A Commitment to Format Parity
Posted on Apr 02, 2024
Metagame Authenticity on Magic Online: A Commitment to Format Parity
One of our top priorities for Magic: The Gathering Online is format parity—mirroring the metagames of tabletop Magic as closely as possible. Achieving format parity has been an increasingly challenging task for MTGO due to two major factors: the increase in unique cards created per year, and the increase in partner properties appearing on Magic cards through Universes Beyond releases.
What’s the Issue Here?
Commander, Legacy, and Vintage parity have been hit the hardest as both of these increases are disproportionately found in Commander-specific products. Fortunately, these formats are also the most resilient to lack of parity: Legacy and Vintage because new cards are less likely to impact such high-powered competitive formats, and Commander because its casual nature means players can still have a ton of fun even when it’s missing some cards.
Simply put, Commander without a format staple still offers a deep, rewarding play experience, while Modern without a format staple is functionally no longer Modern to a player practicing for high-level events.
How Are We Responding?
At Daybreak, we recognize the diverse and evolving landscape of Magic: The Gathering. As player preferences and expectations shift, so too do the demands placed on our digital platform.
We recognize that certain card sets are unavailable on MTGO due to licensing restrictions. Others are simply due to the Game Team’s resource constraints. However, this limitation does not mean our formats are destined to diverge broadly from tabletop Magic forever. We are actively exploring solutions, to fill missing gaps in our metagame, all while respecting the agreements that are in place with IP holders.
Our Commitment to Commander
While we are doing what we can to keep pace with every new Commander release, it's essential to understand our focus on supporting and growing the Commander audience on MTGO.
We want to assure our players that we are committed to enhancing their MTGO experience and ensuring that the platform remains a vibrant and dynamic environment for all Magic enthusiasts. While challenges may arise, we remain dedicated to delivering the best possible digital Magic experience. We also value transparent communication with our players whenever possible, so we want to lay out some of our upcoming plans for maintaining format parity and supporting Commander:
- Magic Online Set Availability Page: We have added a set-availability page to MTGO.com dedicated to communicating which Magic: The Gathering sets are on Magic Online. Players can check this page whenever they have questions about the availability of a given set.
- Commander-Focused New-Player Content: We are putting the finishing touches on plans to revamp our New Player products with Outlaws of Thunder Junction. They will help players have a larger palette of choices with which to create decks and jump into Constructed games right away – including Commander!
- New Commander Events: We also want Commander players to have even more play opportunities on MTGO. We will be back in the event lab experimenting different kinds of Limited and Constructed events using Commander deckbuilding rules to expand beyond casual-room play.
Got some feedback for us? Be sure to let us know via our Discord channel, our Twitter/X feed, the Suggestions area of our Forums, and any number of other social platforms.
Author MTGO Team