Arena Is Getting Worse, Again 

Mtgo is playing a local game shop that pays directly to wizards, playing arena is playing a video game with a gotcha machanic.

Mana bases for mtg, digital or physical, should be the cheapest part of the game. Why is this a hard concept for people to understand, especially wotc. Instead of fetches, shocks, surveil lands, triomes being rare they should be commons and as plentiful as basic lands. The mana base for a magic deck is the barrier of entry for new players that want to play magic. People that want to play the game are willing to spend money on game pieces that aren't lands.

$50-ish is, like, a whole video game.

"where does the greed end?" Here's the fun thing, it doesn't

Are you telling me a playset of fetchlands on Arena costs about as much if not more than a physical EDH precon??

It's crazy how much Arena obfuscates the value of wild cards and their sources. Compared to crafting with dust and having that as your one system it becomes so opaque that if you want to measure it in its entirety you need to make an advanced spreadsheet. This is deliberate.

I live in South Africa and getting real pissed off with the price of Magic in general. I have a good job, a house and a car, but I'm literally getting priced out of competitive Magic. I play Modern, but the price of boosters are so absurd I have shifted to importing singles for my decks. Even that is becoming a bit absurd with the number of sets being pumped out and power creep devouring my collection. I bought multiple boxes of MH2, but MH3 is roughly 40% more per box. That's just too much. Maybe I just need to accept the fact that I'm a poor pleb that doesn't deserve to buy boosters.

I hope Vince gives us an update when his first kid says "fuck". That will be comedic gold.

My main problem with applying that Rosewater statement to digital is this: The boosters are always on the shelves in Arena. You don't have a "print run" of the cards. They're always there, always available. I understand needing to balance power for physical products to assure they all sell relatively well. In the digital format though, you're charging more for less work. Less time programming, less content put into the game, and for something that will always be on the shelves. I wouldn't be surprised to see them be a perpetually "On Sale" product just due to FOMO of the sale, and the general power level of Fetches in formats like timeless and historic.

I wanted to craft a desert, you know, the common that pings attackers, and saw that it was in the mythic slot. Have not really been excited to play arena since

I quit Arena after the introduction Alchemy ruined a couple of my History decks I had just built. The constant BS of that platform just got to me.

Crazy that only Pokemon has got it right in terms of digital pricing and acquiring cards. Though they took out trading in the new client, they give you free starter meta decks, the battlepass is very worth it in value, and real boosters have digital redemption and can be bought at a fraction of the price on markets.

I’m at getting ridiculous. I remember when booster boxes could comfortably be split by a play group now it’s 40-50 bucks. 😞

13:58 "When does it end?" It ends when people stop paying for it. Unfortunately, they won't, so it won't end soon.

Recently I started playing on MTG Online and I'm having a blast. The fact that I can just sell my cards and get the money back is huge.

Arena is code. They could give it all for free with 0 cost. It’s all fixed costs. It’s only profit to determine prices.

1:54 desktop wallpaper checking in

I really should be getting in on MTGO but it is such a threshold. I got so confused trying to buy cards

Fetchlands are the barrier for entry for basically any modern deck that isn't mono-coloured. They are not exciting cards, there are not interesting cards, it's a set of 10 cards that are all basically the same. In a digital format, the barrier for entry to even start building a deck should be zero. It would cost WotC zero dollars and zero cents to add fetchlands and any other cycles of lands to all accounts for free. Anyone looking at the game outside could tell you that. Instead of providing the basic components to play the game, Wizards chooses to make the game less appealing for most people so that they can gouge the few people that are willing to put up with their bullshit. Sixty bucks for a sad, non-resalable digital facsimile of half of the fetchlands. I'm sure glad I don't play Magic anymore.

