One of the first hints that something was going to change could be found in the blog of our then newly hired Coach Mac.
This was his post.
So, from Febraury to July, we posted regular updates in our first series of the Developer Diary, parts 1 to 10. From part I, I have selected the following quote:
"- It is very important to us to give ManagerLeague a proper facelift, and try to make it look like something DESIGNED, not jotted down by a coder (which it actually was!).
The main reason here is to help us attract players who prefer to look at something that is not only functional, but also ESTETHICALLY (buzzword!) pleasing (read: "darned pretty!").
We also wanted to take away the feeling of a "webpage" and move more towards "a game", which means a lot more AJAX (buzzword!) functionality, a more responsive GUI (buzzword!), and an alltogether better experience.
- We also wish to make ManagerLeague "less painfull" to play. Not "easier" as such, but we wish to implement some features that can help avoid some very repetitive tasks in the game. I actually planned to tell you a bit more on this point now, but due to certain problems we have had with the development in this case, I had better not, yet.
- We also wanted to make information more available, and more naturally tied into the game. Some of the more experience players here would not belive the amount of relatively simple questions admins deals with every day. And I still have not had a single Sunday without the classic "Hi admin! Something is wrong with the game! My stadium upgrade has not moved at all today, and my team isn't playing any matches. Please fix this as soon as possible!" waiting for me in my inbox...And not just one...Bottom line is, we need more information, better information, placed in better locations. "
And so, we saw the introduction of Auto-Accept, Dynamic updates on a number of pages, Drag'n drop interfaces, a much easier-to-use individual training, many more stadium-upgrades, Team-stat penalty for buying too many players in one season, Help-text and tip-text on each page, a completely new design, Friends were implemented as a new and better way to keep track of your friends in the game, The Medical Center and Lawyer entered the game, much more team-history was made available, the ingame inflation was nearly removed by the introduction of a higher Agent-fee and fortune-tax, Open Challenges were introduced and improved, the number of friendlies you can play per season was reduced from 250 to 200, the BBQ-effect was completely rewritten to be a bit kinder, player-cups could be created for specific Q-levels and and and....Well, it's safe to say that the game changed a lot in many different ways.
Finally, on August 8th, 2009, we launched the major upgrade that was to be given the name "ML 2.0".
Loud applause, loud complaints, business as usual (-:
We were proud to have taken the game from
to
We finally found our visual identity!
