Great info, appreciate the thoughtful response!
Right now we’re using digital to help teach us the game and we’re mostly using Arena since we bought some starter kits which gave us the same decks in Arena and paper. It’s been really helpful having both forms of the same decks as we’re able to try things out that we’re unsure about. Long term I think digital will be more of a “pick up and play” type thing so we’re leaning Arena.
I can definitely see why companies would be interested in this. Near total control of content and the resources behind them? Don’t have to worry about being tied to bad publicity of a specific platform?
Of course this is wide open for them to abuse this by restricting content to only what they want, but the nice thing about the fediverse is that it would likely just be one of many resources for content on that topic.
I don’t see many people wanting to create their accounts with such an instance, but definitely could be nice as an “official” source of news. Could one day likely replace official forums on company sites as it essentially fills the same use case but is federated so its content reaches larger audiences.
Thanks for the info! I’ve seen the lack of multiplayer formats as a recurring negative for Arena, but thankfully it’s just my wife and I with no real interest (yet) in going beyond that.
I think we’ll keep an eye on MTGO, though, because eventually we’ll probably want to try something like Commander out. Since we’re social distancing enthusiasts it’s unlikely we’ll look for a local group to play with (nobody in our circle of friends plays MTG) so having a digital option for that will be awesome.