Shadowmoor Nights, Part II 
New Arena Pet: Shrieking Baboon with a Siren on its Head
Hey, Magic fans! Here at Wizards HQ we’ve just wrapped up an intense week of focus group meetings concentrating on all aspects of the Magic the Gathering: Arena experience. From these meetings we’ve received a lot of great feedback regarding pets, including how popular the ones that make a lot of noise are, like the dog that whines and licks its mouth every few seconds and the lava dog that barks at you every time something enters or leaves play. We’ve put all of the excellent data we gathered into creating our newest pet — Galileo, the insane rollerblading baboon with a siren on its head. Galileo is the first pet that does not stop making noise: whether it’s his ear splitting cranial siren or his nonstop aggressive shrieking, Galileo is not going to be ignored!
Another very interesting piece of information gleaned from our focus groups was how unpopular the “mute” function was, and frustration over pets being confined to only a small corner of the screen. As a result, we have instituted an “always on” function for chat and pet noises, and pets will now be free to roam, (or in Galileo’s case, rollerblade) all over the play area, and even interact with cards!
Galileo has a number of on-click responses, including furious chest slapping, kicking up huge clouds of dust and even permanently growing larger. Focus group participants noted that Galileo’s penchant for knocking cards askew and reordering blockers was “funny” and that the pitched battles now common between opposing pets were “wicked”. I hope that the Arena player base is as excited about the changes as the students of Runnymede Elementary were, and we thank them for their excellent (and free!) feedback in our week long focus group.
Keep posted in coming weeks for additional Arena changes, including new chat functions that feature frank appraisals of your opponent’s play.