MTGnews
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MTGnews, or MTGNews is a Magic: The Gathering website and forum, and was known as the main source for the Magic: The Gathering online community of "spoilers"--the contents of new sets of cards prior to being publicly released.
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[edit] History
[edit] 1998 - 2003
MTGnews.com, a Magic: The Gathering website, was founded by Ray "DG" Yu in 1998. It grew out of Yu's first website, Land of Destoguardiana (LoD). In the beginning, he simply scoured the internet and various Usenet newsgroups for information and rumor about upcoming releases. Word of the site soon spread. With increased traffic and exposure, the site was able to gather information more effectively.
In 1999, LoD joined force with the then popular online tournament league, The Planeswalker League, utilizing their hosting service, as well as cross-promotion. Through many transformation, it eventually became MTGnews.com, with promises of daily news and rumor updates. A sister website called Conquest Magazine was created to offer strategy articles, though the site was short-lived. In year 2000, MTGnews.com joined the former The Den network (owned by Imagine Media, publisher of PC Gamer) as an advertising affiliate, which became the Snowball Network afterwards.
MTGnews.com attended various conventions as press. Through hardwork of its staff, the site frequently posted information about upcoming releases well in advance of release dates, as well as accurate data collection from pre-release events via real time reporting from earlier pre-release tournaments such as those often happening in Australia. It quickly became one of the most popular destinations on the internet for Magic: The Gathering sites, competing with rivals such as the former The Dojo and Brainburst.com. Though at this time, Yu's interest in Magic: The Gathering has subsided, but he continued to operate the website.
In 2001, MTGnews.com cemented its popularity by launching a feature called Ultimate Spoiler Generator. It features then the most robust card search engine made available online.
In 2003, due to personal reasons, Yu's friend "Night Dakkon" joined the staff to help administrate and develop the site. Activity rised and dipped low once again after as Dakkon left. Volunteer moderators and staff members began to request more access and control on the website, including access to making programming changes on the site. The request was granted but ultimately no one was as dedicated and involved as Yu once was.
[edit] 2004
In early 2004, after seven years of operations, due to a mixture of internal staff and personal issues, Yu announced that the website will be closing in one month. However, to keep the community he started intact, he would assist in the transfer of the forums to another site chosen by the community. In addition, he offered to setup the Ultimate Spoiler Generator code as an open source project so others can continue development on it. Almost immediately, a group of members headed by moderators Jeff Vondruska and Daron Rutter (Rancored_Elf) set up a PayPal account for donations towards maintaining and establishing a new site in the event that the community moved. However, soon after, the site was sold to Greg Woodruff of FindMagicCards.com despite the original announcement, a commercial website devoted to displaying price comparisons for single cards among major online dealers. A portion of the undisclosed sales amount was offered to the staff as a token of appreciation for their previous effort and future site use but it was refused.
[edit] 2004 - Present
The site lived well through the incident, but administration problems caused a number of staff, including Daron Rutter to leave the staff and form MTG Salvation. The site has lost a significant amount of traffic, including its main draw of Magic: The Gathering rumors, but the site is rebuilding and it remains a popular unofficial site for news about Magic.
On January 20, 2006, Wizards of the Coast decided to take legal action against "Rancored Elf" and his sources for providing spoilers to the two website communities. MTGNews has issued a statement supporting "Rancored Elf" and MTG Salvation. The case was settled out of court later.[1]
