Server Downtime

Starting at 8 AM PT (3 PM UTC) on April 26, the MTG Arena services will be taken down to prepare for the Dominaria update. Service downtime is expected to last from 4 to 8 hours. However, this is a large update, and unexpected things can always happen. Follow the server status here during downtime.
Dominaria Content

We're releasing the entirety of Dominaria to MTG Arena, bringing a host of new cards and card mechanics and celebrating both the old and the new from Magic's original plane. This set is us coming home to where it all began. The art and style of Dominaria has also spilled outside the cards into MTG Arena with:

New Dominaria battlefield
New music
New visuals throughout the game

The Beginning of Events

Events will be a major way to enjoy Magic in MTG Arena. We want it to feel like there's always something new to check out every day. This update is our first step towards that goal with the first two events:

Quick Constructed
Quick Draft

We will have a schedule events through to June available to view (I'll update this with a link as soon as it goes live). Additionally, a few surprise events will pop up throughout the month.

Events also come with their own form of matchmaking. When you enter an event, you are primarily matched with other players with a similar net win/loss record. MMR plays a lesser role in matching you with players within your win/loss record. To keep match times reasonable, you can be matched with players outside your win/loss record if you or someone outside your win/loss bucket has been waiting a long time.

EVENT CALENDAR

With all of that information in the public, I can share with you our current schedule for upcoming events:

Name


Format


Start Date (3 PM UTC)


End Date (5 PM UTC)

Quick Constructed


MTG Arena Constructed


April 26, 2018


June 7, 2018

Hour of Devastation Quick Draft


Draft HOU-HOU-AKH


May 4, 2018


May 7, 2018

Dominaria Quick Draft


Draft DOM-DOM-DOM


May 11, 2018


May 14, 2018

Rivals of Ixalan Quick Draft


Draft RIX-RIX-XLN


May 18, 2018


May 21, 2018

Hour of Devastation Quick Draft


Draft HOU-HOU-AKH


May 25, 2018


May 28, 2018

Dominaria Quick Draft


Draft DOM-DOM-DOM


June 1, 2018


June 4, 2018


Quick Constructed

This best-of-one Constructed event will be offered at all times in MTG Arena. This is the place where players who have finished their daily quests can continue to compete for a chance at even more rewards. There is no limit to how many times you can enter a Quick Constructed event, and you will use decks you already have built to compete. Let's give a quick rundown on entry and prizes.

Entry Fee: 500 Gold or 95 Gems

Match Structure: Single Matches

Ends After: 7 Wins or 3 Losses (whichever comes first)

Event Prizes:

0 Wins: 100 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
1 Win: 200 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
2 Wins: 300 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
3 Wins: 400 gold and 3 individual Uncommon cards
4 Wins: 500 gold, 2 individual Uncommon cards, and 1 individual Rare card
5 Wins: 600 gold, 2 individual Uncommon cards, and 1 individual Rare card
6 Wins: 800 gold, 1 individual Uncommon card, and 2 individual Rare cards
7 Wins: 1,000 gold, 1 individual Uncommon card, and 2 individual Rare cards

All individual card rewards have a chance to upgrade to a higher rarity. And whether you end the event at 7-2 or 7-0, you still win the top prize. As long as you don't get loss number three, your loss record doesn't affect your rewards.
Quick Draft

This best-of-one Draft mode will have different events each weekend starting May 4. And yes, we are looking at offering Draft events every day in a future update. When a Quick Draft event is running, there is no limit to how many times you can enter, and you get to keep all the cards you draft and play with during that event. Unlike other MTG Arena boosters, Draft boosters will contain 14 cards in the same rarity distribution as tabletop (10 commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare or mythic). Additionally, Quick Draft will give out gems as prizes, giving players a way to earn into premium currency.

The drafting portion of Quick Draft will happen against seven AI drafters. Drafting against other players is not something we offer now, but we plan to in the future. One benefit of AI drafting is if you need to leave halfway through a draft, you can pick up exactly where you left off the next time you log in.

After drafting all your cards and constructing your 40-card Draft deck, you battle against other players who drafted within the same format. Let's give a quick rundown on entry and prizes.

