By Aug. 26, BioWare's official forums will be no more.
Lead community manager Conal Pierse made the announcement, saying the decision wasn't easy. However, while the public boards for Mass Effect, Dragon Age and legacy titles from BioWare will be closing down, the forums for Star Wars: The Old Republic will stay up. This is because it runs on a separate website and houses several different boards dedicated to the game.
Pierse explained that the decision to shut down BioWare's forums came about as more and more avenues for interacting with players came about. In the past, the forums were the only way that the developer could connect with fans. Now, there's Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the rest of the internet to do just that.
"With so many great things so widely available, our developers today find themselves spending more time on other sites, and less time in our own forums. And to our fans and players who came to those boards looking to talk to us, it was a great disservice," he said.
As it closes most of its public boards on Aug. 26, BioWare, however, will maintain some private ones, which can be used for beta feedback and other special projects in the future. The public boards contain a lot of information that fans may want to go back to so these will remain live until Oct. 25, although in read-only state. After that, they will be taken down completely.
While long-time fans will certainly be sad to see the forums go, they still have the developer's official social media accounts to go to.
In June, it was announced that Mass Effect novels will be released in an effort to bridge the original trilogy and Andromeda when it comes out in early 2017 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Titan Books will be publishing the novels, the first of which, Mass Effect: Andromeda Initiative, is written by N.K. Jemsin and is expected to roll out in August. The second and third books are set to come out in March and September 2017 but don't have titles and authors yet. The last book also doesn't have a title yet but it will be written by Mass Effect creative director Mac Walters and will be released in March 2018.
Mass Effect: Andromeda was originally meant to come out in 2016 but BioWare delayed the release date to ensure that it can "deliver everything the game can be and should be."
