing a year later.   
(Yes - I will admit that I had a Myspace page filled with MTG stuff)

Circa 2009

By far, my favourite designs of the Daily MTG webpage.  The newly improved gatherer is amazing, content is very well organised but By Odin!, should you need to search for something, you are going to have a bad time.  Gatherer has a slick-look page which propels me in to a new level of deckbuilding.

Gleemax 2.0 ?  Wizards of the Coast concludes that Facebook and Myspace is a mess for the MTG fans to build a community with at this time.  Wizards Community goes live circa 2010 which supplements the main webpage with this creation and I enthusiastically sign up.  It closes down five years later which kinda left me sad.

Circa 2014

Oh dear, this was not to our liking at all.

Let's just fast-forward a few months.

Circa 2015

This has become much more improved, and one is now able to use a functional search to float out that article you wanted to re-read.  Navigation is decent and Magic Arcana continues to be a 'must read' column.  Daily MTG 'Update' is soon to become a daily routine for me in 2016.

November 29, 2017

Here comes the part where my 'old fogey' preface is now referenced.  I am experiencing a mild dislike, but as Leo Buscaglia said - "Change is the end result of all true learning", which prompts me to realise that change is sometimes a good thing, so I look past my old-guy pre-determinations.  I very much appreciate the community generated content section and know that I will come to like the re-design in rather short order - just not the 'daily mtg' font.  Let's drop the probiotics please Wizards and ask Beleren to step back into the room.

~

Lands Ahoy

~
Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We hope all had a great weekend.  As we head on into the Holidays, we suggest you pop by one of our sponsors - CCG House, MTG Mint Card, Cardhoarder, BCW Supplies, Ideal 808, or Ultra PRO to finish up any left-over shopping you may have for presents.  Over on the mothersite, they are running previously published articles as staff take a well-deserved break for the next two weeks.  

For today's post, we wanted to take a look back to MaRo's 'mailbag' article last week, when he had solicited questions from the Magic: the Gathering community.  More specifically, a question posed by Don Wiggins (of Don's Magic and Sundry) - a particular question we ourselves had been wondering about since 2009 . . .

I'm writing a mailbag column today and I need your help. Please send me a question that's a single tweet that starts with "When".
— Mark Rosewater (@maro254) November 14, 2014

@maro254 When will we see full art basic lands again?
— Don Wiggins (@TheSundry) November 14, 2014

When will we see full art basic lands again?  To which MaRo responds -

I can't tell you an exact date just yet, but I can say this: They are currently planned for an upcoming block that I know about. Nothing's definitive until it sees print, but I have a lot of confidence they will see the light of day again.

This, for us, is very exciting.  We've been playing with the Zendikar full-art basic lands ever since they had come out and were fortunate enough to pick up two full sets - enough to have several decklists fully furnished with these beautiful cards.  

Anywhoos - let's yatter a titch about full art basic lands.  A lot of players we know personally love to include these and it's all about the aesthetics and the cred you may acquire at the gaming store for having such very lovely swag.


Unglued - August 11, 1998

These full art lands are technically extended and are framed inside an oval frame stretching from near the the top to bottom of the card.  Again, there were only five separate illustrations - one for each land type and were done by artists Terese Nielsen, Daren Bader, Tom Wänerstrand, Christopher Rush, and Mark Zug.

Unhinged - November 20, 2004

The Unhinged lands are simply gorgeous.  These were true 'full art' basic lands from the first (of two) fun 'joke sets' as the art stretched from almost top to bottom.  The illustration for each of the five different lands (Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain and Forest) were all by artist John Avon.

Zendikar - October 2, 2009

Technically not quite full art with this one, but none the less very beautiful.  These were thought necessary as this set and block had a land theme.  There were four of each of the five basic land arts commissioned and executed by Vincent Proce, Véronique Meignaud, Jung Park, and John Avon.  
~

Mothersite Redesign

~
Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Here in Central Ontario, Canada-Land, meteorological conditions are lending itself very effectively to create this season's Snowpocalypse.  We were planning to yatter a bit of lore about the Dominarian Ice Age (Ice Age / Alliances / Cold Snap and some of the recent singles we picked up from MTG Mint Card from this block) which we thought were apropos to the weather at the moment but thought it better to discuss the latest redesign of the Wizards of the Coast's Magic: the Gathering website which we affectionately refer to as the 'mothersite' here on MTG Realm.  Before we get into it, let's have a look at the evolution to date . . .

2001 - if you remember this, you likely have mixed feelings of nostalgia and hate for this early webpage.

2002 - Biggest change was the addition of the seach box on the top of the front page as well as the link to the MTG message boards.

2003 - More graphics, more links, more content - starting to get a bit 'cluttered' now.

2008 - The biggest / most stark change in our opinion.  We loved this layout the moment we saw it!

2013 / 2014

That rather weird time when the webpage was straddling both old www.wizards.com/Magic and new magic.wizards.com domain.  A litany of issues and problems encountered with the new site for a while until finally fixed in June 2014 with content being posted to both.  

Fast forward to today - again some large changes from yesterday's site.  We suggest you pop on over and read TJ's article over on the mothersite here.  We are absolutely loving the verticle menu drop-downs - the previous horizontal iteration simply sucked.  We have yet to test drive the improved search function.  On the forums, the comments are not as positive as ours.

What do you think about the new design ?
~