Magic: The Gathering Arena Plans To Add "Remastered" Sets and The New Pioneer Format

Wizards of the Coast and the developers of Magic: The Gathering Arena have huge plans for the free-to-play collectible card game.

As part of this month's State of the Game, WotC revealed that later next year, they're planning to start adding "remastered" versions of older sets to Arena. "The MTG Arena team, in conjunction with Magic R&D, will be looking at multiple sets and condensing them into a single larger set that only includes the most relevant cards, and adding that to the game," WotC wrote. "This will allow us to focus on what made these sets fun and exciting for players while delivering on the content much more quickly."

Omitting the cards that are not viable in non-rotating formats would definitely help them focus on bringing more viable cards from older sets at a faster pace, but it's still a long-term commitment since they would still need to program a bunch of cards if they want to bring Pioneer or Modern to the digital client. "Pioneer is one of the formats that we're working towards, but it'll be a longer journey before we can talk specifics," WotC said. "As we head towards that goal, we'll be focusing on delivering the best play experiences that these iconic card sets can offer."

When Pioneer was announced last month, many players criticized WotC's decision to have different new non-rotating formats in Arena and on tabletop. Why not just add Pioneer to Arena instead of just focusing on Historic? Now that they revealed their intention to add Pioneer to Arena, it looks like Arena will have a bright future ahead, and it's exciting to see that WotC has big plans to improve the game.

We'll most likely have to wait next year to see the "remastered" versions of older sets added to the game so don't expect to play Pioneer on Arena anytime soon. However, players will soon be able to play the new Historic format when it launches later this month, and they're adding 20 new cards with the November 21 update. Arena is also getting a new Friends List feature to help players connect with friends in the game.

Are you excited to play Pioneer on Magic Arena? How about Historic?

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