While Standard reigns supreme on MTG Arena, on paper, Commander is the most popular format by far. Offering limitless creativity, a fun-focused casual environment, and thoroughly enjoyable gameplay, Commander has it all. On MTG Arena, however, players have to make do with Brawl, which is hardly a perfect replacement for the real deal.
As much as Brawl follows the same Commander-led structure, it’s only a two-player format, which changes the game entirely. Brawl is more akin to Duel Commander, albeit without the competitive edge that makes that format appealing to many. This leaves Brawl in an unusual middle-ground that’s still very fun from a causal perspective but nonetheless somewhat lacking.
Thankfully, Wizards of the Coast is looking to improve the Brawl format with Multiplayer in the not-too-distant future. Since 2023, this feature has been planned to be released in 2025, which is just around the corner now. Sadly, in the latest state of the game presentation for MTG Arena, it seems the planned release date has changed somewhat.
Slow Progress
It was always expected that implementing multiplayer, or anything close to Commander, would take an obscene amount of effort. Considering the complexity of Magic: The Gathering, it’s practically a miracle that the client works as well as it does. The rare bugs that occur from innocuous sources showcase just how fragile the intricate web of Arena’s code can be.
On top of figuring the code out, the MTG Arena client, matchmaking, and battlefield would all need an overhaul. It’s safe to say that an obscene amount of work would be needed to properly implement multiplayer on Arena. There has been the expectation, however, that this work was already being completed behind the scenes.
Hype for multiplayer on Arena has been building ever since the game first launched way back in 2019. The growing popularity of Commander made it seem inevitable that the feature would arrive sooner or later. In 2023, it seemed that it was going to be sooner, as more and more was being said about multiplayer.
In February of 2023, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks stated that Wizards was actively “figuring out” how to get four players on Arena. Following on from this, at Gen Con in 2023, Wizards mentioned the game’s future and multiplayer again. While no fixed release date was attached to this announcement, “2025 and beyond” was mentioned at the beginning of the Arena segment.
In hindsight, it seems we might have gotten carried away upon hearing “2025” and promptly ignored what came after. That being said, at the time, 2025 was a long way away, and two years to develop a new feature seemed almost reasonable. Sadly, now that 2025 is just around the corner, it seems we got our hopes up too much.
A Damning Delay
So, technically, multiplayer was never officially planned to be released in 2025, even if players wanted it. It may have seemed technically possible, but Wizards never outright confirmed any release date. The same is true now, as Wizards isn’t stating when multiplayer will finally arrive on MTG Arena. What has been said, however, is that it’s being worked on.
In the latest MTG Arena State of the Game video, Ian Adams and Chris Kiritz spoke specifically about multiplayer plans on Arena. Sadly, they didn’t have good news for anyone hoping for a quick release. For starters, it was explicitly stated that “it will not [launch] in 2025. That is a guarantee.”
Following on from this statement, Ian Adams added more context about just how big of a project multiplayer will be. Setting out expectations, Adams stated they “hope to have hired the people I need to do it in 2025, and then start working on it. Then some other year it will come out.” From this alone, it seems multiplayer is still a long, long way away from release.
During the video, while talking about Arena’s next big thing, this sentiment was repeated a lot. Both Adams and Kiritz repeated multiple times that “it will take a while,” so we shouldn’t get our hopes up. Even being somewhat realistic and saying another long wait until 2027 might be too soon.
Despite the knowledge it’ll take a while and the lack of a real release date, this information is nonetheless comforting. Even if it will take a while, it’s nice to know that multiplayer is actively being planned out and worked on. Hopefully, we might be surprised by how long development takes, but I wouldn’t expect too much right now.
So… What Now?
Now… We wait. Sadly, this might not be what a lot of players want to hear, but development does take time. It’s incredibly likely we’re not going to hear anything about multiplayer on Arena for quite some time in all honesty. As nice as it would be to look behind the development curtain, there’s no telling how long this will take.
Thankfully, that doesn’t mean that nothing is going to happen until the far future. In the State of the Game posts, Wizards revealed that an achievement system is in the works. This feature is planned as the first major release for 2025, so hopefully it won’t take too long to release.
On top of achievements, Wizards is also planning to expand the social features available on MTG Arena. Currently, the team is still exploring their options for this feature, but there’s huge potential. According to Wizards, the first wave of expanded social features should arrive “near the end of 2025.” From the sounds of things, this could be an overarching project that takes multiple updates to complete.
In the much shorter term, MTG Foundations will be released next week on November 12th. Following that, Pioneer Masters will be released on December 10th, which is also hugely exciting. After that, we’ll be moving into 2025, where there will be six major Standard-legal sets released throughout the year.
Even if the implantation of multiplayer takes a while, MTG Arena should have a bright future ahead of it.
