Weekend Reading: Coins, Crowns and Legends

A few days after the launch of Dragon Age 2, the latest role-playing game offering from developer BioWare, the publisher Electronic Arts has also launched Dragon Age: Legends, a game that is played on Facebook and uses the free-to-play and microtransaction business model.

I gave my initial impression on Dragon Age: Legends on Softpedia as part of a Quick Look and I have played more of the game since then, just as the development team has added some content and tweaked some of the mechanics.

And, as long as the resources are there to develop Legends further and player interest remains up, I believe that this Dragon Age spin off might be a sign of how mainstream gaming series make the step to the social space.

Dragon Age: Legends is not something that asks you to get a lot of friends involved and then steers some content your way and later call it a day.

In order to succeed you need tactics, a well-developed character, good management skills in the castle sector and (a downside for me) friends that create characters and then commit to playing and leveling up their characters.

Legends can be made easier by buying crowns with real world money in order to speed up things and in order to get some better gear, but there seems to be nothing that cannot be accomplished by a determined player that resists the lure of using money.

The threat here is that the Dragon Age spin-off will disappoint both those who like social games for the social aspect and those who love role-playing games and will not be able to stand the cool-downs and the monetization.

On the other hand, Legends could be the game that bridges the more hardcore and more casual crowds and opens up a path for big games to move to Facebook without losing their essence while gaining a bigger audience.