MTGアリーナ：2024年のカードセットとプリコンデッキの新情報を公開

As 2024 winds down, let’s look back at MTG Arena’s year and shine a light on what we did, what we learned, and what’s next. What We Did Content When all is said and done, 2024 will go down as a benchmark year for our card set team as we’re on pace to deliver over 3,000 new cards, including the most complicated set we’ve ever worked on, Modern Horizons 3. 5 Standard set releases: Murders at Karlov Manor, Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Bloomburrow, Duskmourn: House of Horror, and Magic: The Gathering Foundations (coming this November, with preorders on sale now until release) 2 Nonrotating releases: Modern Horizons 3 and Pioneer Masters (coming this December) 1 Classic release: Khans of Tarkir (in December of 2023) 4 Alchemy releases: Alchemy: Karlov Manor, Alchemy: Thunder Junction, Alchemy: Bloomburrow, and Alchemy: Duskmourn 1 Jumpstart release: Foundations Jumpstart (coming this November) Preconstructed Deck Sales Beyond card sets, we launched preconstructed deck sales in August to help players discover new decks and supplement their collections. We know that deck building can be challenging for some players, particularly for newer players and those who are looking to explore formats with larger card pools like Historic and Brawl. Deck sales are another step toward providing players with options that get them into the game faster. The awesome part of this feature is that the pricing of the decks is prorated based on the cards already in your collection, which allows the decks to serve the widest possible audience. Since this is a relatively new feature, we’re still in the test-and-learn phase, but we’re excited about the possibilities in this space. As an example, this work let us re-release older Historic Anthology products. Previously, Historic Anthologies were available for a set price, and players needed to be acutely aware of cards already in their collections. Now, the cost of these products is prorated, taking into account a player’s collection automatically and delivering a much better experience. New Way to Earn Rewards With the launch of Modern Horizons 3, we experimented with a new way for players to earn rewards: the Psychic Frog’s Horizon Hideaway. This served two purposes. The first purpose was to explore a new way for players to opt into Mastery Pass rewards for a non-Standard release. With last year’s Universes Beyond release as an Alchemy set, we heard feedback from Standard-only players that the associated Mastery Pass was disruptive to their experience. Horizon Hideaway was our first attempt at limiting Standard-player disruption while providing a pass-like experience for everyone else. The second purpose was to give players more control over how they earn cosmetic rewards from Mastery Passes in general. The previous Mastery Tree structure let us lean into the themes of a set in fun ways, but ultimately it was both restrictive for players and more effort for our content team to deliver. Changing to the Mastery Emporium delivers that awesome win-win scenario in which the player experience improves because they can prioritize the rewards they prefer while being simpler for us to create. Speaking of cosmetics, the Outlaws of Thunder Junction release saw the return of phrase emotes—Howdy!—to provide more options for players, along with some small quality-of-life improvements. This work also established a foundation that we could build on for an upcoming feature (more on that in a bit). Play Delivering all these cards and decks doesn’t matter without somewhere to play them, so we continue to provide fun and engaging play opportunities, including launching our most powerful Constructed format ever in Timeless alongside the release of Khans of Tarkir. For more information on the state of MTG Arena formats, check out the … uh … *checks notes* … State of MTG Arena Formats article. The takeaway for this article, however, is that we’re continuing to grow and adjust how we manage formats and plan to meet the needs of an ever-expanding audience. From Midweek Magic to Arena Championships, we continue to run events for a wide range of players, broadening options so you can find the right experience for you. Arena Direct Events One example of us looking for new ways for players to play is the launch of the Arena Direct event series. Built on the learnings of our Festival in a Box events at the end of 2023, Arena Directs offer players an opportunity to earn tabletop products through digital events. While we’re very excited by the initial results, we know there are opportunities to improve the player experience for the winners, and we’re actively working to correct some of those issues as we plan for our next set of Arena Direct events. Wizards Play Network Programs In addition to MTG Arena play, over the past few months we’ve collaborated with the Wizards Play Network (WPN) team to try new programs that reward you for in-person play. In the month of May, you could join in at least three drafts at your local game store and earn an MTG Arena Draft token the following month. In August, if you joined in up to four Standard events, you could earn cards, a card style, and a mythic pack on MTG Arena. We’re excited about connected play and will continue to explore options that bridge in-store and digital play. What We Learned We’ve learned a lot in 2024 that will inform our growth for next year and beyond. One of the biggest areas is continuing to improve our communications and setting better expectations with players. On the product side, our announcements for the Horizon Hideaway and preconstructed deck sales didn’t set expectations as well as they could have. For the Hideaway, we saw confusion on how to unlock the Hideaway or redeem tickets, particularly for players who were not explicitly looking to engage with Modern Horizons 3 content. We were trying to balance awareness of the system for those who wanted it while reducing the disruption it created for those who wanted to ignore it, and we missed the mark. On the bright side, not only did we learn a lot, but we also have plenty of time to get it right the next time since all our set releases next year will be legal in all formats. Similarly, with preconstructed deck sales, we could have been clearer on how the pricing works. Because we’re often trying novel things inside of established systems, we make hard decisions for products and features. Usually this comes down to some version of, “Is it worth it to wait until we can perfectly polish this product or feature, or can we navigate the existing constraints and still deliver something good for players?” For deck sales, we chose the latter path since the player would experience the desired outcome of getting full decks at a price that is reduced based on the cards in their collections, even if some