MTG Arena artwork for Time Warp from Mystical Archives

[Update #2]: The Adventures in the Forgotten Realms expansion has now arrived with 261 cards in tow!

[Update]: MTG Arena's Mirror Mirror event has brought back rebalanced versions of the strongest banned cards.

Before MTG Arena's Historic format became popular, the plan was for Pioneer to be the default eternal format. In order to achieve this as quickly as possible, Wizards of the Coast began working on an absolutely massive Pioneer Masters set that would've brought in many of the competitive staples into MTG Arena, and with them the Pioneer format.

A fair bit of time has gone by since then, and Pioneer is still nowhere to be seen. And now, according to the newest update, it looks like it's going to be an even longer wait as Pioneer Masters has been pushed back at least a year, if not more.

"Unfortunately, our schedule doesn't have room to focus on growing that unique identity for Historic and fully supporting Pioneer," ready the brief update. "Some steps toward Pioneer will come as part of Historic's growth, but we have paused work toward the Pioneer Masters sets for the time being."

"We do not anticipate a Pioneer Masters release in the next year. We have a solid plan for those sets, but for now, we will be focusing on expanding Historic in other ways."

While I know this will come as a rather unpleasant surprise to some, I'm personally rather ambivalent about the whole situation. Historic has developed into a remarkably fun format, and if that is to be MTG Arena's Legacy variant, then so be it. I'll gladly keep playing it as long as Wizards of the Coast keeps the ban-hammer nearby to clear out any potentially problematic cards.

Should anything change with Pioneer I'll make sure to let you know. Until then, enjoy the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms spoiler season!