11:17 wheel is not in the power 9 that’s timetwister

I've kind of stumbled onto your channel as of late, and as somehow who mainly plays Pokémon it's interesting to compare just how different the approaches of Magic Arena and TCG Live seem to be. In particular, TCG Live seems to pretty much eschew any notion of making money on the client itself - rather, they use the client to encourage people to go and play the game physically. The client gives you a bunch of pretty solid precons to start with, including most of the staples that your decks. The battle pass readily gives you a bunch of new toys to play with (a lot of packs of the current set, some packs from older sets, some full arts of meta-relevant cards, and a deck that you steadily build on throughout the pass), and the daily missions for the pass are easy to complete and give you more than enough currency to stop you getting bogged down for too long. The crafting system is really generous, and being able to redeem physical products is the icing on the cake (including fixed elements of things like prerelease kits or precon deck, booster packs, and even little nice extras like getting in game sleeves). The client is not perfect by any means - there's still a fair few bugs since the transition to TCG Live, and support for Expanded is very lacking (pre-Sun and Moon cards aren't implemented yet, so things like Expanded and Gym Leader Challenge don't really work all that well). The range of ways to play is rather limited (you have private games, a ladder for Standard, Standard and Expanded casual matches and that's it). But at its core, the client feels a lot more approachable and encouraging for newer players to quickly get up to speed with competitive level decks, and for competitive players to easily test and refine new decks before investing in physical product. I really don't think there's much scope to fundamentally change Arena at this point unfortunately, but the difference in direction is very interesting as a relative outsider to Magic.

I wish I could give my wildcards to my friends. I've mainly drafted the last couple years and already have a ton of Historic, Standard and Timeless decks while still having 80 some rare and 60 some mythic wild cards just not being used.

I think the sole reason I enjoy Arena as my primary way to engage with MTG is because I have always been a limited player. Absolutely no way I could be convinced to buy packs on arena for the sake of playing constructed. I’m finally falling into constructed formats because after drafting since basically launch I stockpiled wildcards. My partner on the other hand started playing magic on arena last year and I was surprised to see how quickly they were able to build a decently competitive standard deck to start earning gold. That grind however is much slower than it needs to be. Imo they should make wildcards rewards for more things (maybe one for a daily quest) and better rewards for winning the format events. Also give me timeless event, it’s wild the most “expensive” format is the least rewarding to play

Why i quit arena... wanted to get a few terminate for a deck i think it was some rakdos removal spell that was a rare... realised it would have cost me like 10 quid to get bulk rares in paper...

So I saw a video of a 97 land Brawl deck on Arena. So I downloaded Arena and with all the free packs and codes I found I was able to make the deck to play. That being said I could never see myself putting money to add cards I own on paper to a digital profile.

I would suggest playing on Cockatrice. You can play commander digitally with others (publicly or privately). That is how my play group plays since we are all in different areas.

The other problem with the price variation for differentiation/demand management point as it applies to Arena is that these aren't physical packs. There is nothing to sit on shelves if demand is too low and they aren't going to runnout if demand is higher than expected!

Always reminds me of the professor's comparison. Once you're in the 250-300 dollar range, that's a nintendo switch.

Already hated historic once Alchemy filtered into it. Gladly skipped Timeless. I'm going to stick to Limited, Standard and Explorer until WotC gets the hint. Used to put $20-40 a set and havent spent a penny since the Baldurs Gate money grab.

Magic trading cards were made to be played with - not to sit quietly in some collector's binder on the shelf. The true instrumental value to Magic cards is the fun you can have and relationships you can build through playing with them. Down with the reserved list, reprint cards so people can compete on an even playing field. But leave it to a corporation to push for a card game with no cards, because they're pushing for all-digital, cuz money. And in the process, throw LGS's under the bus despite LGS's being an integral part of MtG's success and longevity.

I have been playing arena since open beta and find myself in the lucky situation of never having to spend money. When a new set comes out i pick up like 30 packs with gold, then i just play brawl and historic brawl. I do get the mastery pass every set, but the gems for that come from occasional draft and the mastery pass itself. New players though, really cannot play this game in any kind of competitive way without dumping excessive amounts of resources, time or money, into it. I feel like this is why we see so much budget aggro grinding ladders compared to control decks with much higher rare/mythic counts. The cards should be easy to get, the cosmetics should take resources, simple as.

I stopped playing on arena, learning of this is complete bs...

I'm like 90% sure that "printing" the enemy fetchlands into Arena to sell at a markup is a cash grab that will end with actually adding the cards to an Arena set in a year or so to get the money now and later.