Entry Fee: 5,000 Gold or 750 Gems

Match Structure: Single Matches

Ends After: 7 Wins or 3 Losses (whichever comes first)

Event Prizes:

0 Wins: 50 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card Dominaria boosters, and all the cards you drafted
1 Win: 100 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card Dominaria boosters, and all the cards you drafted
2 Wins: 200 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card Dominaria boosters, and all the cards you drafted
3 Wins: 300 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card Dominaria boosters, and all the cards you drafted
4 Wins: 450 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card Dominaria boosters, and all the cards you drafted
5 Wins: 650 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card Dominaria boosters, and all the cards you drafted
6 Wins: 850 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card Dominaria boosters, and all the cards you drafted
7 Wins: 950 gems, 1 to 3 eight-card Dominaria boosters, and all the cards you drafted

Just like with Quick Constructed, whether you end the event at 7-2 or 7-0, you still win the top prize. Your loss record doesn't affect your rewards until you get to loss three.
Economy Updates

We have been listening to a lot of player feedback on the economy, and we've made updates across most rewards. Let's talk about what we've changed.

Three Dominaria Boosters. Every current player will be granted three Dominaria boosters upon their first login. This is a one-time reward. New players will be awarded three boosters of each set available in MTG Arena, now including Dominaria.

One Additional Mythic Wildcard. Like the three Dominaria boosters, this is a one-time reward. Many players were upset over the removal of a Mythic Wildcard from the Vault, and we listened. So to everyone who opened their Vault since the wipe last month: this is for you. For everyone else: make sure you thank them because you're getting this anyway!

Daily Wins. The first win of the day will now award players 250 gold. Wins two through four will now award 100 gold. That should give players 550 gold in their first four daily wins.

Quests. Quest rewards will now be set at 500 and 750 Gold. We have also removed the quest type that requires players to win with a two-color deck, and we've adjusted some of the values to complete of the other quests. Together between daily wins and quests, players should be able to earn at least one booster per day with about 60 to 90 minutes of play.

Weekly Wins. Players will still receive a pack at five, ten, and fifteen wins for the week. These weekly wins will now reward Dominaria packs. Between daily wins, weekly wins, and quests, you have an opportunity to earn at least ten packs per week.

Individual Card Rewards. These are gone from daily wins and the Vault. We're happy we tried the experiment, and we certainly learned a lot. But the variance was too high here, and the player feedback pointed us more towards Gold rewards than Individual Card Rewards. We are still planning to use the system in event rewards, but at uncommon rarity and above and in greater quantities.

The Vault. The Vault will now reward one Mythic Rare Wildcard, two Rare Wildcards, and three Uncommon Wildcards. Vault Progress has been rebalanced a bit, but if you play daily, you should unlock the Vault at least every three weeks with consistent play of roughly 60 to 90 minutes a day. For the average player, this should happen once per month

For those interested in exact numbers, here is how the Vault progresses as of tomorrow's update. Vault progress comes from opening 8-card boosters or from adding a card to your collection after you already have a full playset:

Opening an 8-card booster: 3.33333333...%
Fifth (or more) copy of a mythic rare added to collection: 1.11111...%
Fifth (or more) copy of a rare added to collection: 0.5555555555.....%
Fifth (or more) copy of an uncommon added to collection: 0.3333333.....%
Fifth (or more) copy of a common added to collection: 0.11111111....%

End of Weekly Rewards. The Friday rewards of three boosters will end with this update. Now that the economy is more formed, we think it's time to test it without these gifts.
Gems Economy

With this update, players will now be able to purchase gems using real-world money. Any gems purchased with real money during the Closed Beta will be given back to your account after a final wipe at the end of the Closed Beta. Why? Because we're going to test the paid economy during the Closed Beta as well. Also, to purchase gems, you will be redirected to an external website to enter your payment information. We're working on integrating this process fully into the game for the future. Gems can be purchased at the following amounts, all of which are in USD.