of the visual elements may not tell the full story. While we believe this is still the correct path, the learning here is to ensure we’re doing everything we can to enlighten players on what the experience will be. Specifically, we saw confusion on how the pricing works based on our original announcement and what players saw in client. Decks have three prices: The base cost of all the cards in the deck, which is a simple calculation based on the number of each card at each rarity. The deck cost, which is a discount each deck gets based on the type of deck it is. The final player cost, which is the deck cost reduced by the cards in a player’s collection. Some of the confusion stems from the fact the MTG Arena Store can only display two prices, the base cost and the final player cost, while our designers think in terms of deck costs. Our original announcement used deck costs, but we should have used the base cost so prices in the announcement matched what players saw in client. The team is exploring ways to make this clearer in the Store. For events, we’re aware that the experience for some of our Arena Direct winners wasn’t good enough. We’re working with both internal and external partners to resolve some of the issues we’ve encountered, which have proven to be tougher to solve than expected and has delayed the return of the Arena Directs. The good news, however, is that we’re making progress toward resolving issues for current winners and are currently working on improvements to the process for future winners. As we get these adjustments in place, we’ll add events to the calendar, hopefully before 2025. Finally, we learned there is still an opportunity to improve our digital formats. We’ve adjusted some Alchemy design philosophy around how we construct our releases to emphasize fun play patterns, and we are seeing good results. We also want to be more responsive in our digital format balance and will be expanding our capabilities with a new role on the team focused on Alchemy design and digital format management. Beyond a dedicated designer, we’re working to deliver changes that will increase our flexibility around rebalances, but we don’t yet have a timeline we can commit to on this front. What’s Next So, where is MTG Arena headed from here? Pioneer Masters December will include the long-awaited release of Pioneer Masters, bringing support for pretty much every tournament-relevant Pioneer deck we’re aware of. We know this release doesn’t include every fun or unique card in the format, but we’ll continue to explore ways to deliver fun and relevant cards through products like anthologies, preconstructed deck sales, and more. As an aside for those players who immediately wonder, “When is Modern coming?”, let me offer the preemptive answer of, “Modern currently isn’t on our roadmap, and we don’t have plans to add it any time soon.” Card Sets Beyond this year, of course we’ll deliver each major card set next year. Beyond the awesome content each set brings, we’re excited that all the releases next year are legal in all formats. Even though we’ve worked to create tools that allow us to better manage sets that are targeted at specific formats, we love when sets appeal to players regardless of their play preferences. Core Achievements System Outside of card sets, our first major feature release for 2025 is our core achievements system, which will provide more ways for players to engage with MTG Arena. We’ll walk through everything you can expect soon, but, in short, we want to further expand ways to reward play that isn’t solely focused on just winning matches of Magic. This doesn’t replace the Daily Quest system but is another layer that rewards experimentation, exploration, and fun. As players earn achievements, they’ll unlock new cosmetics, phrases (using the foundation we established earlier in the year with the Outlaws of Thunder Junction release), and a new way to celebrate accomplishments with [REDACTED]. While we’re delivering core achievements early next year, this is a foundational piece built with future iterations in mind, which could include things like set-specific achievements, greater customization options, and more. Expanded Social Features Following core achievements, the next large project the team will work on is expanding our social features with a focus on building in-game communities and connecting them to real-world communities. While we’re still in the exploration phase, our vision includes providing tools for friend groups to socialize and play, improving connections between players’ digital and tabletop play, providing a system for leaderboards and trophies, and more. We’d expect the first iterations of this to reach players near the end of 2025. Social is a critical prerequisite for an MTG Arena future that supports digital Magic play with three or more players. Quality-of-Life Improvements Beyond the major initiatives, we have some quality-of-life improvements in the pipeline as well. Launch dates are still being finalized, but here are some changes you can look forward to soon: Updating the Golden Pack meter to progress with all Standard-legal pack purchases, which means every set released in 2025 will contribute. Updating Special Guests cards in packs to match their intended gameplay rarity and eliminating the need to spend rare or mythic rare wildcards on certain reprints. Please note that this doesn’t mean all reprints will match their original rarity but will reflect current rarity standards. Continuing to iterate on deck sales and ways to get into games faster. Improving connections between in-store and digital play, including changing some of our rewards to be automatic. For instance, Prerelease codes will be discontinued and instead will be automatically granted to players who play at their local store and then log into MTG Arena. Continuing collaboration with the Play and Product teams to support Magic: The Gathering Foundations and programs like Magic Academy. Implementing behind-the-scenes improvements to the client and the backend services to support the team and future features, including improving stability and performance, decreasing the timeline needed to deliver bug fixes and small features, and improving our ability to provide more balance updates for digital formats. In addition, there are projects we’re very excited about but are not yet ready to announce. Our unwavering goal is “fast, fun Magic for everyone, anywhere,” and I’m proud of the steps the team has made over the past year in advancing that goal. I’m even more excited about the opportunities that lie ahead and how we can continue to engage and delight even more players. Thanks to all of you who’ve allowed us to get this far, and we’ll see you in the queues. Executive Producer Chris Kiritz, Magic Digital

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