War Rooms Finally Got Real

Holy Crap We Actually Did It

Earlier today, MockingBoard had the pleasure of hosting it's first genuine full War Room mock draft, courtesy of the Brett Kollmann discord server. I am pleased to say that, all things considered, this event far exceeded my own expectations. The site didn't go down in the middle of it, picks got made, and lots of people got to experience the site for the first time. Thank you to everyone who joined today and who participated. This project only gets better as more people use it.

Okay, Maybe It Wasn't Flawless

Alright, so let me be honest, today didn't go off without any hitches. About 30 minutes before the draft was supposed to start, I got a text stating that War Rooms were limited to 32 total people, notably the amount of people that is the limit for standard multiplayer. This was, truthfully, a freaky moment for me. I immediately booted up my PC, frantically wrote in a small change to hardcode the limit to 1600, and prayed nothing else would break when I pushed out the new release.

Luckily, within about a minute of the release being live, we had confirmation that we had pushed past the 32 person limit and people were no longer having issues joining. Nothing quite like a real life demo to really push your software to its limits. In the grand scheme of things, these are the events that forge a project like this to what it can be, and I believe that together, we can build so much more.

Where We Go From Here

Firstly, I'd love if you could share this site with your friends. If you think this is a nice project worth sharing, then please do. My goal is for the maximum amount of people to enjoy this project that can.

Second, I want to assure all our new users that this project is nowhere near any sort of "end state" and realistically may not have one. Certain areas of the site may be in a nice spot, but updates will continue to happen almost daily. Shortly after this post goes live you'll be getting a new update and patch notes addressing many of the issues found today. I have so many more areas of the site planned out that don't even exist yet. We had people asking today about fantasy football, and I can assure you that while this is a decent way off, it is certainly in the pipeline. Other things are as well, but I'll talk about those more when get there.

What to Expect From Me

You should continue to expect from me things like honesty, transparency, and responsiveness. As I mentioned earlier today on the draft stream, I welcome all user feedback and suggestions. Will every suggestion get implemented? I can't guarantee that, but most certainly do. The MockingBoard Support Server is going to be the main place to do that. I have a formal bug report form as well that really lets me keep track of things easily that I suggest folks use.

In terms of communication, you should expect the following:

1. Patch Notes - these will be the most common things I share. These will mostly just be user friendly explanations of the changes I've made
2. TWAM - This Week At MockingBoard. These are going to be more long-form posts that will stay contained to the site and show up in our Featured section as well for more visibility. If you're familiar with the tradition of TWABs from Bungie, you can think of those. If you aren't, then these will be larger posts that go over everything from user feedback, things the community is doing, updates that have been made, updates that are coming, etc
3. Major Update - These are posts explaining major features when they get added. Our most recent one was on the addition of Collaborative Big Boards. Basically, if there is brand new functionality coming to the site, it'll get an explanation of what it does, how it works, and the reasoning for adding it.
4. General/Roadmap - That's what this is. These are posts that won't really have a specific thing to be talking about, more just a general explanation of where things are and where they might be going.

Is That It?

Yup! That's it for now. Thanks again to everyone who was involved today, I hope you had fun and I hope I can continue to deliver positive experiences to all.