On August 29th Wizards of the Coast released an announcement that completely altered the course of Arena's first non-rotating format known as Historic. The August announcement positions Historic as a competitive format for serious players. Here are the bullet points:

• Cards will be added to MTG Arena that are only legal in Historic starting with 15-20 cards in November with quarterly releases planned afterward. These cards will not be a part of any specific set and will not be Standard legal.
• Complete sets older than Ixalan will not be added to MTG Arena at this time.
• Historic Events will become a regular monthly event, and the prizes could be some of the Historic-only cards released quarterly.
• The Historic Events are planned to have an entry fee but players will receive some of the Historic-only cards just for playing the event.
• You can buy booster packs from a rotated set in the store after the Fall rotation update, but purchases will be limited to the 45 pack bundle with Gems.
• "Starting after an update in November, crafting a Historic card will require you to redeem two Wildcards of the appropriate rarity instead of one."

The August announcement may have been universally applauded if it were not for that last bullet point. This sentence lit reddit on fire, and the memes have been pouring in all weekend. Many players believe that backlash like this will force the decision to be reversed. Wizards employees Chris Cao and Megan O'Malley defended the Wildcard crafting cost on Weekly MTG on Twitch, saying that cards will acquirable through Historic Draft formats, and pointing out that Historic cards will be of a higher power level than regular cards, implying they will be worth using more Wildcards on.

In the days since the announcement, the question I see the most on Twitch is "why?", or more specifically "why the 2:1 Wildcard ratio?". I am going to answer this question from the Wizards point-of-view, and then I am going to explain where I think they got it wrong and why the 2:1 ratio is dangerous for the Historic format.

Why impose the 2:1 Wildcard exchange ratio on Historic cards?

The straightforward answer to the question is money, and that shouldn't surprise anyone. It is the idea of how to make money that is interesting to me. Wizards is trying to position the Historic format as a premium experience, and that comes with its own set of benefits that we should talk about.

The Benefits of the 2:1 ratio for Wizards (and a few perks for players as well)

I can see why Wizards thinks that the 2:1 ratio will work. While many players have pointed out that other digital games don't do this, Magic Arena is drawing inspiration from paper Magic. If a player wants to get into Modern, the barrier to entry is very high. Modern decks are expensive. Wizards is duplicating this price-based barrier to entry in Magic Arena. This has the potential to create the following benefits;

New players will play Standard and Limited formats

Wizards wants new players to learn Magic through the Standard and Limited formats, and they have good reasons for that. The bigger the format, the more complicated gameplay becomes, and the risk of decision fatigue is real. It is hard enough to build a deck by going card-by-card in your collection in eight set Standard, imagine what building Historic decks could be like in two years! Learning what the common cards in the meta do is a big part of learning the game, and Standard presents a smaller card pool for new players to get comfortable with.

Players will craft more Standard cards

The 2:1 Wildcard ratio doesn't kick in until a set has rotated out of Standard, so the incentive is to buy and craft more cards while they are in Standard. I was never concerned about whether or not I crafted the entire set of Ixalan before rotation, but since this announcement I find myself checking my Not Collected filter looking for obscure rares from rotating sets that may be good years from now. The incentives are where Wizards wants them. Players will be more concerned with spending Wildcards than hoarding them if they care about playing Historic.

Players will play in the monthly Historic events

The ability to pick up these Historic-only cards for a limited time by entering and playing an event rather than paying the 2:1 Wildcard ratio will make these events "must plays" for a lot of Magic fans. This keeps players engaged with the format and the game. Even with an entry fee, possibly a premium fee, I expect these events to be extremely popular.

Risks created by the 2:1 Wildcard ratio

Positioning Historic as a premium format carries some significant risks which could result in a complete failure of the Historic format. Here are some of the risks I see and how the 2:1 Wildcard ratio fits into the picture.

The Historic format could fail because of competition from other Magic formats

I consider MTG Arena the best way ever made to play the best game ever made, but not everyone shares my point of view. Clearly Arena is popular, but so is paper Magic and so is Modern on Magic Online. Prices on Magic Online cards have continued to drop since the launch of Arena, and most entrenched Modern players have decks and collections on MTGO already. I don't think these players would be willing to spend money to play a small format like Historic that happened to include some number of Modern cards.

The Historic format could fail because Wizards makes bad decisions with reprints and bans

Chris Cao mentioned that the Historic format will have its own ban list, and that they may try restrictions and suspensions (temporary bans) to keep the format healthy. As a player I don't find anything about this reassuring. Wizards has a tough job to do; the cards they introduce to Historic have to be exciting and powerful, but if they make a bad format that nobody wants to play they will have to take action by banning, restricting or suspending cards.

Standard and Modern have proven to be resilient formats that have survived many bannings and unbannings, but I don't have faith that a new digital-only format will survive that kind of turbulence. If players have to rebuild and recraft Historic decks because of bannings on a regular basis, they will give up building and crafting Historic decks.

The Historic format could fail to attract new players because of the high cost of entry

We have it good right now, and players joining MTG Arena will have it good for a few years. We have already collected a lot of cards playing Standard and Draft, and our Historic collections will look OK. We will be able to build some decent decks right away based on what we played in pre-rotation Standard. Three years from now, the experience will be very different for new players. I have spent the last five years resenting the Modern format because I was away from the game between Time Spiral and Avacyn Restored. I feel I missed out, and I can't bring myself to buy in because of the high price tag. Arena players will feel compelled to get into Historic to keep playing a Standard deck that is rotating, but eventually those decks will fail to be competitive in a non-rotating format. Consider how terrible my Orzhov Vampires deck would be in competitive Modern.

When that time comes, the best tool Wizards will have to drive players into Historic is the hope that players will be willing to pay a premium to get a different play experience from the game they love (this can be helped by a stale Standard format). The incentives are in the wrong places. Nobody wants a stale Standard format, and nobody wants to pay a premium to get away from it. If the cost barrier is more than players are willing to pay, Historic queue times will get longer and longer.

I love MTG Arena and I want a great non-rotating format to play when the Standard grind becomes repetitive. I can see why Wizards thinks they have an opportunity to make Historic a premium experience product that players will pay for. They should be more concerned with creating a healthy and sustainable format that players want to play. There is a lot to lose if Historic flops as a format, whether it is this year or in three years. I hope Wizards becomes more concerned with the survival of the format than the profitability of the format, at least in the short-term. Don't create barriers to a format before we even know if the format is good.