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General: Dragon Age and MMOs
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently interviewed Dragon Age Origins Lead Designer Mike Laidlaw about the game, and its relationship to its multiplayer cousins, the MMOs.
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For those who missed the launch of Dragon Age last week, it marked an important return for Bioware back into the world of fantasy RPG gaming. Recently, we sat down and talked to Mike Laidlaw, Lead Designer on the game and got his opinions on what MMO tools Dragon Age used to create a fun and familiar game. Mike also talked about what some MMOs can learn from Dragon Age and the plans Bioware has for the game's future.
Mike first commented on the response the game has gotten and how well it has been doing this week. Launch week is always busy, but one of the things Mike enjoys the most is seeing players go to the forums to post their own stories and experiences with the game. The response to all six different opening story lines has been very positive. Bioware is internally happy and Mike sees the players comparing their experiences as a great example of the game's depth.
Read Dragon Age and MMOs.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Yes, if MMORPG would have so many choices it would have great replayability value (or whatever people call, I dont know as I am one game = one character player). But Dragon Age didnt have feeling that you change world with your choices, maybe because it is too short to feel them affecting world or maybe it was just my choices. It would be if they would create Dragon Age 2 with your choices showing changes after lets say 10 years.
Premium Content was real immersion killer... I understand it good marketing but still, it made me want to puke...
Story was good but nothing new: end of the world is coming and you are superhero who is going to save it. It simple as that with a bit of backstabing. That Loghan or whatever was his name didnt felt as great threat but minor nuisance, there was 100% chance of getting support of dwarves, elves, redcliff, mages. Wouldnt it be a lot more fun if you could be betrayed by some race or something like that. Bah 7/10 for story...
I find the article amusing.
Dragon Age copied from World of Warcraft everything but the User friendliness of its interface.
There is no Auto Target or Nearest Enemy Target key. So whereas in World of Warcraft you press Tab to target an enemy and then attack it with a button on your hotbar, you can't do that with Dragon Age. YOu must click the Target.
You also have no Target Portrait, so you need to pause the game to try to figure out who you have targeted. If your ally is infront you...then sorry bub but you can't target anything but your ally...unless you rotate the camera in various ways to try to click the enemy you wish to attack.
Other things are the Map and the Quest targets. In World of Warcraft, especially with recent user created enhancements such as quest helper, Tom Tom and Carbonite you are never at a loss for what you have to do next. However this isn't the case in Dragon Age.
The Codex and Journal are cryptic messes of text that make following quests and storylines very difficult. Whereas in World of Warcraft with these mods you can bring up the overhead map and see exactly where you need to go, in Dragon Age you frequently lose track, especially traveling between cities. Some quests are given in one town, but you actually need to go somewhere else to do the quest...and then return to the town. When you return you'd better remember who gave you the quest and where they were, because unless you are on the right map you won't see the quest marker.
Now let's go onto Leveling up and completing quest objectives.
World of Warcraft makes it very clear when a player levels up, in fact they make it a big deal with a recognisable sound , onscreen graphic effect and text that appears at the top center of the screen, very readable and noticeable indicating you have levelled up.
If you are on multiple quests, a Quest Objective tracker keeps track of the quests, multiple quests, as you do them. You can tell at a glance what you have to do next. If you put the game down for three weeks and return to it, you won't be lost. Not so with Dragon Age. Notifications are tiny and placed in the lower left of your screen, well out of the way of the focus of your eyes. You need to go back and forth to the ineffective and confusing Journal repeatedly to keep track of what you have to do. And at some points you coudl have over 20 quests in the journal.
Another issue is that the User Interface does NOT SCALE. So whereas with world of warcraft if I set my resolution to 1920 x 1200 or heck..2530 x whatever I can then adjust a Scale to make everything a bit bigger and more readable...you can't do that in Dragon Age.
Dragon Age's interface is the same interface style we've seen from the 1990s. So unless this Dragon Age spokesperson is saying that Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights drew on the user interface of World of Warcraft, he's full of it.
World of Warcraft with its user mods are a 10/10 with regards User Interface, Dragon Age would be a 5.5/10
They do nothing new and unique, and do a lot much worse to what gamers are used to in 2009 in an RPG.
I don't know why all the hype over Dragon Age to be honest, the story is generic the characters are bland and the classes are extremely limited in customization. when i got my first advanced class i was really excited till i found out how little it impacted my characters playstyle.
what because i can choose my dialog? wooo so i can be snarky, or evil or the good guy but really nothing changes except my party members may not like me .... awwww.
its a decent game, just glad i didnt spend money on it if you know what i mean.