Great video dude and I agree with everything you said. Unfortunately I would never expect it to change. I believe they have cornered the market on a way to play MTG online anytime. They will continue to do what they do until we stop buying it, and we know all the people are still buying it. For myself, I cannot resist arena even though I think its evil and greed driven. This is because I want to play more magic other than the once-a-week spelltable game. The opportunity cost of online non-tradable cards is that you can play them endlessly alone without other known people, so they do have an advantage on paper cards. That "anytime" advantage is going to win in a always-online world. Thanks for the great videos!

Completely agree with all of this. Arena became far too expensive for me to play and I have no clue how a new player builds a collection at this point. It's a problem that is only going to get worse with each new set.

Mark Rosewater said the same thing about power level and price of Commander Masters pre-cons. He said more powerful cards = higher price yet they were the same level as regular pre-cons. We all know an ivory tower WOTC exec made the price jump up 50% then claimed they were premium decks.

I don’t blame businesses for trying to make money, but this is just too much.

Thanks Vince. It was the money I spent and how I still felt like I had to grind to get anywhere. Oh, and Alchemy that turned me off. Been over Two years since I played. Sad too since my brother got back into Magic through Arena. But it always felt so soul draining to me, and I can't get back into it. Maybe when I move again I'll find an LGS closer to me.

How do you sell the current set? Maybe standard rotation lol

I'd like to point out that the price increase is actually a bit more ridiculous than 60% if you think about it. 25 Playsets for 25000 vs 5 Playsets for 40000 Because you are getting more bang for your buck on top of a lower price with the older anthologies, the effective prices become... 1 Playset for 1000 gold vs 1 Playset for 8000 gold. That is a price increase of 700% when factoring in the amount of cards you get per gold. Fetchlands or no, this is an absurd and outrageous price increase.

Maro's statement makes more sense in a physical cards world. Stores make a huge amount of their revenue from sales of magic singles and barely any from boosters(I think from boosters, I saw numbers like a 10-20 dollars a box). That means that in order to keep the lights on, singles prices have to be high enough. The singles prices have to be competitive with the secondary market prices, so as a result if WOTC wants to continue having stores to sell their cards in, they need to care about keeping secondary market prices high. HOWEVER, in any case where there is no physical store (direct distribution products like secret lair, MTGO bot vendors, arena) none of this applies - There is no shelf. There is no cost to players ignoring the products they don't use. They can stock everything indefinitely and print everything into the ground if they feel like they need to. There is a slight additional consideration for secret lair because they can potentially tank physical card prices with that if they aren't a *little* careful, and an additional slight consideration for MTGO product redemption temporarily flooding the market, but other than that its just greed.

I recently got incredibly upset with arena and was like "f it, ill just play paper again" and then realized paper is not much better. Currently playing SWU and loving every moment of it

When the werewolf set came out i dropped like 200$ on gems and was able to draft that set to the point thst i got a full 4 of collection of the set. I performed extremely well, It was a point where i was considering trying to play competatively and i realized in doing that that even as i floated around a 72% win rate i was slowly losing gems. 72% is like a pro level player winrate. having a pro level win rate requires you to continue putting money in to compete? Like honestly fuck em. I have not put another dollar in since and deleted the client.

I've actually had to stop playing Magic almost completely because of the cost. My favourite formats is any limited, and pre COVID I was able to draft or do a sealed every week. Now it's just not realistic. It's basically $30 Canadian to draft current sets, and more for premium sets. Its just too much weekly! Plus keeping up with Standard got so hard. Now I have a few commander decks that I've built up over the years, and a couple of cheap pre-cons. I gave up on Arena a couple years ago, free to play was okay but eventually you just fall behind on cards. Magic is also my favourite game of all, I was a judge for a few years, I championed the game so much in my community! And now I live through content creators playing. By the way, thanks for the great videos Vince.

8:52 love this point. I am so tired of hearing people say just draft. Not everyone has endless playtime, not everyone enjoys limited, and not everyone wants to turn arena into a fucking job just so they can get cards to play the format they actually care about. F2P on arena is not as simple as that crowd makes it sound.

