EA Cancels Its MOBA Experiment, Dawngate

MOBAs are the new MMO. Everyone sees how sucessful Dota and LoL is so they try to copy it. But it suffers from the same problem that in the 2 years it takes to make a brand new MOBA nobody is going to give a shit because everyone is already playing dota.

Borderlands MOBA? Who fucking cares

Witcher MOBA? What the fuck are you even doing?

I had no idea this was out in any way. So I guess the Gearbox and Blizzard games are the other two big MOBA's still on the way, unless I forgot one.

Honestly felt like dawngate was doing a better job than LoL in terms of gameplay and just general asthetics the heroes were great as well.

I play/ed a lot of Lol, some Dota, a bit of Smite, but never heard of this.

Praise the sun

Too bad. I actually liked the rune system way more than in League of Legends. And the role system was interesting too, even though it felt a bit stiff to lock yourself into a very specific role for the whole match.

Shouldn't "difficult decisions about how to proceed" be something that happens in internal Alpha testing, not public Beta testing?

Dawngate had a really impressive loading time that was basically instantaneous for all players, and It's a shame that that amazing loading time isn't going to live on.

Game was okay too, tried to do some things differently. I wonder if the game was really doing so poorly it wasn't even worth keeping servers up though?

Aw, that's a bummer. I put a couple of hours into Dawngate a while ago. It was fun.

first smart moba-related move made ever since the creation of the moba genre.

I played it, it was alright. It never had enough going for it to grab me away from Dota 2 or LoL (which I alternate between at different times). I feel bad for the people at the studio. I got to know a couple of them at various cons and such, and they were good people. I hope they all land on their feet.

Strife, which is S2's (maker's of Heroes of Newerth) new MOBA. We'll see how that goes for them, as they are kind of alienating their core fan base moving away from Dota style mechanics and towards more League style mechanics.

Agree with everyone else. MOBAs are the new MMO. They're obviously less of an investment so they can afford to do things like this.

Trouble is no matter how much your game is "pushing the genre forward" That's not necessarily what the genre needs. As Brad has explained many times, Dota has a somewhat infinite pool of strategy to draw from, it never really feels stale.

I guess you could say that the meta really broke dawngate...

Actually, it's about ethics in MOBAs.

#DawnGate

I played a few matches of this and uninstalled it. Plays extremely similarly to LoL and looks even more similar. The company's whole "no meta" thing was valiant but is useless as there will always be a few decided upon best builds and strategies (just like there is in anything).

I played this game in REAL early alpha with the devs (before it was bought by EA?) and it seemed pretty good, great group of guys those devs, hoping they have an eventful future!

This is pretty much the first interesting thing I have seen about Dawngate.

I feel like I have read about Dawngate before and it was always troubled.

Unfortunately big companies like EA don't know how to handle a game in this space so they will never be able to reap any rewards from it.

It's honestly surprising they tried at all considering how little support it seemed they gave this game- which is weird because it seemed to have interesting ideas. It probably could have done ok if given some time and maybe some kind of marketing so people even knew it existed.

I haven't played it, though, so this is just speculation. I haven't seen much said from people who have played it so I don't know if it's well made or not or if it seems like they cant get a grasp on the game.

It seems really strange from the outside.

Yeah that's sort of the biggest thing that bums me out about this. Dawngate was a moba. Moba's are mobas, but the lore/art/story thing they had going for it was actually pretty cool ):

EA always seems to be following 'the next big thing', and they're always too late. They need to switch gears and try to create something groundbreaking of their own.

Can't keep up with all these gates anymore.

And although the game has grown, we’re not seeing the progress we’d hoped for.

Translation: We were hoping to make a lot of money quickly by having a lot more players join than should reasonably be expected in the crowded MOBA market.

It's a little too bad. More competition is only a good thing in any market. I also know a number of people in the scene who were being drawn to it, and even a few who were talking about professional teams. I guess most of that (the non- DotA / LoL crowd) is going to be drawn to the Blizzard game.

Last I heard IdrA, of Starcraft infamy, was joining a team for Heroes of the Storm.

