If you’ve only recently gotten into Magic: The Gathering, you’re not alone. However, you might not know that there are actually two different official ways to play MTG using the internet.
While MTG Arena is the way a lot of newer players will have gotten into MTG via this more streamlined interface with its fancy graphics and free-to-play stylings.
However, MTG Online has been around for an awful lot longer, and for some players represents a truer experience.
We’re all beginning to wonder if both services can exist together forever, or if we’ll all end up on MTG Arena.
Will MTG Arena replace MTGO?
While Arena is definitely an easier to use service, it seems unlikely that it’ll replace MTGO, at least any time soon.
Ideally, one service is certainly the way to go when it comes to this sort of thing, because then there are more players using the service, and it means that there are always more people to play against.
However, MTGO can currently do a lot that Arena can’t.
Things like multiplayer games and older formats are just one part of the problem though, there are a few other things that need to be addressed if the two will ever become one.
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What issues are in the way?
Aside from those already mentioned, the biggest issue is the MTGO player base.
That sounds more aggressive than we meant it to, what we mean is that there are a lot of players who’ve invested a lot of time and money in MTGO, and that would need to be transferred over to Arena.
Unless we get every card in MTG on Arena, and unless things like trading also turn up there, Arena simply isn’t going to be good enough for a lot of hardcore fans.
This isn’t the fans being absurd either, this is something that Wizards is going to have to address if they ever want to fuse the service. Until that happens though, you can safely assume that we’ll have access to both versions of the game.
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