After much anticipation, The Brothers’ War finally launched on MTG Arena and Magic Online yesterday. With new cards, mechanics, and economy-boosting features, there was a lot for players to be excited about. Unfortunately, while there has been a lot of good, The Brothers’ War’s launch wasn’t entirely perfect. As a result, many players have been battling bugs rather than the forces of Urza or Mishra. Understandably, with these issues getting in the way of gameplay, players haven’t been all too happy about Wizards’ latest blunder.
It’s Getting Hot Hot Hot
As a digital game, it’s expected that sometimes, unfortunately, unforeseen bugs happen to creep in when an update rolls out. The launch of The Brothers’ War has been no different. However, the bugs are worse than usual this time around. Users on the MTG Arena mobile client, for instance, have been finding MTG Arena too hot to handle as it’s physically overheating phones. As if that wasn’t bad enough, MTG Arena now also appears to be rapidly draining the battery of players’ phones.
Understandably concerned by this recent development, many MTG Arena mobile players have been taking to Reddit to warn others and find out what they can. Taking to the MTGArena subreddit, for instance, u/_4C1D stated, “since yesterday’s update and the BRO release, the game drains my battery insanely fast. I can barely play for an hour without getting drained by like 60-70%. This hasn’t been a problem prior to the patch.”
Hoping it wasn’t just their phone, u/_4C1D turned to the community, asking, “is anyone else experiencing the same?” For better or worse, u/_4C1D was quickly inundated with responses from players complaining about the same issue. “Same on Android (Pixel 6),” u/ontariojoe claimed. “Post patch, incredible battery drain, overheating, and lagging animations. WoTC done goofed up again.” Similarly, u/notmcride claimed they’ve experienced a similar issue. “Yes, my iPhone 12 drained 5% in like one minute and got warm super quickly. Such a bummer.”
A Major Mobile Malfunction
Unfortunately for players and Wizards of the Coast, the problems don’t end with MTG Arena making phones toasty. Users such as u/poppin_pandos, for instance, claim that this issue is also affecting high-end laptops as well. “Mac laptops are basically unusable with arena, now mobile is too.” Backing up this bold claim, u/GerominoBee stated their “M2 MacBook air that ran perfectly before now gets the same issues, and gets hot as hell which it never has before.” Further supporting this claim u/cdbwdesign noted their own “new M2 MacBook Air had no issues prior to the update. I’m even running it on the lowest graphics and it still burns up.”
Unsurprisingly at this point, given the prevalence of this issue, other mobile devices, such as tablets and iPads, are reportedly also being affected. On some devices, The Brothers’ War patch has made MTG Arena seemingly so power-hungry that charging the device doesn’t solve the issue. For instance, on Reddit, u/Rezae claims their “M1 IPad Pro was treading water in battery % while being plugged in with the official charger.”
As if the performance bugs weren’t enough, the oddities of The Brothers’ War MTG Arena patch don’t end there. According to Reddit user u/Carmicart, the MTG Arena update “took a key feature away.” Similarly experienced by u/TheLastNacho, in their post, u/Carmicart explained that “Just updated the app, and they took away my split audio. I loved listening to my podcasts while playing area; they took that feature away. Now I gotta listen to the bland and repetitive music; hell, I’d probably just play in silence.” Notably, while multiple players reported this issue, we could not replicate it in our own testing.
A Glimmer of Hope
Thankfully, not all players were content to just sit around and complain when faced with this issue. Reddit user u/RadioFr33Europe, for instance, highlighted that there is a “bug post on Wizards’ site. It would be good if everyone could vote for it.” Alongside contacting Wizards support, this should raise awareness of the issue, prompting a fix to be implemented sooner.
Similarly capitalizing on the issues raised, u/usernamecloi stated, “they definitely need to add a graphics changer in the settings. I’m running a snapdragon 860t tablet. It’s struggling with the game.” While this feature would require some development on WotC’s part, this feature would definitely be a welcome one, since, like PCs, not all phones contain the same specs. Therefore, it’s only sensible that graphics options be offered so players can better tailor their experience to their hardware.
Unfortunately, so far, there’s no word on when these frustrating bugs may be fixed. Since the overheating and battery draining issue appears to be rather major, we’re certainly hoping fixes can be implemented sooner rather than later. After all, as u/DiamanteLoco1981 points out when saying, “at least I still have Marvel Snap,” bugs like these may turn away potential players.
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