What is MyTwoPecs.com?
The MyTwoPecs public preview has streamlined the process of delivering market rates to subscribers, be they players of Project Entropia, or service providers to the Project Entropia community.  It contains hourly updated XML and RSS feeds, mini market graphs, and twice daily updates of the grand view of the tracked commodities.  Since the inception of MyTwoPecs.com in July 2005, we have been feeding the appetite for a stable and trustworthy platform that players can use to get that 'street-wise' knowledge about the base economy in Project Entropia.

Where does MyTwoPecs.com find its roots?
Originally, MyTwoPecs.com started out as a mini project called 'The CommodityTracker', or as some of the friends of MyTwoPecs called it...  'The MineralBot'.  We felt the need to understand what a 'decent' price is to pay for an item, without having to over- under-pay the supplier.  In time, it quickly became evident that there was as great need to understand what the most recent history of said commodity was.

What is the MyTwoPecs BETA then?
Beta.mytwopecs.com is the testing ground for the new algorithms, ideas and concepts, improvements and corrections needed for the way the various Project Entropia Auction Trackers, track data published from the MMORPG Project Entropia.  It is also the platform where we are busy perfecting the long awaited full version of MyTwoPecs.com.

What is wrong with the current MyTwoPecs.com?
Well, apart from the current MyTwoPecs site only being a 'public preview' of what the Market Watch website could look like, it was never intended to be used as a production website.  However, the hunger and appetite for a good, easy-to-use and stable price index was there, and quickly forced the public preview to reach a standard where any of the common items of Project Entropia could be found, and monitored.

Okay, so what is wrong with Auction Tracking in general?
The problem with auction tracking, has actually been one that we believe starts at the point that someone decides to create an auction tracker.  Tracking the data published by Project Entropia is not supposed to be handled by a website, but by an application.  A server side scripting language, cannot handle the flow processes and decision making of a compiled server application.  The website, should merely be an interface to the collected and aggregated data.

The main concerns are:

• Trackers often lose information which they think are duplicate.  If two items expire in the same expiration list, having the same stack count, the same bid amount, and the same bid count on them, they are still two unique items.  They must not be counted as one.
• Auction trackers often miss events when two items of the same name and quantity, expire within mere minutes of each other.  The trackers pick this up as one item, where the human mind would reason that they're both unique.
• Auction trackers have not diversified their game item concepts to grow with the increasing amount of item types that Project Entropia now features.  Blueprints have never been calculated, the tracked prices of Fruit is ludicrous, and until recently, Skills weren't calculated properly either.
• Abstract concepts are not represented in any of the other auction trackers.
• Auction trackers limit their aggregate calculations to primitive formulae, whereas the real world has very good examples on how markets should be tracked.  Standard Moving Averages are weak, and therefore we have much room for improvement.
• Auction trackers have not successfully handled market manipulation, or at least, have not managed to filter out extreme events in market tracking.  This must be changed, so we can more easily police such events.
• No protective buffers exist to handle downtime on the Auction Tracking, straight through to aggregation.  If the server falls over, precious data from Project Entropia is lost during that downtime.  This must be minimised if not nullified altogether.

So, what has MyTwoPecs.com done about this?
Over the last six months, new flow processes have been mapped out, and mapped out again.  Flaws in thinking have consequently been exposed, and all the processes have been developed from scratch again, and different environments tested for the new production systems.

The server applications are now able to switch between operating systems (from Windows to Linux, or vice versa) at the flick of a switch.  The database model has been developed for MSSQL and for PostgreSQL, to be able to handle the amount of records that an auction tracker will handle in a five year window period.

With regards to uptime, MyTwoPecs has created safety zones that would not "miss" any information being published by Project Entropia, even while we are undergoing routine maintenance, or have some form of severe server breakdown.  The MyTwoPecs BETA can backtrack any period of auction expirations, if it is found necessary to correct a flow problem, or to handle a new game item that might not fit into the previous 'known item' types.

What is the status of the MyTwoPecs BETA?
Currently, MyTwoPecs 2.0 is in it's final phase of testing and code optimisation.  The datamodel has been settled in December, and has been running the course of January.  A code review is being done by developers other than the ones involved with the beta development.  These guys also have good experience in high-end server development.  Because of some real life issues that I've had, the deadline has been steadily creeping forward.  The idea is, after one week of final code build running 100% efficiently, the beta will go public.

How can I trust the data presented by MyTwoPecs.com?
The new flow processes have rectified the problems of accurate tracking, and several different formulae exist that aggregate the data in multiple different trends at once.  The new beta farm can plot the different auction trackers rates on the same graph, which will help in improving all the auction trackers in time.

If all tracking is happening consistently on Auction Tracker A, B and C, then they should mirror the same history listing of auction expirations.  Thereafter, if they are using the same formulae for aggregation, then A, B and C should also match in their published rates.

So, if all three echo each other, and all three are truly independent, then it should be a good safe-guard against one of the three manipulating the displayed price unduly, on an unsuspecting public.

However, as discussed with the community in the middle of 2005, MyTwoPecs will be moderated by reputable members of the community.  For instance, if the automatedmanipulation flags are raised on a commodity, several of the moderators will be able to vote the 'suspect' auction entry in or out of the system.  If an item is 'banished', it will not be removed (merely disabled), and will be able to be resurrected if someone challenges the vote.

This also implies, that for MyTwoPecs to be 100% trusted, every calculation must be transparent.  Every algorithm, open for viewing.  This will help in the community challenging the ideas, and directly having input for improvement of the system.

The new 'version 2.0' MyTwoPecs site, will bring the final installment to the monitoring methods currently possible for this virtual economy.

What are some of the features that we have been waiting for?
Among many other changes, the beta version will:

• Switch between advanced economist view, and standard player view.  This change will toggle detailed data off or on, and replace it with summary information that is more integral to the base player, while not losing the knowledgebase of information that serious miners, traders and crafters need.
• Properly gauge the prices of blueprints, for actual sale history (based on the quality rating of the blueprint at time of sale) or even a suggested retail price for a blueprint based on it's level and it's crafting category.
• Track the proper cost of full suits of armour.
• Track over time graphs and history pages to track the suggested retail prices of Vibrant Sweat, Common Dung and Fruits.
• Able to look at the skills market as a whole, after correctly calculating skills based on what players are willing to pay for it, as well as the costs incurred with the skill transfer (skill decay and device cost).
• Able to hook up alerts to your account, that will notify you when a certain commodity/item reaches a specific market price, by e-mail, RSS, private message or even by SMS.
• Be fully translatable for the different language regions of Project Entropia.  For example, the first translation (after common English) will be in French.  This is a personal pet sub-project of mine.