750 Gems: $4.99
1,600 Gems: $9.99
3,400 Gems: $19.99
9,200 Gems: $49.99
20,000 Gems: $99.99

Pack Purchasing

Players will still be able to unlock packs for 1,000 gold. Starting with the Dominaria update, packs can be purchase at around $1 each (depending on the amount of gems and packs you purchase). We will be testing gem pricing on eight-card packs as follows.

600 Gems: 3 Packs
1,200 Gems: 6 Packs, which includes at least 1 Uncommon and 1 Common Wildcard
3,000 Gems: 15 Packs, which includes at least 1 Rare, 3 Uncommon, and 3 Common Wildcards
9,000 Gems: 45 Packs, which includes at least 1 Mythic, 3 Rare, 9 Uncommon, and 9 Common Wildcards. (The Dominaria 45-pack bundle will also include 1 copy of Firesong and Sunspear)
18,000 Gems: 90 Packs, which includes 2 copies of Firesong and Sunspear, at least 3 Mythic, 6 Rare, 18 Uncommon, and 18 Common Wildcards. (The Dominaria 90-pack bundle will also include 2 copies of Firesong and Sunspear.)

And since we brought up Firesong and Sunspear, I'd just like to mention that the card will be available through crafting with a Rare Wildcard and will not be appearing in packs of any type.
Putting the Pieces of the Economy Together

The in-game economy is still not in its final state with this update. We are working on adding more events and formats to the mix. There will be more in the store to choose from eventually, like cosmetic items, bundles, and potentially decks. But the foundations are in place now. Let me summarize the three pillars again:

Base Economy. Gives you a rewarding experience in your first 60 to 90 minutes of play. Or if you don't play daily, you can have longer play sessions a few days per week with larger rewards. You should also see a pathway to getting the cards you want weekly and monthly.
Events. These are designed to be the next step beyond your daily and weekly rewards. If you do well, you get out more than you put in and can keep playing. If you don't want to earn your way into an event or hit a rough patch, you can enter with gems. This is where we expect those who are playing many hours a day to play.
Paid Economy. Now that you have a way to earn gems, there is no paid-only mode. Purchasing gems is there to speed up your rewards. The paid economy works best in conjunction with both the base economy and events.

Polishing Continues

There is plenty we'll continue to work on to polish your gameplay experience. A few areas we've added some additional polish to with this update are:

We've added animated deck boxes for all your decks in the deck manger.
We've update deck selection so you can select your deck without a scene transition from the home page.
We've updated the look of the decklist in deckbuilder to allow for easier parsing of deck contents.
And more in the patch notes . . .

Play and Give Us Feedback

Jump in, play the new update, and give us your feedback. There are a lot of new elements we're testing in this Closed Beta update, and we greatly appreciate your help in improving them.

Short Version

1: The Free-To-Play experience is still more than twice as bad as Hearthstone without having to do any math. It might not be more than three times as bad now.

2:

$4.99 = 3 packs and 150 Gems you can't spend.
$4.99 = 1 Draft
$9.99 = 6 packs and 400 Gems you can't spend.
$19.99 = 15 packs and 400 Gems you can't spend.
$49.99 = 45 packs and 200 Gems you can't spend
$99.99 = 99 packs and 200 Gems you can't spend

I'm making the assumption that spending gems on Quick Constructed is something you don't want to do. It costs 95 gems (so you would have to spend 95 gems on it 20 times to not have un-spendable gems) for a chance to get slightly better than one pack. The odds are very poor and you'd be better off grinding Drafts.

3: The pity timer probably gives you at least 3 Mythic, 6 Rare, 18 Uncommon, and 18 Common Wildcards in 90 packs. The "guaranteed" wild-cards in these bundles are going to come from the packs you open, instead of being separate wild-cards on top of the packs.

4: Spending $100 on the game gives you more stuff than the average F2P player is going to get in ~2.5 months of doing their daily quest and daily 4 wins.

The Really Short Version: The game is Pay To Win and won't have a Free to Play audience outside of some MTG addicts. But now it's a cheap-ish way to Draft at pre-specified dates and times?

99 Packs for $100 is 99 Rares/Mythics, 495 Commons/Uncommons, and opening the vault 3 times. This is a "guaranteed" 6 Mythic Rare Wild cards for $100, and the rest is up to RNG.

