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Personally, I have much to thank Yaro for. If it wasn't for his efforts, I would undoubtedly still be playing Magic on a slightly-more-than-casual basis, as I used to before becoming more involved with the site and the forums. Depending on who you ask, this may or may not be a good thing, but I'm surely the happier for it. It strikes me that a lot of the Paradise regulars are people are in a similar situation. Perhaps their local Magic community is a weekly or even monthly arrangement. Maybe they even live in an area where there is no Magic community at all. MTGParadise has allowed all of us to get together on a daily basis to chat, discuss, buy, sell, and trade this game that we devote so much of our time to. I believe that if MTGParadise did not exist, or had not grown to be what it is today, Australian Magic would be much worse off for it.

So, when Yaro approached me a month or so ago about purchasing the site, I immediately knew it was something I wanted to be involved in. I discussed it with Paul and there was really never any hesitation. We want Magic to grow in Australia, and we are totally chuffed to be able to be a part of it, and to help it on it's way.

Who comes to Paradise anyway? More people than you think! Statistically speaking, some bits about the site:

- There are about 3-4,000,000 hits per month
- Each day 1,300 unique individuals visit the site
- The forums boast nearly 1,500 registered members - with approx. 30-40 new ones signing up each week - more than all but 4 or 5 of the biggest magic sites in the world
- Nearly half of the visitors here are not from Australia
- We. Are. Growing.

MTGParadise has been driven largely up until now by the forums and the strong community that has been built up there. I, for one, am excited to go to Nationals to finally meet some of the people I have been chatting to, more or less daily, for the past year. I'm always surprised when I sit down to play someone "new" at a tournament somewhere and they go - "You're Scott right? Ssteven? I'm XXX". That's fantastic.

You see, I was proud of MTGParadise, even before I co-owned it. I WANT to help out people in the forums with questions on trades and cards and what MBRO's name means. I hope that someone who's an MTGParadise forum user does win Nationals. "Hearken!" Well maybe not. Don't you just love obscure references? Anyway.

So what does the future hold? Well we want to make MTGParadise bigger and better, but that seems like something that anyone having recently bought it would say. We want more content. More articles and stories and reports. More interactive experiences. We like Marvel and that will show. We want pictures and videos. We want competitions and prizes. We want Australians to come here and be proud of having such a great Magic site; and if they must, the Kiwis can be proud too. We want to cater to people that want to know the details of the 16 different Tooth and Nail builds and to the people that couldn't give a stuff about it because they'd rather play with Crystal Golems or Shahrazad. We want to be the name that sticks in every Australian magic players mind when they think of online Magic. We want to be your homepage. We want to help your local shop, because they are the ones that make Magic grow. We want to have more people turn up to Pre-Releases and Regionals and tournaments in general - and we think we can help make that happen.

That's the general gist of it. Specifically - we've been contacting more Magic players that we reckon would be good writers, because the fact of the matter is that Magic players like to read Magic articles, even if that article is a 6-man tournament report from somewhere no-one has ever heard of. We want to be more involved in the forums and on the front page to deliver more content - Australian and otherwise - to those who are interested in it.

We like competitons. We're running one now. Check out the Australian Nationals forum for details, but the gist of it is that we're giving away a box to the highest placing forum member at this year's Nationals. Given that I will win Nationals myself, I have elected to not enter our own competition. That would just be rude.

We like input. Let us know what you think. Let us know if you have any ideas which you think would be good for the site or that you would appreciate seeing or having access to.

We like writers. You don't have to be a professional Magic player - you don't even have to be good at the game. You do probably have to speak English and be able to form sentences. Hopefully this doesn't rule you out. We are going to be starting up a "Casual Corner" as well, for articles that aren't specifically about tournament-level magic. So if you have a great multiplayer deck and want to let everyone know - that's the place to do it. If you are interested in writing for MTGParadise, click on the "Email the Author" link below and we can chat about it.

And there you have it - I'd like to thanks a couple of people at the moment for their continuing effort on keeping this site running -

Moderators

- Nathan White - a.k.a. TheCrimsonScribe - possibly the only person on the forums more than me, been keeping the peace for ages with a vigilant yet discerning hand
- Joe Tobin - a.k.a. aytakk2 - our newest staff member yet long time forum member (and writer of articles. We like writers.)
- Rebecca Mitchell - a.k.a. ChaosLord - while she has given up her Moderator role in light of more interesting life events (congrats again!), she has been instrumental in keeping this place going from a moderator and editor perspective. And she may have her editing services called on again sooner than she thinks [Ed: surprise surprise ^_^]

Editors
- Michael Mason - a.k.a. mmason - ok so we can't ALL have original nicks. The picture of efficiency and brilliant rules knowledge/contribution to boot! I don't know Michael that well yet but that will undoubtedly change soon
- Audrey Chin Quan - a.k.a audiebear - definitely the nicest and friendliest Magic player I know. I fear the day when her son beats me in Magic - probably not too far off as he seems to grow about 10CM each time I see him.

Writers
- Samantha Hepworth - a.k.a Sage - now a Sydneysider, much to our approval, I've always had much respect for Sam's witty writing, and am only rarely daunted by the length of her articles.
- Kahana Chin - a.k.a Kahana-Chin - Kahana makes up our non-Australian contingent and has really grown into the writing role over the past few years - I look forward to hearing more.
- Craig Hong - a.k.a securitron_ch - One of the Paradise Post authors and all around great guy - one of the first Brisbanites I met while playing Magic and his good nature is always appealing
- The scores of occassional writers - you guys are cool too.

The all-rounder
- Dan Turner - a.k.a DapperDan - Dan does a bit of everything on this site - a semi-regular column, an editing role, the other Paradise Post author. I met Dan about seven years ago when I first came to Australia. I was fairly oblivious at the time and didn't pick up on the English accent. I thought to myself when I met him that Australians sure were strange. I was pretty much right but that's cool too.

Thanks to everyone and to everyone who comes around to visit our site here.

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