As stated before, the core issue with PR answers is that they'll feed you what you want to know when it comes down to personal investment and hype onto the game.

You may put your money onto Arena if they give satisying answers, but their answers for long term involvement will forcefully be based around the same paying customers adoption rate.
Basically is a dog chasing its tail.

U)"I'll give you money if you can guarantee long-term planning on the project"
D)"We can guarantee long-term planning on the project if enough people give us money * "
*add hyped statements on their developing job and community feedback on top.

Personally, I believe that the only adequate way to evaluate this project, considering all the stuff we've seen during the years (Sean leaving the forsaken motherboard, DotP, Duels, other competitors' betas etc.), is to try it out.
Crack some numbers on effective costs, get a feel on actual polish, development quality and required timeframe to address bugs, and finally evaluate if the cost/fun ratio is comfortable for you.

They can say whatever they want, but if bugs and glitches will linger around unanswered for too much time, that's the day you draw the line.

On a side note, at this point MtGO can esaily be discontinued the same way as Duels did.
Just let them reach a point with newly released sets, and they'll give MtGO players the same announcement "No more new content for MtGO starting with this set; from now on MtGO is a Vintage Machine. Don't worry tho, we'll support block-specific tournaments".*
*If Arena attracts enough money

See? WotC is still playing the safe game.
Keeping one feet onto the solid enough, although surpassed MtGO, while testing the waters in front of them.
If Arena succeed, MtGO might stop getting new releases. Won't disappear, as we've seen how they handled DotP and Duels.
If Arena doesn't, nothing major changes in ol' WotC.

Meh, no thanks on the battered wife syndrome, I definitely do not have to try it. You guys have fun, but I'll wait until I really know they've changed.

That might be never, btw.

Listen to this podcast featuring Ryan Spain talking a lot of the things that has been discussed over here:
Arena block starts on min 38

Summary

* Arena's been in development for at least 2 years.
* It still has a long way to go, what's been shown is a vertical slice.
* One of their core goals is to make sure beginners can play beginners, pros against pros.
* Pretty much confirms there will be a new Modern-esque format for sets in Arena that rotate out of standard.
* Says Arena won't rival MTGO "from a short term and close to launch perspective". Definitely sounds like if Arena is successful, it may eclipse MTGO eventually.
* Game sounds exactly like Hearthstone.
* In-game currency confirmed, used for draft formats and buying packs.
* Ranked matchmaking ladder with one-off games.
* Will have ranked seasons.
* Daily quests, can have up to three.
* No plans for multiplayer right now.
* Ranking will determine your draft options. There is one draft button but if you're a higher rank, you'll have options to draft more complex formats or older formats. Beginners will just be able to draft the latest format, they don't want to overwhelm new players.
* You draft with other players, there are draft queues.
* Plenty of vanity items, tied to ranks and season progression and such.
* No plans for legacy formats right now, but they're open to it if the fans want it. I take this to mean if Arena is a huge hit, they'll start working on it.
* When you drag a spell to cast it, it highlights the lands it will autotap and you can change which lands you want tapped if it's not to your liking.
* They may change mulligan rules for single matches.
* Streaming and esports is a high priority, to the surprise of no one.
* No Twitch integration on day one.
* No single player campaign right now.
* Still exploring being able to set up custom priority stops and other control options.
* You can 1v1 friends.
* The chess clock aspect of the game is still being adjusted and tweaked.
* Stresses the need for player feedback 800 times.

Reddit original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/com ... a/dmw8dop/

If WoTC lost their lawsuit against Hex, Blizzard isn't going to win anything based on animations. The gameplay is totally different. Magic came first. Blizzard didn't trademark the animations

Hmm, I just learned now that Arena isn't going to be available on iOS. At least, the website only indicates Windows7+, and some system specs as requirements to play. Is there not going to be a new iOS Magic game?

If they're skipping iOS and Android they're making a serious mistake.

Jumping over some facts there. The beta will be PC only and it will expand to others later on with no indication in which way other than suggesting they will do what the fans want (last I heard).

Like Duels expanded to PS4... Lol.
But, I think this time they're taking the digital Market Seriously, so Mobile and cross-platform support are very likely. Not so sure about consoles.
I bet the WotC head-honchos kept looking at digital Market pie-charts and itched all over when they looked at those hearthstone results.

Never underestimate the power of corporate greed, it may just be powerful enough to actually make Arena good.

Nothing is clear at this point, only that the game is designed on Unity so apparently is really easy to launch it on iOs, XBox and steam once their are ready to go. From what I can tell from the discussion on discord, the devs just wanna nail the beta and then I guess the marketing team can mess things up. D:

If the Devs make a good game, it will be well received. Also, that podcast answered a ton of the questions I've been asking. I guess they weren't that unfair. (thanks for sharing btw )

But seriously though, if the game is good, it will do well. If it's Duels 1.25, it will fail. I'm glad they are making 'real' mtg finally.

Oh yeah I like the idea of rank having a better meaning and hopefully being more than just 40 and its an interesting way to deal with drafting and overwhelming new players.

DJ better still make my decks, that's all I'm saying

If this game is REALLY standard, which is one thing I 100% believe, we'll need two sets of deck lists: 1) for casual 1 game encounters, and 2) for best of 3's (or more). That second set is going to be heavily influenced by pro play, IMO.

Or put another way, BB, I ya, but I'm not going to be a good enough builder for a spike like you when Arena drops. Or if I actually am, then I'll need to develop a serious ego about my building skills, lol.

Anything even remotely Jank is going to get eaten alive at high rank play.

Yeah, if Arena is 100% Standard, you can just look at ChannelFireball or StarCityGames for decks.

But I'm never going to have all those cards, it'll be an insane grind. So I think the fun part for talented builders like DJ would be to build decks with a reasonable card base of what starting players can expect to have? I hope that makes sense

Heck, I'm sure I'll be mostly drafting if it's anything like Hearthstone

It's hard to say anything on that matter because we don't know how we'll get cards in this game, and how hard/easy will it be. Remember, there are a lot of cards in any given Standard format, but most of them are trash. You don't need to grind every single card to have a chance.

I can imagine that grinding out 4 copies of any of the top mythics, without dishing out loads of cash (to buy singles/ crafting currencies/materials), just out of grinding and openning boosters is going to take forever.
Duels was very kind to us is this sense, since we knew that if you openned a fixed number of boosters, you had a complete set guaranteed.
If Arena simulates paper Magic, where you can get repeated cards (that you may or may not sell/turn into crafting materials) the chances of actually getting complete sets (4-of every card) is rather small. So either your very lucky, or your probably going to have to improvise with some stand-in cards most of the time.

One thing I'd really like that just occurred to me:
I like the Duels rarity restrictions, because it makes it, its own format. I would really like it if Arena had a duelsesque rarity restricted format for some tournaments or casual play, even if it was just to feed my duels-nostalgia...

Fact is, without trading, not adding a way to obtain specific singles is basically hanging themselves.
Even Duels's booster system on its own can't be kept viable in the long run without singles.

They clearly have to balance the game on that point, not allowing for trading; because MtG has a flood of required cards when compared to competitors.

No multiplayer in the works.
Akready a huge negative.

i hate FFA like poison. I wouldn't even notice if it wasn't there