Shadow Realms cancelled, likely reassigning staff to SWTOR

Impacthound

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/6577840/thread/427383#6577840

https://shadowrealms.com/blog/an-important-update-on-shadow-realms

 

February 9, 2015

Today I’m sharing some important news about Shadow Realms and our BioWare Austin studio.

We’ve made the decision to not move forward with development of Shadow Realms. We fully recognize that this news is disappointing to some of our fans, so I want to explain more behind this decision.

While the team did amazing work on the game concept and we got lots of great feedback from our fans at events and through other game testing, right now there are other projects for the team to work on within the BioWare studios for the coming year and beyond. We’ve got an incredibly talented team here at the Austin studio, and they are excited and already deep on new projects within the BioWare family, ones that will make some great BioWare games even better.

These include additional ongoing enhancements to the award-winning Dragon Age: Inquisition, as well as the next game in the Mass Effect series and other new IP.

But the biggest focus for our team in BioWare Austin will be on Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. As every Star Wars™ fan knows, this is a massive year in the Star Wars universe. We have some great plans for expanding this epic game this year, and look forward to sharing the news about those plans with our players in the coming weeks.

For all the people that registered for the Shadow Realms Closed Alpha, we’re working on a way to say thank-you for signing up. To all those players that gave us feedback at Gamescom and PAX, and those that shared their thoughts and impressions in the past months, we thank you for being part of the conversation. 

Jeff Hickman

General Manager, BioWare Austin

 

We shall see, Mr. Hickman. 

Azaron_Nightblade

It's a shame about Shadow Realms, since I had started to look forward to it, but hopefully this will allow them to focus on delivering more story content like they said they would after SoR, and a partial return to the Class stories, which they hinted would happen if the Class story content in SoR was well received.

I suspect constantly producing new "episodes" for Shadow Realms alongside making new story content for SWTOR wasn't feasible for them to keep up. Or maybe they feared no one would buy the SR content.

Either way, the only thing we can hope for now is that good things come of this - since I don't see them reversing such a decision once its been made.

Calgor

Call me a fool but I believe what they are saying in the announcement. I think with Ep 7 coming out they are reallocating resources back into SWTOR and not just blowing smoke into our collective sarlaac pits to save face.

What most likely does make me a fool is the fact I am hoping the movie will give at least a wink and a nod to something old republic-ish that the game can tie into and make it more than just a supposed boost cause they both have Star Wars in their names.

Gretelda

Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade

I suspect constantly producing new "episodes" for Shadow Realms alongside making new story content for SWTOR wasn't feasible for them to keep up. Or maybe they feared no one would buy the SR content.

that could be easily the case. just like how people are mad for the inevitable DLCs for Evolve. (i think Shadow Realms was suppose to be a 4 on 1 too? not sure)

Battlerock

Either you misspelled something or used it in the wrong context, shame, shame, shame.

Asm0deus

Too bad shadow realms actually looked like it might be good.

Malabooga

lol BW Austin has been nothng but fail so far. Competent people have either left or working on DAI, ME and this "other new IP".

But im glad to hear their "focus" will be on SWTOR from now on. Whatever that means....guess recoloring stuff and putting it in gambling boxes aint workng any more.

Even Andryah threw in the towel (read: fired)