An opinion on the Arena season changes
I'm your average Joe Arena grinder, with a day job and a family to attend to. I've been playing the game for over 25 years by now, and have received the Arena experience with positive feelings since it allows me to play in the little free time I have - mostly at night when I no longer have to attend the kids or work-related issues. I've also gotten into the habit of playing to the Mythic level via drafts, although it does take some dedication with the limited amount of time I have. I mostly get there during the very last days of the season, though, so I've made it a habit to maintain that pace. There's no way I could dip into constructed, too, dividing my time between two paths would make no sense.
I heard about the Historic Horizons update and related changes by chance (watching a stream) but was happy to find out that it would not affect my regular game routines since I could still qualify by reaching Mythic by the end of the month. However, it turns out that later on that information was changed, and again I learned about it by chance, not because it would have been announced at the Arena front page, as one could expect. So I was quite discouraged to find out that the current season was going to be a full week shorter, especially after not having been able to prepare and speed up my playing rate starting the beginning of the month. It is going to be quite difficult to cram more games in my already busy life now that the season is already closing. To add insult to injury, this shorter season qualifies to a Limited Qualifier, the format that I am the most interested in playing and that so rarely is the format - doesn't really seem logical to me to make it even harder to qualify for something that is already scarcely available. It seems to me that nobody bothered to consider the average grinder when taking this decision - it doesn't really help to get a few free drafts in random formats when what I would actually need is time. Give me an extra week to any season and I'll gladly pay for 3 extra drafts to not feel the pressure of time running out at the end of each month.
I must say I cannot see the logic in not planning ahead and giving the necessary information to the players to approach the ladder grind best using their limited resources, or in not announcing these rather important changes on the Arena welcome screen so the players would at least have the information right away. The only way to know is to go via the regular link to Arena announcements, yet there is nothing that calls one's attention to it saying that there's an important change coming to the current season. This is really trying the limits of my patience and I'm seriously considering whether my time would be better spent elsewhere than grinding Arena every night when eventually these extra hurdles are thrown in my way out of nothing. I hope in the future Wizards has the foresight to consider its player base as a whole, not just the dedicated Historic players craving for their new cards.