Nifft
Penguin Herder
There's an old maxim about not looking for malice where stupidity could suffice. I'd extend that to not looking for ingenious stealth errata where errors could suffice.That's pretty much what I think they would be changing it to, an automatic magic missile. Based on the wording with "wizard at-will originally", I find it unlikely that the article was based on old playtest information. That is, unless, it was like it is now, they changed it to just Magic Missile, and then they changed it back. Which is possible. I get the impression that this is instead an early office version of errata to limit the Arcane Initiate choice. Either way, it seems clear that the article is using such a version due to the other clues.
It's not like WotC has a long history of iron-clad rules-abiding NPC creation.
Cheers, -- N