Depending on how much time you spend focussing on the competitive side of MTG, you might not be aware of the fact that there was a Qualifier Weekend event in MTG Arena over the last two days.
It’s not a huge surprise if you didn’t realise it was going on, because according to MaRo, only 10% of players ever even engage with the more competitive side of MTG anyway. However, there was a rather large mistake made with the tournament that meant that it’s hard to view it as being particularly legitimate.
Half of the MTG Arena Qualifier Weekend was the wrong format
After last week’s announcement regarding the state of competitive play, and the reactions to it, it’s probably safe to say that a lot of people are feeling a little lost with MTG now.
Well, the first event following those announcements was the MTG Arena Qualifier Weekend, which promised a two-day-long Standard tournament for players to fight their way through the competition. Just getting into the event required you to be in the top 1,200 for the April Ranked Season, so it was always going to be an intense weekend.
The first day went as expected, which is to say that people actually got to play Standard. However, on day two, the event was set to Historic for some reason. A tweet went out from @MagicEsports that read, “We are working on the issue where today’s Qualifier Weekend event was set to Historic rather than Standard, and will update as soon as we’re able. Watch this account and @Wizards_Help for updates.”
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Less than ideal
It’s safe to say that people weren’t very happy about that, and some players had already gotten involved in the event were unhappy, especially as some had no doubt allocated specific times to get their matches done and then been bombarded by Historic decks instead of Standard ones.
It’s not a great look, for sure, but Wizards did try and fix it by resetting day two. That meant that all wins and losses were reset, and some players still got prizes that they earned, even in the rather broken competition.
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It was fixed
As you can see, things did get fixed and players got a brand-new Day 2 Token to compete in the event with, and this time it was actually set to Standard. They also changed the entry window to try and accommodate people who may have struggled to make it otherwise.
If you paid attention to this over the weekend, how has this all left you feeling about competitive play? It’s a little disconcerting to see Wizards making this mistake after withdrawing some support for the competitive scene last week, but we’ve got to hope that the scene will continue to thrive anyway thanks to the support of third-party tournaments and events.
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