First of all: I liked Dawngate. It was a fun game. But, the people on the Dawngate Reddit are really getting in their two-minute hate at EA. I'm not a huge fan of EA, but, in this case, I can see the business sense in what they did.
I can't really blame them for closing Dawngate though. It's been in Beta for a year and a half, still had balance problems and had low populations even during peak hours (sometimes taking 15~ minutes for a game to pop for me, someone at the middle/newbie MMR.) There's no guarantee it was going to be a money maker with LoL, DotA2, Smite and soon Heroes of the Storm to compete with. EA is also giving refunds on in-game purchases. Every dollar spent on Dawngate is a loss; odds are, they would have been throwing good money after bad to keep developing it. An economic reality that a lot of gamers don't want to face, I know, but games need to either make money or not be someone's primary source of income to get made.
If Dawngate had gotten to this level of polish a year, maybe two years ago, it would have been well-positioned to be a major player. Unfortunately, it just didn't strike at the right moment. What Waystone provided [an amazing lore and world] is sadly something that the vast market of MOBA players don't care about.
People blame EA for not advertising; I constantly see people saying "my friends say they would have played it if they heard about it!" Honestly, these people are most likely soft lying. They honestly believe that they would have played it, but the fact is, they would not have. You know how I know? Because anyone passingly familiar with MOBAs is aware when new ones show up because we all follow the same news outlets, or have friends who try them and try to get us to play. I doubt most of them would have tried Dawngate if they had heard about it, and those that DID try, even fewer would become paying customers.
Which is sad. Dawngate was on the way to be a very good game. It just missed the moment.
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P.S.,
With NaNoWriMo happening, I realized I'd been neglecting the blog. Maybe after, I'll get back to writing more regularly.
