[2023] State of Formats in MTG Arena (No plans for Modern)

Originally posted by dwindleelflock

This is interesting for sure. I would love to see charts like this more often from them. I would also like to see a breakdown of causal play queue and ranked queue, but I assume if they won't include it, they are roughly the same.

The one thing that is surprising to me is that alchemy is twice as popular as explorer. From my experience in ranked BO3 queues, explorer pairs you up with an opponent of similar rank way faster than alchemy. In alchemy queues I have 1+ minutes of waiting time and often getting paired against the same person or people from way below my rank. This happens way less often in explorer. Maybe it's just the timezone and when I play arena that affects it. For the longest time I assumed it has to be the casual play queue influencing the percentages, but them not splitting them up second time around makes me think this is way less likely to be true.

As for brawl it would be interesting to see if they abandon standard brawl completely. Is there anyone who prefers it to historic brawl? Maybe it's more new player friendly?

Originally posted by deathrattlestwice

Why is the team not dedicated to adding Modern to Arena considering the format's popularity?

Originally posted by Rainfall7711

Is there any chance of an article about draft? It would be cool to see it compared to constructed.

Originally posted by pelican15

Appreciate you guys doing a Pioneer Masters for explorer.

For me, draftability and pack cracking is a huge part of getting my hands on MTGA cards, and the lack-there-of being one of the reasons why anthology cards (and explorer in general) feels so inaccessible. Like many other Explorers, I'm stuck opening standard/supplemental set packs that have little to no impact on my format of choice, and I need to scrounge wildcards to be able to afford the countless anthology cards I'm looking to get. Pioneer Masters seems to remedy that.

If you're able to answer, will Pioneer Masters be draftable? Will cards from the Explorer Anthologies be included in this set? If not, will your team maybe be implementing an alternate way to acquire these Anthology cards?

Thanks Jay!

Originally posted by Endless5340

Am I to understand that Pioneer Masters is designed to help make collecting cards that already exist on Arena easier?

I like Pioneer and I like to draft... I am worried that this will be a set full of cards I already have on Arena.