Over the past few weeks, MTG Arena hasn’t exactly been having the best time. Hopes for the Modern format were unceremoniously quashed, and bugs aplenty have been disrupting play. Even the one thing players should have been able to look forward to, Arena’s 5th Anniversary, caused major disruption.
Thankfully, after a surprisingly long wait, this latest of these issues has finally been resolved. Well… Almost, at least.
Let the Celebrations Begin Again!
After accidentally being too generous with double messaging, MTG Arena’s Player Inbox was turned off last week. Typically, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem, since the Player Inbox is largely just used for news posts. Last week, however, the Player Inbox took upon a higher purpose, dishing out compensation to every single MTG Arena player.
Responding to the problems caused by a Premier Draft outage, Wizards gave every player a free Draft token and some XP. On its own, this would be a very welcome reward, however, as we mentioned earlier, many players got more. Receiving double, reportedly even quadruple the interned reward, many MTG players were unsurprisingly very happy.
As if this wasn’t bad enough for Wizards, MTG Arena’s fifth anniversary was just around the corner. Dishing out a steady string of rewards, the celebrations for this event were looking worryingly generous. So much so, in fact, that the Player Inbox feature was paused while Wizards could try to implement a fix.
For whatever reason, this fix turned out to be a surprisingly difficult one to implement as the feature was disabled for 9 days. During this time, MTG Arena’s official anniversary date, September 27th, came and went, leaving many players perplexed. This confusion was exacerbated by Twitter posts that promised rewards prior to the feature being disabled.
Thankfully, while many MTG players were understandably frustrated and confused, this problem has finally been fixed… Almost, at least. Yesterday, many players, including myself, were happy to find the intended 5th-anniversary rewards within the Player Inbox. Unfortunately, however, not everyone was so lucky, as the feature’s functionality hasn’t entirely returned.
According to MTG Arena’s Senior Digital Products Manager, this problem shouldn’t persist too long, so everyone should get their rewards soon.
“We are in the process of testing fixes to the Inbox system, so the anniversary rewards were enabled for a brief time.
If you did not get the anniversary rewards, do not worry, you will still get them in the future. Thanks for bearing with us!”
Lee Sharpe
Better Late Than Never
In case you haven’t already booted up MTG Arena to claim the anniversary goodies yourself, yet are unendingly curious, the free rewards are pretty great. Just for clicking a button, players can receive 5000 XP, a gorgeous sleeve by Dan Mumford, Kenrith, the Returned King, and a card style. Hopefully, even if these rewards aren’t in your inbox quite yet, they should appear very soon.
While free XP and a mythic card aren’t to be scoffed at, that’s exactly what some MTG players have been doing. Disappointed with the supposedly lackluster rewards, Reddit users and MTG players like u/truffleblunts weren’t shy about voicing their dissatisfaction. “I actually laughed out loud – people really thought we were getting like 2k gems or some sh*t.”
Thankfully, while 5000 XP may not be what everyone was hoping for, there’s a chance it wasn’t the only reward in store. After all, the Player Inbox was closed on Monday the 25th, and there were two days of rewards left to give. Unless these have all been rolled into one, it’s possible there are more goodies waiting in store for players.
Admittedly, at the moment, there’s no telling what has happened to the intended rewards from the anniversary event. Thanks to a previous tweet, however, it definitely seems like we’re missing a reward to two. Prior to the Player Inbox shutdown, it looks like the Jace Puppet Pet was promised to players. Since this hasn’t appeared, more rewards may well exist.
Unfortunately, as much as we might like to speculate, at the moment, the future is unlikely unknown. Subsequently, we’re just going to have to wait and see what the future brings over the coming days.
Arena Has More in Store
While we may not know about the state of Anniversary rewards on MTG Arena, the future still looks very bright. Over the coming weeks and months, there’s plenty of content for players to enjoy and enjoy.
The former and more dubious of these two enjoys is the upcoming release of Alchemy: Wilds of Eldraine. Set to be spoiled this weekend, and released next week, this Alchemy could be absolutely amazing. Potentially rejuvenating the troubled format, this set could break the mono-black dominated meta. Alternatively, it could include a new Historic warping menace that players utterly despise.
While the new Alchemy set may be very hit or miss, thankfully, MTG Arena should have some universally loved content coming soon. Next month, Wizards will be running a new and improved “Historic All-Access, Basically No Bans” event. Should things go well, this event may well be the next step toward a brand new format on Arena.
As if all that wasn’t enough already. MTG Arena is also getting the Khans of Tarkir set later this year! At the moment, we don’t know exactly when this is releasing, but it’s nevertheless well worth looking forward to. Including Fetch Lands, Delve spells, and plenty of incredible cards, this full release should have it all!
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