Many of you have asked about the wind down on Friends + Rivals Series 3.  That time is here.  Next Thursday, December 24th, we’ll be awarding Series 3 Spire packs, so you have 1 week to finish those Series 3 National sets.

Also due to a very significant change by Facebook around how items are published on their site, we will not be able to start Series 4 pack awards for publishing items to Facebook or granting Facebook permissions. There is a chance we’ll not be able to do a Series 4, but more details as we have them.

Based on suggestions we’ve gotten from a number of players, we’ve decided to reduce the number of 2008 cases available for purchase by 2,000.  As of this writing, there will still be about 1,500 cases available for purchase. We’ll make that change next Wednesday, 11/25.

And since a number of you have also asked, as of today we only have 3 of the Grand Slam bonus bundles left.

We know many of you have had questions about new sets in Baseball Boss.  I thought my last post would help clarify things, but since we are still getting questions, let me attempt to clarify what’s up.

As we always have, we have a number of new card sets in development for Baseball Boss. Our goal is to round out the eras of baseball that are currently not represented in the game. But, as some of you know from previous conversations, posts, and the like around here, producing new sets is never just as simple as a desire to make the cards.  There are always circumstances around photos, rights, etc. that are outside of our control.

Unfortunately - as much as we’d like to be able to say “here’s what we’ll have and by when” - we can’t. I know that’s not the answer many of you would like to hear.  And it’s not particularly the answer I want to give. What we can promise is to give you specifics and dates as soon as we know them. I want to thank everyone for their patience.

Over the next few months, we’re working on a number of projects to improve the fun factor and simplify the user experience for some of the basic “flows” in Baseball Boss.  Yes that means things will be a little different (and not everyone likes different), but we think it will be better.

With today’s update, you’ll see the first steps in that process. We started with the basic challenge flow view. This new view means a new way to view your challenges & scrimmages be they Exhibition, Class or Leagues. Here’s what we’re trying to achieve:

• You should see less scrolling and a little less clicking to view game results
• We’re using lighter, brighter colors
• The default view is in the “Watch a Game” mode, but if you prefer the “Stats” view of line scores box scores and highlights you can set that as your default view preference - we’re going to be doing some substantial work on the game viewer to give games more of a “broadcast” quality
• We added version 1 of “Player of the Game” on each game results screen - which shows the most outstanding performer from that game
• The summary screen shows the top 4 performers from the series and their stats, which is a simpler way to see which cards had a “great series”
• Challenges are now delivered in a “modal” window - this is designed to help players keep their context in the Ballpark, and make the process of finding/playing games faster

We are still working on the best way to get things like the pre-game player modifiers and your overall Class rating back into this view.  Expect to see this in the coming weeks.  We also believe this new user interface gives us a lot more flexibility to build on…like adding contextual links to restore cards before a challenge, show your progress towards accumulating tickets for packs, more stat view options, etc.

Other projects we have on tap for the coming months:

• A new roster editor designed to make it easier and more fun to put your cards to work.  We plan on “hooking this up” to this new challenge flow so you are only a click away from editing your roster post challenge if you want to
• The aforementioned improvements to the game viewer
•  A new “single player” mode of play
• And of course. we’re always working on new sets…stay tuned