Note: A full playset of Rares/Mythics is over 200 cards for just one set. So it's completely reasonable for you to get nothing you want out of a $100 bundle and for you to have to craft everything.

With 5 sets in the game, I don't understand how they can think this is okay.

For me this game will end up being a draft now and again and maybe sealed when they implement it other than that I think I'm out. I believe it was confirmed that ffa and 2hg and other formats aren't even being considered now.
Wizards confirmed eventually draft will be available whenever you want it and not just on weekends.
With the pricing like it is, nothing but bo1 standard, no hopes for console in the near future.
I will not be a part of this for much longer unfortunately.

I was sure hoping on this game and now I see the halcyon DOTP days are long gone to never come back. So much for sitting around, chatting with friends and getting some good games in. Duels was one of the reasons I got a PS4 to begin with and of course we all know it never came to that.
From the hardheadedness I'm seeing from wotc, I'm now doubting Arena will come to console either no matter what they advertised at the beginning.

I think they are dumb but at the end of the day I don't think they are so dumb as to abandon a SECOND game like this.

The prices are going to go down and/or the F2P economy will get better. It's just a matter of how soon and how painful the whole process will be.

At some point the XBONE 2 and the PS5 are going to come out. And then later on the XBONE 3 and the PS6. I don't understand how they could even bring something like this to console because consoles have a shelf life. I honestly think it was a mistake for Gwent to do so.

DOTP was different b/c it had yearly releases.

I don't think its as bad as you are saying, though obviously paying people have an advantage.
Those guys we liked before done the new calculations and reckon there will be about a 25% boost in F2P economy and that it can take 1.5 to 2 months to grind with 20% boost in wanted rares and 10% boost in wanted mythics, which is also with a less forgiving assumption compared to last time which had been very forgiving to even reach close to Hearthstone.

They reckon it will be ahead of Hearthstone in F2P friendliness but obviously behind Eternal, though if you are brutally unlucky it drops down to being barely ahead if not equal to Hearthstone according to what they reckon.

The events seem dodgy and hard to evaluate but they reckon if you're good then the constructed events could really boost your grind but you need to win most of your games to not lose gold.

Where Arena falls flat is the starting card pool still obviously which doesn't give you a big boost to start off.

Link again: https://artifact-academy.com/mtga-update/

Obviously its just pre-gaming calculations and I don't understand the 1.5x calculation thing, though there's more numbers to go on and seems to prop it up much less like they said but still calculating a boost.

That all being said the ICRs did give a neat bit of extra and don't get compensated for in this update and I wouldn't have some of my decks without them and nothing else just pulls randomly from anywhere which will make that variance a bit more difficult in my mind.
Plus that article is very focused on grinding a perfect top tier deck and as such kind of ignores wanting that variance in decks.
Then again I barely went over the 4 wins myself anyway lately so most of m variance and such came from the first 4 ICRs, in particular the guaranteed Rare which the idea of further grinding rewards wouldn't cover anyway.

Oh cool I guess I might actually play tonight then. Haven't touched it in a few days (the inevitable card wipe bums me out, the client itself is "playable", more so than I thought it would be.

Then they are completely wrong lol. This game is more than twice as bad as HS right now.

This change was ridiculous for free to play... I played for less than an hour, got 5 wins and cannot win any more gold after that. I believe it was at least 50 gold or a random card for every win... I know 50 gold is 1/20 of a pack but it's still something. Now after 5 games I have no incentive to play any more.

On the flip side I dropped some money on the game and played it for 9 hours straight. Actually being able to play a competent deck against other people because I'm no longer 2 months behind everyone is a great breath of fresh air.

Is good and bad here.

iirc, you had a limit of four daily wins for the gold last version. All your wins after the fourth awarded cards only, up to 30. You are supposed to play your games after those in draft or quick constructed events. The pack for each 5 wins apparently still remains.

I wish they had kept the individual card rewards; it was just a nice thing to see even if most of the time it was common chaff.

Anyway, been into the beta for only two weeks, didn't even play really much or optimize my quests and haven't spent a cent and have basically a tuned UB Control deck, sans duals. Guess I might keep playing this after all to grind the lands.

