Last week, WotC made an announcement about MTG entering the Esports market with MTG Arena, highlighting a $10 million prize pool for paper and Arena MTG combined. The content of the announcement on the role of MTGO in this new world order, or rather, the lack thereof, caused an immediate uproar from many in the MTGO community and several big bot chains stopped trade on tix and collections (they have since resumed albeit at a considerably low exchange rate). For a moment (and maybe for others, up to this very moment), the sky truly felt that it was falling. The lack of any mention of how MTGO fits in a world of MTG Arena seemed to mean like WotC was finally going to pull the plug on the online CCG dinosaur that is MODO; sending thousands of loyal patrons’ digital collections to oblivion. Assurances made afterward by WotC through twitter that MTGO remains to be a part of their Esports program did little to quell people’s anxiety.



In this article, I throw my two cents into the matter and hope to convince people in the MTGO community that the sky indeed is not falling, and that ultimately, the success of MTG Arena is something that all of us should be rooting for.

Why wasn’t there any mention of MTGO is the WotC announcement?

I think that among the different questions that were asked after WotC’s announcement, it is this that is the most controversial. The complete lack of mention of MTGO in the announcement is what caused many knee-jerk reactions across the community. However, if you think about it, the answer to this question is not very complicated. Tell me, have you ever tried to explain MTG to the uninitiated? I’ve watched a very good friend of mine try to do this in front of a crowd at a wedding reception in order to explain how we were connected with the groom (he was giving a best man toast). The ending was good fun, but I’m pretty certain that nobody in the crowd understood what MTG was at the end of it (and at least half of them ended up thinking we were part of an amateur magicians’ club).



My point is that WotC needed to communicate its message about entering the Esports market in a way that will clearly connect with its target market, and I think that it does not take much to understand that this target market is NOT the MTGO community. Esports is a billion-dollar industry. Hearthstone alone reportedly has over 100 million players. If you sum up the number of players in each league in MTGO, it would not even pass 20 thousand. The point of Arena is for MTG to compete in that billion-dollar industry, and one of the worst things that WotC could have done in its announcement is to cause any sort of confusion among members of its target market. The message is simple: We have the greatest game in the world and now we are bringing this game into the Esports format with all the trimmings that can be expected of a respectable online CCG. MTGO was intentionally left out of the announcement because having to explain how “Oh yeah, but we also have this other game that is kinda identical to Arena but not blah blah…” would only dilute the message. The goal is to convince people who do not play MTG but play other online CCGs to abandon their current game and jump into MTG Arena, mainly with the value proposition that MTG is simply the better game. These people do not need to know about Arena’s strange older cousin whose been around since before they were born and is filled with sharks who have been playing MTG competitively for about as long a time.

Is the sky falling?

WotC already announced, multiple times, that MTGO is here to stay. Yet with the latest announcement, it seems that most of WotC’s efforts in the standard format will be focused on Arena. This is true. In fact, with the announcement of format championships on MTGO, everyone is better off playing non-standard competitive constructed leagues over the competitive standard league to get the most value. However, this does not mean that standard card prices on MTGO will grossly deteriorate. This is mainly because pound-for-pound, any MTGO player who is good enough to do well in MTGO will come to the conclusion that moving to Arena is a value-negative proposition. These people hardly spend any money on MTGO; many even make money instead. Plus they get to play standard for free using any deck they want and get a shot at high level tournaments every once in a while.



On Arena, these same players would need to cough up dough every season to stay updated with the meta. Competitive Hearthstone players pay about $400 a year so Arena would likely cost about the same. Personally, I installed Arena just last weekend and found grinding through games against the AI (they were AI’s, right?) to accumulate gold just too tedious. In the same time it took to accumulate about half of the gold I need to draft, I could have already gone 4-1 in a friendly league and pocketed enough tix to buy 1600 gems (enough for 2 drafts plus change) in Arena if I wanted to.



Another important aspect of MTGO that will keep the sky from falling is redemption. As long as that is around, there is enough incentive for bot chains to buy cards from the latest sets. Finally, I do not think WotC even wants us to move from MTGO to Arena. For MTG Arena to thrive, WotC needs to make it so that except for a small enough proportion of players, everyone else is on the same starting skill level and can progress together. Every self-respecting gamer loves a challenge, but getting your behind handed to you one match after the next by players who have years of experience with the stack and well, just doing stuff during your turn, can become pretty frustrating pretty fast. I believe creating Arena to have the same rules as existing online CCGs in terms of card accumulation and economy will keep enough MTGO players out of it to make that ideal environment exist (gold is nice and all, but I prefer cash).

Why should we be rooting for Arena?

MTG Arena is likely WotC’s last attempt to make MTG mainstream. MTG is the greatest game in the world but like Chess (which is maybe the 2nd greatest), it has failed to capture the attention of today’s massive gaming audience. MTGO failed in this and will never succeed in it because at the end of the day, you need to be already good at MTG to find MTGO appealing. If WotC succeeds in getting the attention of the Hearthstone market, it is very likely that MTG Arena will overtake the online CCG market leader within a few years. When it does, I believe that one of two things can happen: 1.) Players who “graduate” from Arena will go on to play MTGO, realizing that that strange older cousin is actually much cooler and sophisticated 2.) WotC finally shuts down MTGO, making all formats available in Arena and providing MTGO players with a pleasant way of transitioning into the new world. I think that either of these two things is a win for any MTGO player.