EA shutting down 50 titles including classic Battlefield, FIFA, Crysis, Need for Speed games (via Polygon)
The company that EA contracts with for hosting the online components for these games, primarily multi-player matchmaking and leader board services, is shutting down their hosting. This means that the dozens of games they host will either be shut down permanently, be transitioned into an offline state, or hopefully be picked up by another company as is Star Wars: Battlefront 2.
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If you look at the many posts that I've made about the Keep in this thread you will see that I am supportive, pleased with the concept, and greatly looking forward to using the DA Keep for DAI and beyond. However, with news like the above (yes, I did read the whole article), how can you expect myself and other players to not be concerned about the longevity of an internet required service like the Keep, especially if there is no offline storage component?
I still play Neverwinter Nights, which is 12 years old. I know many players still play games that are even older. If the DA franchise is dead in 12 years will the servers still be online? Can you guarantee that they will be? No, you can't.
It is not my intention to be alarmist. Neither the Keep nor DAI have even been released yet, so we are certainly in no danger of the servers disappearing any time soon. But it is, and should be, a consideration eventually, and before the development cycle ends on DAI within the next couple of years and you all move onto the next game. Right now, no one expects any patches to fix remaining problems within DAO or DA2. There will come a time when that will apply to DAI also. So PLEASE, at some point, put in support to load up Keep world states that are saved locally.