No doubt, the one word that immediately comes to mind in regards to DA2's quests is "Boring".

The find and deliver quests ? The word there is "Insulting", much like the copypasta everything, copypasta locations, copypasta encounters, copypasta mobs, copypasta npc's, you know, insulting.

No wonder i spent alot more time looking at fan made art and whatnot than i did with the game, the fan made stuff has 10 times more enternainment value and it's free ;)

It's that that has killed any chance of me playing it again. I started a new game but I couldn't even finish act 1. When I think about all the interesting side-quests in Origins and then look at the crap DA2 expects me to do I just start getting angry.

Shame New Vegas' character is called The Courier, would have been a better name than the Champion.

Pretty much, i'm sure i already mentioned how the mere thought of replaying CH1 makes me physically ill, but maybe it wasn't here ;)

I'm not even tracking the progress of the patch that supposedly fixes more than 100 (wtf?) bugs since i have absolutely no desire of replaying the game with or without bugs, it's not like a bug squashing patch will fix any of the core issues that killed the game.

On the up side, i'm way past angry now, and well into 'mildly amused by the trainwreck' territory ;)

I'm sort of sitting on the fence with the whole thing. I've certainly been laughing at the abject fail of the whole thing and the desperate PR spin but at the same time I am genuinely worried that this is the direction Bioware are taking.

The absolutely most astonishing thing about the development of DA2 is it's happening a floor down from where ME3 is being made. I think it was Casey Hudson of the Mass Effect team that said he felt they had removed a little too much of the RPG elements in ME2 and that ME3 would feature a combination of the systems used in ME1 and 2. Skills are coming back, weapon mods are coming in and characters will have far more customisation than they did in ME2 while the actual combat will remain unchanged. Which to me sounds brilliant. So why did the Dragon Age team decided to not only copy ME2 but actually go even further by stripping out virtually everything? It's utterly bizarre to me that I can say Bioware need to learn how to streamline a game properly by looking at Bioware :S

Well, look at the bright side, maybe DA2 was just a quick cash grab to plug some hole and they'll get back on track now :/

You mean their giant black hole of a MMO? Rumor is they're f'ed for a good long time on that one and it actually might hurt Bioware for a couple years. There's already an indication this is how Warhammer Online got the final nail in its coffin (though I think it might still be shambling along in some zombie-like state - too bad, I fucking liked the pvp in that game).

yeah, i was thinking about the MMO actually, either the profit coin going directly into it or going into plugging some hole from someplace where they had previously diverted coin from to toss at the MMO instead. Either way, i guess my point is DA2 feels a bit too 'desperate' for just the usual 'milking the franchise' kind of greed.

EALouse claimed they had sunk over 100 million into TOR and that was months ago. Louse also claimed they had only come up with generic WOW-like gameplay, which means the only draw they have is the license. That's not a recipe for going cash positive on it anytime soon. Most MMOs (that are not WOW) stabalize at 200,000 subs by their one year anniversary. This is actually plenty of money to keep ongoing development going for most teams, but not if you've sunk 100 mill into initial dev.

Many folks seem to be convinced that it will fail big time too, which would surely leave Bioware in a difficult position. I don't know enough about MMO's to venture a guess about how well it can or will do, but so far from what 'm seeing...it doesn't look terribly good.

Well Bioware won't be carrying the can entirely for TOR, it's mostly Lucasarts who stand to lose if it flops. I am pretty convinced however that money was funnelled away from DA2 development into TOR there is no other explanation for the lack of funding for a game that based on sales alone should have bankrolled it's own sequel production.

If the MMO turns out to be poo and incapable of bringing in the bacon, after DA2's disaster which will surely have an impact on the next DA title at least in terms of pre orders (assuming EA doesn't shut down the entire franchise faster than Laidlaw can say "Please don't fondle Andraste" when they take a look at game and DLC sales) and ME being more or less done after ME3 what will Bioware have left by then ? Do they have anything else going ?

How much money has been tossed at the MMO anyway ? I keep seing 'over 300M' being mentioned. Where did folks got this figure from ?

Guess work and the comments from un-named insiders. It should be noted there are just as many positive comments about the game than there are negative ones it's just the media pick up on the negative ones obviously. It is undoubtedly a massive game for Bioware and the game already has 4 times the amount of scripted dialogue that KOTOR had, just think about that for a second ;). I personally think it will be a hit, within a year it will be number two to WoW simply because it does offer something different to almost every other MMO out there. The License will also help shift a few thousand subs.

I really don't think we are looking at another Star Trek: Online but it's not going to trouble WoW either. Will that be enough? Probably. It certainly wont see Bioware in any financial trouble especially with ME3 also to release later in the year which shouldn't be affected by the fallout from DA2.

So although speculative that figure could actually be on the up and up ? Oh lawd, what a waste of resources.

Seriously, MMOs' are totally alien for me, so i have no basis for any kind of comparison quality wise and such, but the negatives i mentioned on the other post weren't from the media, it's more the general feel i get from forumites and such. Or maybe folks were just reacting to the lead designer, or one of them, looking like he's 14, 15 tops ;)

Yeah, ME3 sales probably won't be much affected by DA2, let's just hope they don't rape the ME franchise as well to throw more money at the MMO. The tubes would probably asplode if anything like what happend with DA2 were to happen with ME3. I do hope ME3 turns out to be solid so that the fans can get their trilogy done without the traumas the DA fans had to to endure, that's something no one should have to go through.

I'm not at all worried about ME3 for 4 reasons:

- The game engine is unchanged which means they have been able to focus on content.
- They said they were bring back more customisation options so a system like ME1 & 2 mixed together.
- Casey Hudson and Jesse Houston seem to say all the right things. Unlike a Mr M Laidlaw.
- Mordin, Garrus and Wrex are back :D
I will probably buy TOR because I like the setting however just like Warhammer: Online and Star Trek: Online I will be ready to drop it like a stone after the 30 days are up if it's more bloody fetch quests. I never bothered with DC Online.

It sounds good, let's hope they stick to that plan.

Wait, Mordin ? Doesn't everybody hate that guy ?

I don't know if i'll bother with it, too many sp games demanding attention, but maybe i'll take a peek.