What was Dawngate? It was EA’s attempt at a MOBA, It was being developed by Waystone Games. It was shut down February 4th, 2015 before that it had multiple betas with an open beta that started April 10th, 2014. What did it do to set itself apart from League of Legends and Dota, an interesting loadout system with passive bonus ultimately an interesting take on the rune system in League. You can also select a role for the match it could be gladiator, tactician, hunter, or predator which each giving extra passive bonuses to certain things like kills and such. Along with a take on passive income from wellsprings that teams can fight over, with workers you can attack and kill ultimately hurting the enemy team in passive vim/gold intake. While also only featuring two lanes and a large jungle which is still unique years later and instead of champions their called shapers. None of them have “Mana bar’s” abilities are on cooldowns most of the time with some shapers using a unique, not mana resource whether its blood or spirit or what have you. Where it was the same it was a 5 v 5 game with an ever-rotating list of free character to try and play. you could purchase shapers with premium currency or the free currency you gain from playing matchmaking. if all this sounds interesting and cool to you a curious YouTube search of “Dawngate” gives you plenty of videos and reviews and a more in-depth look at the systems mentions.
So why did it get canceled ultimately EA had higher hopes for the title then it was achieving. The community wasn’t there in EA eye’s they wanted a League of Legends killer. They didn’t get that they got a niche MOBA that had a small dedicated player base. So EA canceled the game after six months of open beta and disbanded the team working on it. While yes it was only in beta it did have a functional cash shop that you could purchase the premium currency at. and arguably that makes the game, not in beta and released to the general public. EA saw that the cash wasn’t coming in on the cash shop side of things. They had a knee jerk reaction and canceled it financially it makes sense.
A glance at the Dawngate subreddit shows two fan projects hoping to give new life to the game AetherForged and Shrine of Imanna. A brief history of AetherForged it fell apart mainly out of it being fan project then it was put back together by !mpact games. About a month ago they posted a blog post of what’s going and what is still needed. !mpact games is a small indie studio who has an early access game Hanako: Honor & Blade which feature direction driven swordplay. Currently sitting at mostly positive with 62 reviews while not the most extensive portfolio of games it is better than none or a bad one under their belt. so if I had to bet AetherForged seems to be in a good place to be made. Shrine of Imanna on their subreddit has a development update video that is about 3 months old of what they have so far its clearly a work in progress and that’s it.
while it found niche appeal EA wasn’t making money and saw no growth in the future of the game.
