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Wizards Of The Coast Reveals Digital TCG Magic: The Gathering – Arena
Wizards of the Coast has revealed Magic: The Gathering – Arena, a new free-to-play digital trading card game. The game is being developed by Wizards of the Coast's internal Digital Games Studio, which is headed up by Jeffrey Steefel, who previously worked on titles like The Lord of the Rings: Online.
When the title enters beta, Arena will feature casual constructed play, where players enter matches with decks they've created from their collections. The initial batch of cards will be pulled from the Ixalan MtG set. Going forward, Wizards of the Coast plans to add additional cards, formats, and modes. The team says that the game is created with full rules and is built for digital gamers without compromising the core gameplay of Magic: The Gathering.
If you're interested in playing Magic: The Gathering – Arena before its official launch, you can sign up for the closed beta test, which is slated to start later in 2017, here.
Our Take
Delivering a digital TCG for a long-running and beloved game like Magic: The Gathering must be a daunting task, but it's a seemingly necessary step as titles like Hearthstone and Pokémon Trading Card Game Online continue to garner dedicated fanbases. It'll be interesting to see how the team proceeds, and at what rate features and more cards from the game's massive library are added once the beta hits later this year.
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