Today, Wizards of the Coast announced that Magic: the Gathering Arena will transition into an Open Beta on Thursday September 27, 2018. The Open Beta will be accompanied by the release of Guilds of Ravnica and full account wipes for all Closed Beta players.
Guilds of Ravnica Will Be Playable on 9/27
The Guilds of Ravnica card set will be deployed with the the Open Beta on 9/27, meaning that Magic’s newest set will be playable on MTG Arena a day before its official paper prerelease. This has resulted in the Magic Online prerelease getting moved up a day to 9/27, as well, to match Guilds of Ravnica’s availability on MTG Arena.
Along with the release of Guilds of Ravnica comes the first Standard rotation in MTG Arena’s history. All of MTG Arena’s formats currently use the Standard card pool and Wizards has repeatedly stated that they’re trying to figure new ways for players to use cards that rotate out of Standard. However, they successfully dodged the problem of the Kaladesh and Amonkhet blocks rotating out of Standard by removing them from the Open Beta and…by wiping all Closed Beta accounts
All Closed Beta Accounts Will Be Wiped—But This Will Be the Last Wipe
That’s right, if you were a player in the Closed Beta, all of your progress and your entire collection will be wiped in the transition to MTG Arena’s Open Beta. We’ve known this was coming, but an announcement a week before the account wipe is sure to take many players by surprise.
As with previous account wipes, all cards, Wildcards, Gold, and packs will be removed from your account, and all purchases made with Gems will be reimbursed back to you in the form of more Gems.
In better news, Wizards stated that they are not intending to wipe Open Beta accounts when MTG Arena transitions to an official non-Beta release.
Redeemable Codes in Physical Products
After testing redeemable codes in Dominaria packs last year, Wizards is expanding the concept to include more physical products during the Open Beta. All Guilds of Ravnica prerelease packs will include an entry to an MTG Arena Sealed event, the Guilds of Ravnica Planeswalker Deck will include a code to unlock the same deck on MTG Arena, and every one in eight Guilds of Ravnica booster packs will include a code non-unique code good for three packs in MTG Arena.