Magic Arena has been killing it for the Standard format. Twitch streams for Magic: the Gathering has been at an all-time high and growing every day, while Magic Online streams have been declining. Many have started ditching their Magic Online collection in fear of declining card prices. While Arena seems to have cemented its place among players as their Magic software of choice, it can’t do everything better. Magic Online still offers a superb experience in a few ways that Arena doesn’t and won’t be able to for a long time (if ever).
Here are 5 things Magic Online Still Does Better Than Arena:
Drafting
Image Credit: Wizards of the Coast
Magic Online provides the closest digital experience available to real life paper drafting. In Magic Online, you draft with a pod of 7 other people. In Magic Arena, you draft with a pod of 7 computer opponents. This has a huge impact on the drafting experience. If you’re wanting to get experience in draft for the real thing at your local scene or at a large tournament, Magic Online is the only way that will provide a realistic experience. You’ll learn much more what cards people value early and what cards you need to take right away. You’ll also learn to recognize when a color is more open than another and be flexible in your drafting style. Drafting with a computer has some quirks. For example, I’ve been passed Carnage Tyrants by the computer before. Perhaps Magic Arena will one day add drafting with other players instead of just computers. If a player drops out or disconnects, it can go into auto-draft with a computer replacement. I don’t mind waiting a few extra minutes for the better drafting experience.
Older Formats
Image Credit: The Command Zone
Magic Online has Vintage, Legacy, Modern, Commander, and a plethora of formats at our fingertips. Not only does it let you play older formats, but it also lets you do it much cheaper than paper. A $5,000+ Commander deck can cost only a few hundred dollars on Magic Online. It’s hard to imagine Arena ever getting enough support to backtrack into older formats such as Commander, which has access to almost every card in the history of Magic: the Gathering. In took Magic Online over a decade to add enough sets for Vintage to be possible. If Magic Arena is willing to add older sets over time, it’s possible it could achieve what Magic Online has, but it's going to require a very patient approach that wouldn't pay off for decades. Additionally, formats like Multiplayer Commander don’t seem like they would integrate well into Magic Arena’s graphical interface.
Special Formats
Magic Online has a few unique formats that aren’t available anywhere else (not even in paper!). One of these formats, Momir Vig, is hailed by many as Magic’s best format. In Momir Vig, one get’s a Momir Vig avatar and a deck of 60 lands. You then play 1 land each turn. You get to discard land from your land and pay X mana, and a random creature with converted mana cost X will enter the battlefield. Momir Vig is an incredibly wild format that utilizes every creature in Magic’s history. Games can go unexpectedly long or short and it’s always exciting seeing what random creature enters the battlefield under your control. While Arena has introduced a Standard only version of Momir Vig, it just doesn't have the same appeal with such a limited card pool. Currently, Magic Arena doesn’t have many formats available outside of Draft and Best of One Constructed Standard. A lot of these special format games also require older cards to be at their best, which isn’t going to happen for years or decades. Also, new sets such as Ultimate Masters, Conspiracy, and Commander Products aren’t being scheduled for release on Arena, but most of them are in Magic Online (sometimes with a delay).
Deck Building
Deck building is significantly better in Magic Online. For example, when you are in the drafting process, you can sort all the cards in your deck visually by converted mana cost as you are still drafting cards. This lets you see easily how your deck curves and how many creatures and spells are in your deck to help determine your next pick. In Magic Arena, you get a text sidebar that shows all your cards in your deck. I’m constantly annoyed by this sidebar. It takes me too much time to see which cards are in my draft deck, and to move them around. Visual views are so much better! I don’t see why Magic Arena needs to keep 85% of screen result for drafting as the card collection view, and 15% as the deck sideboard view. NOTE: When you are done drafting, you can easily see your decks curve.
Trading
In Magic Online, if you have the tickets, getting the deck you want is easy. Within 5 minutes you can go from a 0 card collection to any deck ever! Just buy the tickets from the Magic Online store, go to a bot store and pick up all the cards you need in one trade! Additionally, if you open up expensive draft cards that you won’t use, you can trade them to a bot and get pretty good value for it. In Magic Arena, if you open up a bomb rare, but don’t need the card, you are stuck with it. Not only are you stuck with it, but you are also stuck with the first 4 you open. You won’t get any value from an expensive card until you open the 5th version of the card, in which case Magic Arena will redeem you value in some way (the way they are addressing the 5th card problem is evolving over time). One thing in Magic Arena’s favor is that Magic: the Gathering Booster packs are cheaper than on Magic Online. As far as affordability goes, Magic Arena will take the cake in most scenarios; however, decks that are about $50 or less tickets in Magic Online are probably going to be cheaper than cracking packs in Arena. On the other hand, expensive standard decks that are $350 and higher are going to be much cheaper to acquire most of the time in Arena.
Overall, Arena provides a lot of advantages over Magic Online, but there are still some areas where Magic Online will be hard to replace for the foreseeable future. Have you ditched Magic Online for Magic Arena, or do you play both? Let us know your thoughts on Magic's software in the comment section below!