BioWare revealed Shadow Realms last summer as a "4v1 asymmetrical online RPG," in which a party of four heroes will throw down against a mysterious, powerful figure known as the Shadowlord. It was intended to focus heavily on story, as is the way with BioWare, with a strong pencil-and-paper flavor. But rumors reported by Kotaku say that may all be changing.
The site reports that two industry sources have said the game has been canceled outright, while a third—cited specifically as "reliable"—said it was actually rebooted in late October, which would be around the time that BioWare postponed the planned closed alpha test. The updated design will apparently incorporate a full single-player campaign, according to the source, and will thus push the launch target back to sometime in 2017.
Kotaku claimed to have seen a photograph of an internal EA database showing that the Shadow Realms servers were recently shut down. It also explained how the change in direction may be related to plans to integrate the game with Origin: Games built around Origin get bigger budgets, according to the report, and the failure of Command & Conquer and Dawngate to do so may have hobbled their development and contributed to their cancellations.
This is all entirely unverified and EA hasn't commented on the situation, but Kotaku has a pretty good record when it comes to reporting on these sorts of rumors, and the delay of the alpha and BioWare's silence since then—the Shadow Realms Twitter account has been inactive since the end of October—does appear to fit the narrative. We'll let you know as we find out more.
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