Written by Ryan Hrbacek.

Greetings All,

As product owner of Wizards EventLink, I want to share our plans for improving the tool and experiences for store owners, tournament organizers, players, and everyone in between. Earlier this year, we released the Manual Pairing feature for EventLink to add a bit more flexibility to the tool’s original design during round play.

Based on feedback received from our users, we’re working on adding a similar feature to drafts before round play even begins!

With Draft Pod Manual Pairing, we aim to provide additional flexibility for draft events:

• Prior to a draft kicking off, Tournament Organizers will have the opportunity to late register players, swap players between pods, and even create new pods to allow more customization with the event (though still retaining limits around the permissible pod sizes when possible).
• Improving accessibility by allowing Tournament Organizers the option to split players that should be locked to a table into separate pods, so they minimize the chances of two locked players being matched against one another.

Beyond that feature, I want to highlight a couple other projects we’re working on:

• System stability – We hear you when it comes to slow downs and unresponsive servers, particularly during Prerelease weekend. We understand that even a brief disruption in service can dampen an otherwise joyous event. As an increasing number of players attend Prerelease events with each new release, it is critical that our servers can properly scale up to accommodate traffic spikes throughout the weekend. Improving server stability remains a top priority ahead of new major features in the tool, and we’re committed to our goal of continuous uptime during Prerelease weekend.
• Commander support – Commander pod organization functionality is something we know many EventLink users are eager for, and we have been testing some early iterations of what this might look like. We’ve learned that due to the flexible nature of the format, there are many different ways WPN stores run and organize Commander events. As we explore this further, we’re interested in your thoughts about how best to implement this feature. Please let us know your thoughts about this and anything EventLink related via the “Submit Feedback” button found in the lower left side of the EventLink user interface.

I also want to highlight updates we’re making to events with “Cut to Playoff” enabled. Previously, we only offered the option to cut a Top 8. With a release earlier this summer, we now allow the option to cut to a Top 4 based on the number of players registered in the event. While that is now available, we’re also looking to correct existing disparity between the number of rounds in playoff events in EventLink vs what Magic Tournament Rules stipulate. Furthermore, we’re also aware that draft playoff pairings are based off of Swiss round results as opposed to the pairing structure outlined in Magic Tournament Rules, and we will look to update that pairing algorithm as well.

As always, please continue to deliver feedback through our WPN team so they may share them with us! We communicate regularly, and the team does a great job of voicing our customers’ needs and opinions on how our tools may be improved.

Thank you all!