I wouldn't mind Fantasy Flight Games. They least have the manpower and have a proven record of supporting LCG's as much and long as they can.
Wasn't it said a few years ago that Arcane Wonders wanted to re-do the Forcemaster vs. Warlord expansion, as well as the Conquest of Kumanjaro, and make 2nd editions? Guess we'll never get to see the day!
FFG has shown with their upcoming Game of Thrones Board Game expansion that they are more than willing to support their games in the long-run. At least if they were to buy out the property, we would have a revamped game, with new fresh components and a game that is supported in the future- imagine how nice it would be to see a new mage for Arena that is properly playable
!
But waiting for four years does kill some archmage hype. (I really think they should do it soon since it would probably catch the attention from a lot of former players.)
Players will not come back simply because of the release of an Archmage: not only has part of the playerbase never played with Domination, there is still a dark cloud overhead which is Arcane Wonder's lack of caring in regards to interacting with the community. People would play with the Archmage 3-4 times before putting Mage Wars away again and letting it collect dust.
To me it just feels like a lot of fans are trying to put the blame somewhere for the game not doing as well as it once did.
So, you haven't been following anything of what has been said on these forums for the last year?
The Mage Wars community is still alive, but Arena development is simply dead. If you didn't know, Mage Wars is like any other board game, and people will move on to the next one once they're bored with it. Nothing new has been popping up, and so most of the playerbase is moving on and playing other games.
It has nothing to do with financial success- Arcane Wonders killed its own franchise and left it to die. I doubt that we'll even be seeing Academy sets released in a few years time.