It is absolutely bullshit that those common are rares. Lightning bolt and counter spell were originally printed as commons *expressly because the original creators of Magic wanted them to be accessible to a wide number of players* and by printing them as rares Hasbro is shitting on their dream and it is disgusting and repulsive and even extortive towards people like us who just want to play

It's crazy how much you avoid these people's greed by playing cube

I want Wizards to print Fletch lands. They’re the same as regular fetches but they all have Chevy Chase on them.

Did anyone else read the description of the Angry Birds Twitter account and notice the triple parentheses with the phrase “the blues were here!” I mean it’s in character for that to be something on Red’s Twitter account considering the movie but I don’t think Angry Birds corporate is aware of the double meaning 😂

As always, your analysis perfect and reflective of reality. This is rank greed.

watching this at 3:50 am. Thinking of redownloading Arena, but they don't have Rubblebelt Maaka. Wizards, please bring Rubblebelt Maaka to Arena. It's literally *all* I'm asking of you.

I stopped playing Arena over 2 1/2 years ago and did not spend one plug nickel on it. Buying a box of Magic cards is getting so expensive now that we stopped buying them at the end of 2023. We will wait to get some singles or buy proxies. I dread what the prices will be in 2025. Thank you for the video.

I had a wild take the other day, and the more I stew on it, the more I want it to be true. I believe that if card accessibility wasn't an issue, MTG could become more mainstream than chess. Easy to learn, hard to master. The formats could be the different levels of chess masters, and you'd have a title to signify your standing. These ideas came from having boardgame nights with friends. Sure we could open and learn a new game everytime. Or, we could play commander/ round robin of modern where we all already know the rules. Have a new person? Just swap the lands for basics. I have come to understand how amazing MTG can be. I want more people to understand it too, but, there is a lot in the way of getting new people to like the game... price being a major one.

Couldn't agree more about the sun titan comment. Best white card ever printed. Should be played way more. Especially in commander

I feel your pain. I’ve been priced out of sealed paper magic for almost three years now. I just recently got priced out of Arena. Corporations are indeed greedy, and I thoroughly know how it feels to be squeezed from the bottom. I just want to enjoy my game too.

Hasbros prices drive many people away from paper. Now we slowly see price increases in mtg arena ? What is next I wonder… Maybe an anniversary product worth a month of rent money ? No that’s too crazy of an idea.

That's why I've never spent a single penny on MTGA, never will, and never will regret that desigion. I saw where this is going at the beginning: yet again, things are cheap, then, the more people are hooked and afraid to miss a single cosmetic, prices would start to crawl up. And yeah, buying everything in that version of the game is already more expensive than it should be for a paper TCG advertisement. Honestly, I'm impressed by the free mastery pass system - it was holding for quite a long time. (Technically, it still does, but let's be honest...)

Free play arena guy here and yes I do feel the sting a bit when my cheap stingy ways mean I struggle to see mythic rank, but when I do it's with my own decks, no glory copying here. Subbed you because you deliver good content whilst actually sounding normal, a trait no often seen amongst RU-vidrs, let alone MTG ones.

Again, watching you just reiterates how i feel about arena and mtg in general. Preach on Vince. Love ya content!

Timeless is the only Arena format where you may need a playset of fetchlands. The only other legal format for them is Brawl, where 4 copies is a waste.

I’m a paper magic player and gave arena a try. I have to play free. I’m not splitting my hobby up. I will never be able to build the decks that I want to, only optimize the cards I already have. Never be able to own multiple competitive enjoyable decks. I am going to have to commit good amounts of time in my day to farming resources for a chance to get cards I need. There is absolutely nothing to do with any of the pack filler or even good rares that I can’t use. I don’t see any of the appeal of playing arena. Nothing I like about magic is here, and the significant investment it would take to make magic fun would lock me inside of this box away from the rest of the wonderful world magic has to offer.

I found a group that plays Pauper on Arena and I shit you not i have run out of commons with no efficient way to get more. I built a single pauper brawl deck that wouldve cost me maybe 50 bucks in paper, but it sucked up every common wildcard i had. Now i am trying to make a 60 card pauper deck and cant. There is no way to buy common wilds and so im stuck with the more expensive option of buying packs and hoping i get lucky with extra wilds.