As opposed to small companies like Valve, Riot, and Activision-Blizzard? :p

Blizzard's got it right. Make it more casual to draw in a new audience that are too intimidated by LoL/DOTA's shitty archaic mechanics.

R.I.P. DongGate

Oh you're saying EA is piggybacking on a recent gaming trend and it's not working out for them? Consider me shocked.

@matoyak: Does Activision count? I don't know if Blizzards MOBA is out yet let alone successful (legitimately- I don't know).

Valve got huge. I wouldn't say they were as big as they are now when DOTA 2 released, and they're not as big as EA, no. They have a lot of assets though, sure, but they're not at all the same in terms of corporate size. Not at all.

Riot wasn't at all anything before LOL took off so that was just a bad example on your part. They got big because of how they managed their MOBA game. They were nothing before it.

I see what you're getting at, but it's moot to my point, when my point was very clearly that that EA does not know how to cultivate a fan base let alone a free to play game fan base. I don't get why they bother even dipping their toes in it.

oh, dong gate, the sequel to dong guard. bummer

Pretty disappointing news, it actually did do most MOBA things quite well, varied design and at least the start of an interesting world and setting for the genera. The marketing of it was almost nonexistent though, I don't think it even was downloadable on Origin. It.. didn't really do anything new but had solid mechanics and a few interesting twists.

Yep, that really stuck out to me too. Even the launcher looks almost identical, down to the smallest details. It's not necessarily bad, it just feels...icky when a game chooses to just directly copy a much more popular game so blatantly.

Dawngate, LoL and Strife are all pretty casual.

There's nothing shitty or archaic about Dota's mechanics, you're just a baddy. Sorry you're so bad, bud.

Thats unfortunate, I liked Dawngate, though I didn't play a huge amount because of Heroes. I like trying lots of different mobas, and dawn gate had some cool ideas. I played it a lot during Heroes downtime.

Progression was a CRAWL though. Slightly improved by the fact you could get heroes in the post-game packs.

@bargainben: Dawngate-gate

Dawnghazi?

That's a shame. It seemed interesting from the little I played of it and I liked to sometimes check in on the developers stream where they talked about the game. Sadly, I don't have the time to invest in another Moba. I prefered Dota over LoL so I stuck with that. It will take a whole lot of convincing before I switch to a different Moba.

And I don't really like the idea of runes, gems, artifacts, amplifiers and ability/skill trees outside the matches. Sure, most multiplayer games have some sort of progression aspect to them these days. But I just don't like it in Mobas for some reason.

Every time they mentioned this game the first thing they pointed out was how it was not a clone.. thats a really unfortunate starting position for this game. It always rubbed me the wrong way how cynical this project felt. the developers are obviously talented and passionate but it always had that feel that EA had commissioned a League of Legends game. "We want one of that"

So the devs struggled to somehow break down the entire genre into smaller components and see if they could put them together in a new way so it still worked but was different. This high concept approach rarely works out. it has to be driven by a core of originality and passion. Here the core was the concept and the originality never worked out despite the passion.

I think you both mean Donggate

Dawngate wasnt bad, just kinda generic.

I don't know if games should be charging for stuff in "beta".

Dawngate was not a bad game at all and brought some interesting ideas to the genre. But mobas have such a high skill ceiling it's hard to get people to play more than one. It's a good feeling to play one and 'get good'. It really sucks switching over and starting at square one again.

Making a new MOBA is like making a new Candy Land.

How long before... that other one ( haha can't even remember the name), goes the same way??

STRIFE! So similar to smite... damn idiots.

I literally just uninstalled this off of my system and then they decide to cancel it... What powers do I possess?!

In a few years I'd like a post mortem of where League started to steamroll and pull away from Heroes of Newerth and why it happened.

I have always thought HoN to be a much better game, and I can't stand the way LoL looks.

O man that's to bad. I have a friend to moved to EA just to work on this game.

I'm real sad to hear this, as Dawngate was my favorite top-down MOBA to dip my toes in every once in a while. I really enjoyed their role system and jungle setup.

It's hard to believe they'd completely scrap everything built over the last two years, though. Maybe they'll revamp it into something else that would be an easier sell... Star Wars MOBA, maybe?

Yay less DoTA clones.