Posted in: Card Games, Games, Magic: The Gathering, Tabletop, Wizards of the Coast | Tagged: Magic Arena, MTG, MTG Arena, opinion, WotC

Magic: The Gathering: Arena Is Buggy. Don't Punish The Players.

Magic: The Gathering, the world's premier trading card game, is a very delicately-developed game. Wizards of the Coast takes the time to balance each card especially carefully (barring a few notable exceptions, but we digress). The online interface for Magic: The Gathering, known as Magic Arena, throws a wrench into the works here as it adds a layer of development upon an already fragile tightrope of balance. However, if that balance is ever thrown off, such as through a broken card like Oko, Thief of Crowns or Omnath, Locus of Creation, or a more recent example where Arena players could not sideboard while playing a very specific subset of basic land, this makes things rather difficult for the developers of the interface, and, consequently, punishes players who have invested their time and money into the game. Should players be punished for these bugs? Read on, and we will answer that question.

Recently, Twitter users who play on Arena were given this warning, courtesy of Wizards Customer Support (@Wizards_Help):

This is far from the first time this sort of bug has been prevalent in the interface, and likely will not be the last. But this particular issue is one that affects seemingly few people. One can only get that cosmetic on Magic Arena by way of purchasing the cosmetic code alongside a $30 USD set of five basic lands with the same art (now sold out – our sympathies for your FOMO). So, for the price of $30, you get five pretty versions of cards that are otherwise extremely easy to obtain in real life, and a buggy game cosmetic that as a result, you cannot even use? For Shame.

Players are constantly being punished for the errors of Wizards of the Coast, and not even just through game interface development. Whenever a card is deemed ban-worthy, a phenomenon that is growing more and more frequent as well, players gain wildcards on Arena for their pains, of a rarity equivalent of the freshly-banned card in question. However, this says nothing of the concept of building a full deck around that banned card. No, players do not get wildcards for their pains with regards to cards that aren't banned, so while the players may get 1-4 wildcards for their troubles, they certainly don't get more than that per ban.

And before anyone suggests that the Alchemy format is the answer for this, it isn't. The fact of the matter is that players want to play with their cards as printed, with the same interactions they paid wildcards to have. For some, sure, Alchemy is fine. But for a Standard player who wanted to make 4C Landfall with Omnath at the helm, for example, that extra mana might make the difference between busted and a bust. The list goes on, but Alchemy does not fix the issues of the Standard format.

In the end, the Dracula Lands issue is just one indicator that there is a major problem plaguing Magic: The Gathering development for Arena. The same problem is plaguing the fine-tuning of cards that are meant to be used in formats most prevalent on Arena while Commander continues to triumph on paper. We players want to do just that: play. Magic is a game that we love and care about just as much as the company that makes it, and our voices are just as valid as Wizards' designers and developers. At the same time, Wizards of the Coast is the company that needs to fix this, and they should absolutely not continue to punish players for their errors in gameplay or interface development. There is a major problem on Magic Arena; let's just hope that Wizards of the Coast can rectify that base problem at its roots.

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