Well, said. I am fine with slowly unlocking the fetch lands via individual wild cards since I play everyday (usually) and already have a decent collection. I think the fact the uncommon/common Mystical Archive rare’s is greedy. You drop four rare wildcards to get Lightning Helix then they print into a standard set at uncommon which is a slap in the face for those who waste their wildcards / time / money to play with the card. *shrug*

I play the duel decks only and only to complete quests. Every time I invest and get interested in a constructed format, my cards get nerfed with NO REFUND. I hate that they shoved alchemy into the game, I hate that they completely refuse to mirror real formats. I play because I love magic but am also busy so this is how I get my magic in, but I don’t build, and that sucks because it’s my favorite part of paper magic.

The more and more I sit around Arena, the more I realize just how generous YuGiOh: Master Duel's system is. No janky wildcard system, just funny crafting components you can get back from cards if you wanna scrap a deck. And then shop deals that can be reasonably bought with gems obtained in game. WotC makes me sad.

It's crazy, I mean this is a game with no story, no characters, no voice acting, no writing, no in game world, no a lot of things, and then they want you to pay more than most game's full price for some good lands? If the choice is between getting a pokemon game or a few cards, how would anyone think, yeah I'll have more fun with fetchlands? Especially fetchlands that will just turn into literal nothing someday when Arena gets taken offline. Wizards is just charging so much for so little effort on their part. In a digital only, multiplayer only, few modes only game, $50 is a giant ask...it's a huge ask...because they never gave you a game to begin with, they gave you a card game app.

I think cards being expensive/rare is fine, the problem is that wizards shits out so many sets with chase cards nowadays that legacy and modern are essentially rotating formats. Old cards are powercrept out, new cards are shiny and insanely powerful and also very expensive, and eventually those cards too will be powercrept out and any money you invested will turn to dust. The system used to make sense when wizards printed with standard as the baseline power level and occassionally something interesting or exceptional would slip through the cracks into legacy and modern to spice up existing decks or create a new archetype. At this point there is no real justification for cards being expensive because you can’t call any card that isn’t reserved list an “investment”, it’s just a liability that will be powercrept out eventually.

I have not spent money on arena ever. The second I saw them using gacha mechanics I knew. Never, ever, ever give them a penny. So this price increase doesn’t effect* me. It’s just another sign that they’re desperate to squeeze as much as they can before they go under.

so 25k to 40k is a 60% increase but for that 25k you get 25 playsets or 1000 gold per playset, at 5 playsets for 40k that is 8000 gold per playset of cards you are basically forced to use if you want to be competitive which is a 800% increase

Got into Arena in September of 2020 mostly to "teach" girlfriend how to play magic. Since then, I've purchased the Beginners pack ($5), Traveler's Gem pack ($15) & a pre-release of Brother's War ($50). Mostly because I had a gift card, but i don't intend to pay any more money (just time) into Arena. When they decide to start charging a monthly subscription, I'll stop. *Thanks for the Content!*

Hey Vince, did you know Khans of Tarkir packs cost more gems and gold on Arena than any other packs? No not drafts, packs! Incredible!

So glad I checked out of that cash sink after Eldraine. Much better alternatives out there for digital play

Another good point about Magic Online is that there are no Alchemy cards in the Eternal formats. It's so annoying when you play against cards that don't actually exists. And seeing some of them "shuffling a mox or other power 9 into a deck" while you can't actually put a power 9 into your Timeless deck when the cards are CLEARLY ALREADY INSIDE THE ARENA makes me doubly irritated

At this point I'm insisting when talking about digital assets that we start saying what is true: they cost nothing to reproduce. They are free to reproduce. Every insistence at a developer being paid to implement them onto arena? That developer was paid for it. Wizards has been paid for it over and over again. Enough is enough. It costs wizards nothing to sell you 50+ pounds of fetch lands. It is purely exploitative pricing.

Arena is a place to draft and nothing else. In that realm I think it is fine, but I do wish it were actually possible to engage with constructed formats in the nice UI of Arena.

