Wizards of the Coast
When Wizards of the Coast made the esports announcement for Magic: The Gathering last week, nothing was mentioned about Magic: The Gathering Online while Magic Arena was a huge part of that announcement, so it's easy to assume that they're cutting support for Magic Online next year but Wizards also assured last week that MTGO will start be part of the esports program.
"#MTGO is definitely still part of the Magic esports program," the tweet reads. "Players will still be able to qualify for tabletop Mythic Championships through Magic Online tournaments. For more about MTGO's plans, @CKiritz's State of the Program article will be out next week on the MTGO site."
Today, Chris Kiritz of Wizards of the Coast
titled the
State of Magic Online 2018
, and there, he revealed what they're working on to help improve
MTGO
next year. Kiritz said that they will continue to focus more in 2019 on their back catalog of
Magic
cards, and they will come in the form of new cubes, more of a focus on Modern format, more Chaos Draft, and other non-rotating formats.
They're also working on an update for the Play Lobby: "The primary goal with the update is to make finding matches and events more intuitive by updating where and how you make your selections," Kiritz explained "We're putting choices like whether you're looking for Standard or Draft at the top level, and then showing you the play options available, whether it is a League, Tournament, or just an Open Play match against a friend."
Wizards of the Coast are also planning to improve the client such as improving the experience changes such as exploring how they can incorporate the auto-tapping system we've seen in
Magic Arena
. In addition to the Play Lobby and the client, they're also planning to update their server hardware as well as the account creation process. "We'll be exploring returning account creation to be part of downloading the client, exploring whether we can integrate with the greater Wizards account service, and whether we can update the system to allow players to create accounts without first paying $9.99 USD."
Sadly, they didn't mention anything about Treasure Chest updates, something that many users online are complaining about but the fact that they're continuing to improve
Magic Online
suggests that they're in this for the long haul and not planning to pull the plug anytime soon. It's good to hear that Wizards of the Coast seem optimistic about the future and believe that
Magic Online
and
Arena
can keep going at the same time.
Related: MTG World Magic Cup 2018 Foil Playmat Revealed
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