The days of Dragon Age on Facebook are coming to a close.
Back in late 2010, BioWare rolled out Dragon Age Legends on Facebook as part of the build-up to Dragon Age 2. The studio said at the time that it wanted to “change the perception of social network games and attract new players to the Facebook platform by raising the quality bar,” and also by offering five unique Dragon Age 2 items that could only be unlocked by playing Legends. I don’t know how well it succeeded at that goal, although I’m told it wasn’t terrible, but good or bad, it all comes to an end next month.
“This is by no means a reflection on the quality of the game; the awesome team who created it; or the incredible, passionate community who has supported it,” BioWare wrote on the Dragon Age Legends blog. “While it’s never fun to say goodbye, consider it only temporary. We’re also hard at work on our next core social projects, and we promise you they will be even more epic than anything we’ve done before.”
Players can no longer purchase crowns, the in-game currency, and existing crowns cannot be transferred to any current or future BioWare Social releases. On the upside, people with crowns to burn will be able to enjoy an end-of-days blowout through a “massive fire sale” on everything in the game, and players of the BioWare Social game Age of Champions who have played Dragon Age Legends within the past three months [and presumably anytime between now and the shutdown] will be given a Legends-inspired weapon, a Viscount Ravi army unit, in-game currency and an exclusive medal for their Age of Champions profile page.
Finally, for those who just really love Dragon Age Legends and can’t bear the thought of seeing it go, BioWare is working on a stand-alone, single-player version of the game which it will give away free, shortly after the Facebook edition closes.
Dragon Age Legends still brings in around 10,000 daily average users and 110,000 monthly average users, according to AppData, which sounds not too terribly awful until you compare it to, say, CityVille, which brings in 5.6 million DAU and nearly 37 million MAU. Then, suddenly, the shutdown starts to sound a little more reasonable.
Dragon Age Legends will go down once and for all on June 18.
