D&D General D&D Dark Alliance Servers Shutting Down

Tuque Games, subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast, announced on the game’s Steam page that the video game Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance will be removed frm online storefronts and have their multiplayer servers shut down. The removal of the game will happen on February 23, 2025. An offline mode will be available in single player mode including all DLC. From the official statement:

We will be shutting down (shut down) the Dark Alliance servers on 2/24/2025 and it will no longer be available to purchase starting that day. The base game and all DLC are still available to play in offline single player by anyone who currently owns it.

Released on June 21, 2021, Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance was a successor to Snowblind and Interplay’s console games Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance I & II. The third-person action brawler starring Drizzt Do’Urden and his companions met with mixed reviews on release. Tuque released one DLC for the game titled Echoes of the Blood War.

 

[Jadeite]

How was it a successor? It just used the name, but Dungeon Siege 3 was more of a successor to Dark Alliance 1 and 2 (and not to Dungeon Siege 1 and 2).

 

[Abstruse]

How was it a successor? It just used the name, but Dungeon Siege 3 was more of a successor to Dark Alliance 1 and 2 (and not to Dungeon Siege 1 and 2).

Similar gameplay style of an arcade-style beat-'em-up matched with story content. Also, that's what they said when the game was in early marketing and called "Dark Alliance III".

Granted, I've only played Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel (which used the same Snowblind engine as the original Dark Alliance and...well, that opened a legal can of worms that ended in Interplay's demise, but that's another story) and not the original Dark Alliance games. But in my opinion, it felt similar enough to call itself a successor.

 

[Ramaster]

How was it a successor? It just used the name, but Dungeon Siege 3 was more of a successor to Dark Alliance 1 and 2 (and not to Dungeon Siege 1 and 2).

While it being a successor is high debatable as you point out, the more puzzling thing to me is that they chose to draw on the original Dark Alliance games for name recognition.

Don't get me wrong, the Snowblind games are all bangers (original DA I-II, Champions of Norrath I-II, War in the North, the Justice League games and I even remember a WW2 isometric that used it!), but they don't really feel like they are on the zeitgeist.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

I enjoyed Dark Alliance, but yeah it was too much of an arcade style experience and not even spiritually connected to the original Dark Alliance games, both of which have been updated for modern consoles and PC.

 

[Mike Myler]

Picked this up a couple of weeks ago for $10 and returned it after a day or two. From the polish that it did have (the cinematics were solid amirite?) I could just hear the plaintive wailing of devs screaming "it's not ready yet! Don't release it!"

I was surprised that the servers were still up.

 

[Distracted DM]

How was it a successor? It just used the name, but Dungeon Siege 3 was more of a successor to Dark Alliance 1 and 2 (and not to Dungeon Siege 1 and 2).

Released half-baked and it was mooching off the name more than living on its own merit.
There could've been a good game in there if things had been done differently... It did not do much credit to WotC as a video game publisher-owner.

 

[Valetudo]

I think early builds looked more like old dark alliance games but they reset development. I could be wrong on that one it's been awhile.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I would be funny if later a homemade clone was created thanks some videogame creative mode like Roblox or Fortnite.

Maybe I can't explain it with the right words but my opinion is the future of multiplayer online videogames is you pay for a month-service but you can enjoy different titles, sharing the sames skins or other cosmetic elemtns (for housing). Then this game could appear like a modo within the creative LEGO: Fortnite, and then we have got the children buying the toys.

 

[Abstruse]

I would be funny if later a homemade clone was created thanks some videogame creative mode like Roblox or Fortnite.

Maybe I can't explain it with the right words but my opinion is the future of multiplayer online videogames is you pay for a month-service but you can enjoy different titles, sharing the sames skins or other cosmetic elemtns (for housing). Then this game could appear like a modo within the creative LEGO: Fortnite, and then we have got the children buying the toys.

That's not going to happen just because of the technological limitations. It was one of the promises the NFT pushers made a couple years back - you could take your items and skins and whatnot from one video game to another because your NFT meant you owned it.

Except ask any modder about doing that and they'll laugh. It is a lot of work to import assets from Fallout 3 into Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 76 into Fallout 4 and those games use the exact same version of the same engine. Imagine games with different engines by different developers. Even using the same engine like Unreal doesn't make them compatible because most developers will alter the engine in significant ways to get it to do what they want for their game.

You are, however, right about the monthly subscription. That's the route that the console companies want for sure with Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, and Nintendo Switch Online. Even the publishers get in on it with EA Play and Ubisoft+. You pay us $X/mo, you get access to all these video games.

The question is whether the money they make from people who subscribe and forget or don't play that often (like me) counters the lost sales from full-price retail on big titles. Why would I pay $69.99 for Starfield or Call of Duty 6 when I can get it for $10/mo along with dozens of other games? But apparently it's working because they keep doing it...