EA is plotting Apex Legends 2.0 while scapegoating Dragon Age 4’s lack of live-service features
Last week’s information that BioWare had shed a good portion of its remaining workforce following Dragon Age: The Veilguard failing to fulfill EA’s ambitious promises to buyers (which is not the identical as truly failing) wasn’t actually information for us right here on MOP. Dragon Age 4 cut multiplayer out all the way back in 2021, so it wasn’t even on the sting of our radar, and BioWare has no reside MMORPGs. The core MMOs we care about from EA at the moment are safely rehomed underneath the Broadsword banner, even Star Wars The Old Republic.
Anyhow, what refreshes the story with relevance for the MMO and multiplayer set is that EA CEO Andrew Wilson addressed the corporate’s lackluster Q3FY25 financials by seemingly heaping the blame for Dragon Age again on BioWare.
“In order to break out beyond the core audience, games need to directly connect to the evolving demands of players who increasingly seek shared-world features and deeper engagement alongside high-quality narratives in this beloved category,” Wilson stated. “Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played. However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.”
In different phrases, he’s mainly complaining that the sport didn’t have sufficient reside service and multiplayer parts to take advantage of – a really completely different stance than Wilson took last fall.
Readers would possibly do not forget that 4 years in the past when BioWare first eliminated multiplayer from the sport, we could already see signs of a philosophy split at EA. Allow me to cite MOP’s Justin: “This move comes after a back-and-forth struggle between the studio and BioWare’s parent company Electronic Arts. EA has had a mandate that all of its games offer some sort of online component, but BioWare balked at this for Dragon Age 4, and EA relented.”
Of course, the explanation BioWare needed multiplayer gone was that the sport had already been in improvement for six years at that time with a management overturn and reboot underneath its belt, which means multiplayer was slowing down improvement much more – plus BioWare didn’t wish to simply make “Anthem with dragons.” (Given how badly Anthem went, you may sort of perceive why.)
Lest you suppose this is all about Dragon Age, Wilson also took a moment to pick on Apex Legends, which is apparently seeing “tens of millions of people” who play usually out of its 200M+ playerbase, however that simply isn’t sufficient for the execs as a result of they wish to make much more cash. They’re planning a revamp known as Apex Legends 2.0. What could go wrong?
