E  D  I  T  O  R  S     C  O  R  N  E  R

by Innate Mak, Editor-In-Chief/Publisher Untap, Upkeep, Draw!! Winds of Change Hello, and welcome to the August 97 issue of Beyond Dominia! I've been quite busy recently, and haven't put out an Untap, Upkeep, Draw!! article in a while, so I'll summarize what's been happening at Beyond Dominia, answer a few frequently asked questions, as well as discuss some of our future plans.   The First Year As most of you know, last month's issue marked the first anniversary of Beyond Dominia. Back in July, 1996, Beyond Dominia first came online with a measly 2 articles (which, unfortunately, we didn't even archive). And we struggled for the first few months. But thanks to the support of our readers and the work from our contributors, I'm pleased to say that Beyond Dominia has become a success; over the past year, we have published over 120 articles. The Rumor Mill has been so well used that it has spawned 3 new Mills, the Strategy Mill, Deck Mill, and the ever silly War Mill. Over 45,000 messages have been posted in all the forums (with almost 15000 in the Rumor Mill alone), and this does not even include the additional 6000+ trading ads posted to the Trading Posts. Thanks to you, Beyond Dominia registered over 2.8 million page views in the past year (the large majority going to the Mills and Trading Posts).   A Little Background Never Hurts... But what is Beyond Dominia, and who are behind it? This question I have been asked many times... the Internet is a forum where size can easily be hidden. And in the case of us, the Internet does hide our real size well; we are not a big company with offices and such. Beyond Dominia was started by three Magic fanatics : Innate Mak (me), Bill Lovelett, and, well, someone who we'll call Mister X. Mister X loves Magic, and loved working on Beyond Dominia, but for some strange reason, he preferred not to have his name publically associated with anything Magic related. When the three of us started Beyond Dominia, we had a simple concept... to create a M:tG e-zine (electronic magazine) that was totally run and written by the Magic players/community. Our sole focus -- and this was unique at the time -- was to be Magic, and no other CCG. Magic was -- and still is -- the biggest and most popular CCG around, and we felt that we can produce the best e-zine if we concentrated on only one CCG -- Magic. Money was never a concern to us, but we did hope to be able to someday pay our contributors. Unfortunately, this is not possible, because of one section of Beyond Dominia... the Mills. The Mills had grown to be so popular, that they were now contributing to three-quarters of Beyond Dominia's huge 300MB+ per day bandwidth usage. Because of the large amount of traffic (and I'm not saying this is bad... I'm actually pleased about how popular Beyond Dominia is becoming), we are forced to use this all to pay for our server, and especially, our bandwidth usage. Thus, for the foreseeable future, or at least until we get hordes of advertisers, everyone at Beyond Dominia, including me, are basically working as volunteers. Well, I guess you can call this a "labor of love" project... This should hopefully answer the bunch of questions I've received about the financial situation of Beyond Dominia.   Recent Events... Back in March of this year, Bill Lovelett quit Magic, and with that, his involvement with Beyond Dominia dropped significantly. The workload for both me and Mister X increased, but we felt that we could handle it. Then, in June, Mister X also quit Magic, mainly because his grades were dropping, his girlfriend and family was upset at him, and he was out of money. His computer, unfortunately, also died, and with that, his involvement with Beyond Dominia had come to a close. Thus, I was forced to run day-to-day operations of Beyond Dominia by myself; thankfully, the editors helped ease the making of the monthly issues... if it weren't for them, i would have probably thrown in the towel a while ago. So what does this bring us now? You probably had noticed a few differences; the Magic Joke Collection, Question of the Month, Polling Booth, Magic Resource Launchpad, and Magic Software Central have all fallen to the wayside, due to my lack of time for managing them all (I still have to work, you know!). Also, my responses to reader e-mails have been hurt, too. I must apologize for all of this, and ask that you bear with me while I figure out how to get everything running smoothly.   The Current Status, and Future, of Beyond Dominia All this internal reorganization calls for changes in Beyond Dominia if we are able to continue running all the pages smoothly. You may have already seen some changes (the take over of the War Mill by Coag and Elrohir); here are the plans for the reorganization of Beyond Dominia. 1) Select pages need a new "Maintainer"; if you'd be interested in doing this, please e-mail me, and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can. Please include a reason why you would like to do this, or why you think you're qualified. I'm looking to maintain a certain quality to these pages, so please, only serious inquiries (and you'll have my eternal gratitude!). Hopefully, you'll have lots of fun!   The following pages that are in need of a new maintainer are (HTML knowledge is a MUST!): The Magic Joke Collection (will be split up to make it easier) The Polling Booth Magic Resource Launchpad   This can also be a good opportunity for you if you always wanted to run a web page; not only do you have free web space, but your page would already have thousand of visitors, many thankful for you bringing a part of Beyond Dominia back to life!   2) The new contributor/contributing system will be changed. If you recently sent in a form to help us out, please hold on... I'm changing this system to make it easier for both you and me. Check out the help wanted page now and then for updates on this situation!   3) The continued growth of Beyond Dominia. As I mentioned above, Beyond Dominia doesn't have oodles of money; in fact, we have enough revenue to support the addition of one, possibly two, more Mills. With that, expect an announcement of the expansion of the Deck Mill in the near future. The Deck Mill will probably sprout out a Type I Deck Mill and a Type II Deck Mill, but the final decision has yet to be made.   Also, there is the possibility that the Trading Post will get another page, specifically for sales/auctions.   The War Mill Planning Board may be converted into a free-for-all board, or perhaps something else... I'm still deciding on that.   4) The Magic Software Central pages are coming along, though very slowly. The first section, Magic deck management tools, is approximately 67% done. I'm not sure when I'll be able to finish the last third... hopefully soon. Well, that's about it. With your help, Beyond Dominia will hopefully be able to last many more years. If you have any comments or suggestions, drop me a note at i***i@o***w.edu. I read every e-mail, though I usually don't have time to respond to all of them. Hope to see you again, next month! Innate Mak Editor-In-Chief/Publisher Beyond Dominia E-Zine [ Back to August 1997 Table of Contents ] [ Back to Beyond Dominia ] Magic: the Gathering is a Registered Trademark of Wizards of the Coast