Wizards of the Coast reached out to Magic: The Gathering players on Sept. 28, addressing a growing concern over the status of MTG Arena following multiple issues that popped up during the fifth-anniversary celebration of the digital trading card game.
The fifth anniversary of MTG Arena was intended as a mild celebration that included daily rewards from a Rare Wildcard to a card style. But problems started showing up in other areas of the digital card game, specifically within Premium Wilds of the Eldraine (WOE) Draft, which was disabled last week to resolve the issue. Draft was eventually reinstated and players were given a Premium Draft token and XP to compensate for the bug. But the main bug that caused the Draft issues is a threat that hasn’t been answered yet.
“The short answer is, we’re working on it but don’t have an official timeline yet,” said executive producer Chris Kiritz.”For many, the game is fine, but there are certain areas that are still experiencing issues that we’re troubleshooting. As a steward of this game that so many play each day, I know this isn’t a fulfilling answer, but it is where we are right now, and for that we’re sorry.”
An update that took place on Sept. 19 contained database services for general maintenance, which is an ongoing and lengthy process. After months of testing, according to Kiritz, the database services didn’t perform the same on the live server as they had during testing.
The ongoing behind-the-scenes issue isn’t minor, as the MTG Arena staff activated a special PO Live team to help troubleshoot the issues They got the Premier Draft up and running again after installing a new Draft code.
At time of writing, the player inbox remains disabled, preventing players from receiving the Anniversary Week rewards. The Anniversary has been put on hold until the issues have been eliminated and the MTG Arena team feels confident that the system is working properly.
A patch was shipped on Sept. 28, which was the start of bug fixes to an underlying issue that the team is attempting to correct. Additional MTG Arena updates are slated to take place over the next couple of weeks, although none of the scheduled patches should require a full system shutdown.