From my experience it is dangerous to spend on Arena. It tries to get you in a state of drepression, where the only way out is spending money. I felt that after loosing some drafts in a raw and immediatly deinstalled the game.

Classical parenting line, "I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed" - guess we all know that to some extent. Also why I don't like arena anymore.

To be honest I don’t play much magic nowadays. Mostly due to the cost of the game but I do love playing a version called penny dreadful which I highly recommend for anyone on a budget.

10 dollars is alot for the fetches...50 is insane

this is 100% why I dont spend money in Arena, I typically play Arena on my lunch breaks to keep my brain going and usually within that time I can finish all of the daily/weekly challenges to earn in game currency, I cant complain too much on that front but even at the start I thought the prices stated in arena are insane. why does it cost me $20 for an in game pet that does -literally- nothing important.

I'm currently taking a break from Arena. The whole thing frustrates me, and in-person Magic is an option, though not as often as I'd like.

Just came back after an 18 month break. Opened the free packs from all the releases I've missed, lost some games to cards ive never heard of and shut it back down again. At this point i think it would cost me so much to try and update my decks it wouldnt be worth it.

I've been free to play on Arena and you got me into Marvel Snap and I have been free to play on that as well. I have been having fun in Explorer with Mono White Second Sun but it took me a while to get there. I am not Wizard's target audience, but I am having a good time. It just takes time. Do you have the time? Many people don't.

Fun fact: you are better off buying rare wildcards from the store unless you plan on crafting at least 18/20 of the fetches. The VALUE /s

Honestly I’ve never really made a deck since forever in arena. I have a sockcade of coins and a handful of gems, but don’t feel like drafting. I occasionally get my quest done and that’s it. If I didn’t get prerelease kits, I wouldn’t have as many cards in my pool and haven’t even cracked the arena specific packs I’ve gotten now and then.

Once a year I get a strong urge to get back into MTG and every time I do it looks like the economy(paper/digital) is still scummy and I refuse to give Wizards/Hasbro any of my money.

I play xmage, tabletop simulator, and buy cheap proxies, playing mtg for as close to 0 cost as possible. Playing magic legit would be fun but my rent is about 55% of my income and I can't justify voluntarily making WotC my landlord #2

I play Arena daily and I am getting to the point of saying, why do I even try, I am missing so many wildcards and I cannot stand draft as I find it boring and by so I perform terribly, I wish they would just not make it so shit, it feels so bad to work for a pack, to get 6 cards that are just terrible, that have no deck they can fit into and even worse, that I cannot get rid off.

There's a great way to stop the "booster A, not B/C/D". Stop launching products from a firehose and keep a steady flow of sets with desirable cards. Insanity, right?

waffles about greed -> immediatly shits out an ad 🤣👍

The best thing about arena monetization is being able to do dailys with your friends. Convincing my friends to play arena though? impossible

yeah I stopped playing Arena after Alchemy was introduced and they started nerfing historic cards, sucks to see it's getting worse

Fairly new to MTGA...how do I get other basic lands from different sets

I've been playing Arena since the beginning of the Pandemic. To this day, haven't spent a penny and I have 20 draft tokens plus about $50k in gold and 25,000 gems. Also have 139 rare and 60 mythic wildcards. Hasbro ain't getting my real-life money...

the greed will continue until morale improves

Worst part of all, the Fetches in arena are played in 2 formats, Brawl which needs a single copy of each fetch, and Timeless, an already incredibly expensive format. I know this product is not for me, but its about the precedent it sets, "just overprice the everloving crap outta it, they'll buy it anyways" Expect MH3 drafts, sealed and packs to cost double since "they're a more desirable product with a higher power level"

Arena use to be so fun but once i fell behind by not playing for a year it become too much money to build a fun competitive deck, god forbid you want to try something else also

I've recently started playing commander on paper and on spell table and I'm genuinely considering just dropping out of Arena straight up. The cards aren't that exciting, the play experience is awful, the matches are repetitive and it requires way too much time to stay up to date with the sets and all the new cards

luckily these are only legal in timeless, so it's not like you need anything other than the blue ones.

Digital goods do not have scarcity - only artificial scarcity. Any kind of argument about digital goods that lean into the vocabulary of physical goods are suspect.