MTG Arena executive producer Chris Kiritz sat down with MTG Weekly host Blake Rasmussen on Thursday, for a live streamed conversation about the economy of MTG Arena, the popular, free to play, digital version of Magic: The Gathering. Billed as a talk about all things MTG Arena economy – “how it works, the whys behind its design, and goals driving it” – for the most part it was purely discussion, but a couple of changes to MTG Arena were also announced.
The first of these tweaks to the MTG Arena economy is the introduction of a Mythic Booster pack, costing 1,300 Gold (MTG Arena’s standard in-game currency – ). That’s 300 gold more than the price of a regular Booster pack, but these packs will always contain a hard-to-obtain mythic rare card or wildcard. Kiritz said on-stream that there’ll soon be a Mythic Booster for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty and, if popular, they’ll then be available for future sets.
The other main addition to MTG Arena will arrive with the Streets of New Capenna set release, which comes to Arena on April 28. This will be a ‘Wildcard Bundle’ with twelve rare and four mythic rare wildcards, available for those willing to cough up $49.99.
In the MTG Arena Economy article released to accompany the livestream, Wizards of the Coast explained that it expects “players who don’t want to spend money” to be “building and growing specific decks over time” rather than trying to collect entire sets. These changes both seem geared towards completionists who do want a complete card collection on MTG Arena and are prepared to pay for it.
Fans holding out hope for more sweeping or generous changes to the MTG Arena economy were clearly left disappointed by the stream. The reaction on social media appears to have been mainly negative.
Notably, the possibility of a ‘dusting’ system, whereby old, unwanted cards could be broken down and used to create new ones, has been a popular notion among Arena fans for years. This idea was brought up on the livestream, but ultimately entirely dismissed. “MTG Arena is built on the belief that players keep the cards they open and earn,” Wizards’ article explains.
Incoming long thread: The long-promised #MTGArena Economy stream finally happened, and there’s a lot to unpack. Almost all of what was discussed is negative, sadly. As someone who has been extremely supportive of Arena, I feel the need to talk about what just went down. 🧵
— Jose Lopez (@Metallix87) March 17, 2022
It’s unclear if there’ll be more livestream discussions on the MTG Arena economy in the future. However, Rasmussen was clear from the word go that “we consider this the start of a conversation. This isn’t an end-point”.
Rasmussen and Kiritz also shared some less controversial changes to MTG Arena in Thursday’s livestream. For starters, you’ll finally be able to select your favourite Land art when building decks, instead of the deck-builder automatically picking Lands from the newest set. The stream also affirmed that a new non-rotating format to replace Historic would be coming to Arena shortly.
MTG Arena Secret Lair Street Fighter Sleeves Bundle Code MTG Arena Secret Lair Street Fighter Sleeves Bundle Code $12.95 Buy Now Network N earns affiliate commission from qualifying sales.
If, after all that economy talk, you’re in the mood for some Magic freebies, you should swing by our list of all the MTG Arena codes currently available. And if you’re climbing the ladder in Constructed games, you’ll need to know the best MTG Arena decks in Standard.
Source: Wargamer
