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Why Magic: Legends Died Before Launch


In June 2021, Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment announced the cancellation of their ARPG, Magic: Legends, just a few months after the launch of the game's PC open beta. Sadly, their "Magic: The Gathering spin on Diablo" shut down before it was even launched, and it was reportedly cancelled for "poor financial performance". With many MTG and MMORPG fans having high hopes for Magic: Legends, it's still easy to see why the game failed to please their target fanbases, and YouTuber nerdSlayer Studios has released a video that sums up all those reasons. 

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In his video titled Death of a game: Magic Legends, the RPG critic looks back at the history of the game, and explains why he thinks Cryptic Studios falsely-advertised Magic: Legends as an MMORPG when there's nothing "massive" about it. Instead, it's more of a Diablo-like ARPG, and the video explains this "clear misunderstanding" of genres. MMO, ARPG, and MTG fans are clearly not happy about Magic: Legends

Watch Death of a game: Magic: Legends below: 

 

Magic: Legends was also criticized for its monetization strategy/pay wall content despite that its free-to-play gameplay. The ARPG was also criticized for its repetitive gameplay, art design (unlike the fantastic art of Magic), and its deck-building system. On top of that, open beta players faced annoying bugs and technical performance issues that frustrated them. 

Popular Twitch streamer and Magic content creator Sean "Day9" Plott, who streamed Magic: Legends back in March, had some harsh words about the game, giving it "either a zero or one" out of ten based on his gameplay experience. 

“It’s not that the game lacks interesting decisions, it lacks decisions,” Day9 said after quitting the game in his Twitch stream. “I hit my buttons on cool-down. I do not manage mana. There was no point in the first three hours that I managed mana, period. I really think that the current implementation of the deck and how that works in combat feels like an anti-system. It feels like it hurts the gameplay rather than creating something new and cool and fun.”

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It's not surprising to see Magic: Legends die before its official launch, which Cryptic originally planned for PC and next-gen consoles, and the video above clearly explains why the game died before it was even born. 

For more articles like this, take a look at our Magic: the Gathering page.