One of the design goals of Dragon Age Legends is to have meaningful social mechanics. Many social game are social only in the sense that they use the player's social graph to help spread the game virally through her network - by encouraging the player to invite her friends as neighbors to grow her farm, for example, or trading items with one another through the gifting system to finish a building. While these mechanics help grow a social game's visibility, they don't necessarily make the actual experience of playing the game more fun.

Our core social feature in Legends is borrowing friends' characters to fight alongside one's own character in combat. As one's friends level up their own characters, they make the game more fun by providing new skills and stronger characters to use. Unlike most RPGs, players of Legends will be able to try out the entire skill tree depending on how their friends upgrade their characters. Borrowing a friend's character also provides that friend with a small gold bonus, which creates some interesting dynamics - encouraging players to have the most appealing characters (to earn more gold) while also giving veterans a charitable reason to bring along low-level friends they want to help.

However, a genuinely meaningful social mechanic can create its own share of problems. Facebook friends are not necessarily one's actual friends. Players often announce their names and character details in various forums, hoping to find “fake friends” to fill out their list. Doing so creates three advantages. First, the more friends the player has, the more opportunities for his character to be borrowed and thus earn friend gold for the player. Second, high-level friends make combat far easier because of their high stats and upgraded skills.

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