Originally Posted by
MGB
They need to allow people to make real money playing Arena outside of the Top-8 players in the world or whoever is qualified for the MPL based on it.
I can make $8-$16 an hour playing Magic Online Modern/Legacy leagues. That may not be good enough as a full time job but it's an excellent way to monetize my hobby because I have fun playing the game even when it's not making me any money. But the secondary market on MTGO and the ability to convert prizes into US dollars makes MTGO so much better, in my eyes, than Arena. And if you spike any big tournament on MTGO (like a Challenge, or a Playoff, or MCQ, or a Qualifier, etc), the payout is in the hundreds of dollars for the top8 and sometimes even the top16.
You can grind Arena for hours every day for months and have absolutely nothing to show for it. You can grind MTGO for hours every day and if you're a even just a semi-decent player you can actually have a positive cash flow to show for it, and if you're a good to great player you can make hundreds of dollars every month playing it.
Right now in my eyes, Arena only has one thing going for it: pretty graphics and nicer UI. That's it. MTGO has better formats and actual cash incentives to play.
If Arena had a similar secondary market or even just some Wizards designed payout system that lets you convert wins into tickets that could be sold for cash, then I'd go back to playing it. But even though I sunk $200 into Arena when it first came out, I haven't touched it in months. Life's too short to throw away time on something that really doesn't net you much in the end.