The Scoop Website Updates Files Back Online Bandwith Problems Apprentice 1.46 Released Mysterious Hard Drive Failures Destiny Update Slated for 21st Magic Suitcase Updates and Info Theme Editor and Theme Page

As for Apprentice 2.0, it is slowly progressing. Spectating, multiplayer mode, Any-CCG support, 64-bit encyption (for security), save game, firewall support, self-added art and themes, and a new database are all planned. We are still on the very basic stages but as soon as we have anything resembling the current Apprentice, we will of course conduct an open beta test. Our mission is, as always, to provide the best free CCG product we can, and we thank you for your support.

Website Updates | 10.3.99 | Chris Warden
We're currently in the middle of some website updates and changes right now including a redesign of our website. We're going to be shuffling things around for a little bit until everything is in place. We thank you for your patience and understanding while we are in the midst of this transition. Thanks again.

Files Back Online | 9.3.99 | Chris Warden
Apprentice version 1.46 and Netdraft 1.33 with 1.34 update are back up and available for download. Magic Suitcase should be back up shortly as well. Again, we apologize for this situation, but it was un-avoidable, since we brought Magic Suitcase into our family of software our bandwidth usage has more than tripled. Thank you again for your understanding and patience.

Bandwith Problems | 9.1.99 | Chris Warden
We would like to apologize, we have temporarily taken down the files for Apprentice, Netdraft and Magic Suitcase for 24 hours as we move all files off of this server to another file server. The reason for this brief downtime is our bandwidth usage has been through the roof lately and the amount of users trying to download files crashed the server yesterday. Our upstream connection provider has informed us we are utilitizing 100% of the bandwidth that is allocated to our server. This is highly unexpected as we moved off our previous server several months ago in order to INCREASE our bandwidth usage. The mere fact that in a little under 2 months we have maxed out the increase is nothing short of amazing. The popularity of our software is staggering. We will continue to work to increase our server and bandwidth capabilities to meet the demand for our software. Thank you for your continued support of our software.

Apprentice 1.46 Released | 6.21.99 | Ryan Davis
Lemme just clarify what Chris said below because I had to read it twice for it was a tad misleeding. We thought we lost a month of work on Apprentice, but thankfully we didn't. It wasn't that mysterious a crash -- my computer froze because I did something "naughty" in Delphi so I had to shut off the computer. My computer obviously decided before it shut off it would overwrite my FAT tables just to spite me for cutting its power. I laugh at the word "backup." Anyway, I didn't post this to tell you of my adventures in hard drive repair. I'm writing to announce the release of Apprentice 1.46. This version (which is fully compatible with Apprentice 1.45) mainly consists of small bugfixes, but also includes a new deck editor function and a card database update with Urza's Destiny. It can be found on our download page so go get it! Soon to come...about 8 new themes and some bigger Apprentice upgrades.

Mysterious Hard Drive Failures | 5.19.99 | Christopher Warden
It seems this is the week for mysterious hard drive failures. First Ryan (Shroomie) had some problems earlier this week with his hard drive, and we thought we lost a month or so work on Apprentice (We have since taught Ryan the meaning of the word "backup"). Then sometime yesterday dragonstudios.com's server suffered a mysterious crash which required us to restore from a backup. We apologize for this inconvenience and are working on ways to make our systems more reliable to avoid this kind of happenstance in the future.

Destiny Update Slated for 21st | 5.14.99 | Christopher Warden
Next week we will be making an update for Apprentice which will include bug fixes, database corrections, and Urza's Destiny. We also plan to have an update of the Apprentice Theme Editor around the same time.

A lot of people have been wondering why an update for Urza's Destiny has not been forthwhith since the release of the spoilers. Previously our practice is to have an update available shortly after set spoilers hit the web. I apologize for the delay in putting up something about this, but hopefully this will help clarify things.

One of the details that was worked out with WotC during our negotiations of licensing and sponsorship of Apprentice was timing on the release of updates. What we came to agree on was 2 weeks after the official release date in stores for new expansion sets. While this may dissapoint or anger some, I feel this is a pretty fair solution. I do admit that personally I would like to have updates available on the same day as product hits the stores. This is something I will try and talk further with them about, because as we've seen by the number of hacks that are running around out there, it isn't very effective. (Which, btw, i highly reccomend you do NOT use, if for no other reason that it seems some malicious people have put viruses in some of these hacks, we have gotten emails from angry people with infected pcs, to which we kindly explain we have nothing to do with these unofficial updates.)

I also know that a lot of people seem to have reservations about our agreement with WotC and what exactly it entails. I've seen the polls on mtgnews.com , I've seen the commentaries in articles and musings on The Dojo and many other websites. I would like to take a quick moment to assure our users that we are not under control or owned by WotC or anything of that nature. They have been very fair with us, and in turn, I try hard to be fair with them. They sponsor and license our work, and in turn we abide by certain guidelines we have mutually agreed on. If you have questions you want to ask regarding Apprentice, WotC, and what exactly the whole deal is anyway, I will try and answer them. Feel free to direct them to me via email, it may take me a little while, but I eventually answer all my email. I hope this helps to re-assure the Magic community that we have their best interests at heart in all things. Thanks again to everyone for your support of us and our work.

Magic Suitcase Updates and Info | 5.14.99 | Christopher Warden
I thought I would take a long overdue moment to let you all know there have been a bunch of updates to Magic Suitcase. We have some great people heading up the development team for Magic Suitcase -- Autrijus Tang, and Michael Jennings. We currently have publicly available beta versions of Magic Suitcase 5.0 available for download. There is also a great discussion list we have setup which I reccomend you sign up for on the Magic Suitcase Webpage. We've also finally cleaned up the website some. My heartfelt thanks go out to Autrijus and Mike, they are doing a great job, and thanks go out as well to all the helpful people providing input and help with suitcase. As always, input and sugestions are welcome, if you have something you would like to see improved upon or added to Magic Suitcase, email us at suitcase@dragonstudios.com.

Theme Editor and Theme Page | 5.9.99 | Ryan Davis
Well those of you who have been begging me to make themes can begin and those who just want to enjoy them will soon have a good amount more to enjoy. The theme editor can be found on our download page and if you're looking for some themes they can be found on the theme page. A new user-made theme is there and I hope many more will follow!