In December 2019, Arc Games announced Magic: Legends, which nobody saw coming. It sounded promising as an MMO action-RPG, blending elements of different genres that allow players to explore the Magic: The Gathering multiverse like no other title had before. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to last. Magic: Legends went through several alpha testing periods and even launched in open beta, but then Arc Games announced it was cancelled. Servers remained online for a few months before quietly closing down at the end of October 2021.
In the wake of this cancellation, many fans asked themselves what went wrong. Magic: Legends wasn't without its flaws, with many players criticizing its microtransactions and short storyline. However, it earned praise for some of its RPG innovations that deserve to be honored through a new Magic: The Gathering RPG remixing some of Magic: Legends' ideas through a lens less focused on live-service elements. Magic: The Gathering's multiverse has so much to offer that Magic: Legends can't be the only attempt at bringing it to life.
Reviving Magic: Legends' Innovations
One of the biggest sources of praise in Magic: Legends was its deckbuilding system. Arc Games set out to incorporate Magic: The Gathering cards into Magic: Legends as much as possible, and it found a very elegant approach. Players built decks of abilities to use in combat, drawing new abilities like cards whenever one was used. That mechanic deserves to be revived and expanded for a single-player MTG RPG where players can draw cards more deliberately. Other games like Slay the Spire have proven the potential of card-based combat, so a new MTG adaptation shouldn't feel intimidated making such a system work.
Another strength of Magic: Legends was its environments. Players could visit a variety of iconic planes from Magic: The Gathering and explore at their leisure. Although there's lots of MTG games out there, few have rendered the Magic multiverse in such detail. The diverse fantasy settings that Magic has is perfect for a large-scale, open-world RPG about planeswalkers discovering the breadth of the multiverse. The next MTG game should look to Magic: Legends' renderings of Zendikar, Dominaria, and so on.
Focusing on Magic: The Gathering's World
Because of Magic: Legends' mixed reputation, any studio that makes a new Magic: The Gathering game has to take its legacy into account. The next RPG adaptation should step away from Magic: Legends' free-to-play MMO elements. Any second attempt at making a live-service game with microtransactions will no doubt get a wary response from fans, even if the microtransactions are implemented modestly and responsibly. It'd be better to make an RPG that's either purely single-player or has party-based online multiplayer so friends can explore areas and complete missions together.
Magic: Legends' short life is a tragedy for the IP, but MTG still has a lot that it can contribute to the video game industry. Anyone who needs evidence Magic: The Gathering offers a good RPG setting should look no further than the Dungeons and Dragons crossover expansions it has already generated. Dungeons and Dragons supplemental books about Ravnica, Theros, and Strixhaven have all been received praise, and those are only three of many worlds worth visiting. If Magic: The Gathering is so well suited for a tabletop RPG, it can certainly slot into a video game format well too, so long as it's cared for properly and finds a graceful way to inherit the achievements of Magic: Legends.