Also, these packs are super expensive. I guess you can expect the 90-pack bundle to give you a full deck out of wildcards and vault openings by themselves, from what I've seen of people who bought it, but I can often assemble at least two moderately playable decks out of a single Hearthstone preorder which I can eventually repurpose into another deck later on, whereas wildcards spent are value I can't ever retrieve. Going to see if I can FTP this out.

Yeah it has always been just those first few games that paid out and it was only 50g after the first which has been increased and is great as far as I am concerned.
We can act like the economy is in utter shambles all we want but really its not that bad, its just that it cuts off after game 4 which obviously prevents further grinding and incentive.

Obviously I dunno how truly good or bad it is but mjack and others are totally dramatic about it, after all it has bumped up to at least a pack a day all based on gold like it should've been which is at least a good base.

Now I was often lazy and only doing 4 wins and quests for past few weeks anyway and was getting along quite fine, though obviously I never found myself completing say RDW but that's only really because I felt like it got in a good enough spot I can ignore some certain cards of which one would be banned when standard is completed anyway.
With the improvements it is already looking quite a bit easier to grind out, easily equal a 25% boost like that article said which seems pretty good to me.

That being said I can't pretend like the ICRs sometimes did get me what I wanted like a 3rd Hazoret or just other randoms that opened up some decks such as Nicol Bolas or Locust God, which wouldn't have likely to have been gotten otherwise because I wouldn't be focused on their packs or aiming to make them with Wildcards for it was the totally randomness of the ICRs pulling from anywhere that I could dive into a few decks here and there.
Removing the ICRs certainly feels like the same weird excuse they had for removing the Mythic Wildcards from the vault in that people thought they where a bit much or just sometimes too random and not worth it and as such Wizards decided to remove them instead of fix it.

Also the ICRs clearly do not factor into the improvements and gold increases since a lot of that seems to be the Friday packs we used to get and annoyingly changing vault percentages.
I personally see no reason why some kind of ICR prizes couldn't stay like it used to with all these economy changes.

All they did is remove the 3 free packs and move it into gold. As they said they were going to do all along. This is not new. This is not a surprise. This is in no way something they should be congratulated for. All they did is do something they said they were going to do months ago. They took the 3 free packs per week, which they have always claimed would be later replaced by more rewards you would have to earn, and moved them into the rewards structure. That is it. The F2P system has not gotten any more gold or any more packs out of this. Because all they did is make you earn a reward they have been saying all along they would eventually make you earn.

The sum total of the economy update is that:

- The 3 Free Packs got moved into the 4 wins.

- ICR's got removed.

- The Vault is now slightly better than the system everyone complained about extensively throughout the entire NDA period. There is still no way, shape, or form in which the Vault even begins to start to make up for the complete and utter lack of a dusting system or any other decent form of consumer agency and/or substitute for a secondary market. Which this game seriously lacks and seriously need. This is all compounded by the fact that most product is pack filler no one wants meant only to support a draft format that has nothing to do with constructed Bo1 or Bo3.

- You can now spend money on the game. In an extremely slime-ball-esque manner that brings to mind the worst parts of freemium mobile gaming. Just the fact that something costs 95 gems should completely out-rage you. The new gem system is the worst kind of exploitative.

- They implemented Drafting. Only on the weekends due to player population, but they still implemented it. <- This is the one good thing about the update that shouldn't be heavily criticized.

It is really more disturbing the amount of whining than the actual economy

More enjoyable tho

It's the internet lol. If you find the amount of whining (but apparently not all the white-knighting) about the bad economy disturbing than you haven't been paying enough attention to the internet as an entity. Or F2P digital card games either.

WOTC is trying to release a game in an industry where people are used to every other game but Hearthstone being a cheaper alternative. This game is twice as bad as Hearthstone and basically doesn't let you F2P. The "whining" as you so put it is to be expected. It's like they released a Korean MMO (not quite that bad but it really is twice as bad as HS) to try and steal players from Hearthstone or something. And the Hearthstone players apparently don't like the game. While people used to over-paying for MTG don't care.