The Dragon Age game must have been made for a high end system since it would not run on my system Intel Dual Core 3.6, Nividia 9800, 4GB Ram, Winxp SP3. When I contacted Bioware support, they suggested I upgrade to a faster system using Windows Vista or Windows 7. If I had the money to spend would upgrade, stupid bastards.
If i can run it with an 8400 then its not teh games fault it wont run on your comp.
Apparently stating the truth in my sig is "trolling"
Sig typo fixed thanks to an observant stragen001.
So far a good game.
I purchased it and have not been disappointed.
I don't remember Baldur's Gate I and II too well... I played them, but it was at around the same time I played Icewind Dale and it's sequel. I sat down, played through these games... took what I enjoyed and set them down like I would any other novel.
I have a much different perspective than people who grew up with these and tried to love them. I just... enjoyed them and set them aside.
I'm finding individuals who believe it isn't "as good" as Baldur's Gate, see the game through a filter created by their desire to keep the BG series in their heart. Like your first love.
Placing Dragon Age: Origins and Baldur's Gate in the same arena, I find them equal.
Baldur's Gate has obvious flaws (which really should remove it from competing) when compared to it's modern cousin... Technology being the main of them... but since people keep bringing it back... i try my best to ignore those flaws.
I do the same for Dragon Age.
My friend use the same rigg but a 8800 CTX card, and the game works fine on it. Well, he have a 2,5 ghx quad instead but that is probably slower than your dual core.
I think you have another issue. Check all the drivers and see so you have the latest direct x.
I liked the story, it was far better than most MMOs, only online game that is close was Guildwars: Nightfall. Yes, good and evil is a classic but Bioware handled things very good, you didn't go out and killed 20 rats a 100 times before good enough to do something serious.
As for the autotarget, this game can be paused and are intended to be, you tell all your group what to do then. In a MMO that is something you can't do and that forces the game to help you a lot more.
But complaining that it is hard to find certain quests? I play EQ2 and this is nothing compared to that. Wow is just making questing too easy, and so is AoC and many others.
Dragon Age = most hyped game in history
So highly hyped (payed) that even a site dedicated to MMOs writes articles about it.
Big fan of Bioware here. But DA:O is average RPG. And even that is to much of a compliment
Nope. Dual Core 2,3; Nvidia 8600, 2GB ram is enough. And I even played at top graphics without lag. Load time would become problem after nonstop gaming of FIVE TO EIGHT HOURS. And all I would have to do is spent few minutes restarting my computer. I heard many people complaining about high end system requirement, but is just seems like incompatability with something...
The yellow part concerns me in regards to the Star wars Bioware/EA MMO.
If Dragon Age is the model of "story" based gaming, then worry for the online MMO they are making. The perspectives of starting out are different, but they all meld together in Ostagar and there is little or no variance. I bet the MMO will be like Guild wars, which isn't bad. The down side is that GW is free to play.
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Dragon Age for a single player RPG was GREAT!!!!. Depending on the type of single player RPG experience you enjoy, will determine your opinion of DRagon Age in the long run. I for one hate the FF type RPGs.
As far as MMOs learning anything fron Dragon Age. I don't see anything that would be learned from this title. So as story for the forth pillar in MMOs it is a nice idea, but untill we see it implimented in SWTOR we will not know if it is going to be a major impact on MMOs.
I hope they can pull it off.
Asheron's Call, Champions Online, Dark Age of Camelot, EVE Online, EverQuest, Lineage 2, Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft.Waiting for SWTOR
As compared to what? I think it's an excellent game. Sure there things such as being "snarky evil" that anohter person had said (most bioware games seem to have that problem) but I see dragon age as a step forward in Bioware's evolution.
It does have strong similarities to Baldur's and neverwinter nights but they have spent quite a bit of time allowing the player to nudge the story a bit here and a bit there.
With the exception of a few glitchy things here and there and perhaps the whole "snarky evil" (but in Dragon age one can actually do evil things that are really evil, not just being the standard "rude" in the dialogue".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
LOL
Really?
LOL
There is nothing that they copied from wow. It is much more similar to their earlier games of Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.
Im glad Im not the only one who doesnt understand the hype for Dragon Age.. Even the title of the game make me cringe...
"Hey we made a new fantasy IP, what are we going to call it? Lets take the 2 most used fantasy words and put them together. Voila! We have Dragon Age!"
But on the other hand I must be the only PG gamer who never been a big fan of Bioware. Which is strange since Story/lore is the most important feature in game for me and Bioware is supposed to be the kings of this.
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
Well, I think it's a juggling act. how much different should the class allow you to play. I do see the differences between a pure damage mage and one that is more curse based as opposed to the healer type.
Being a shield wearing warrior is a lot different than a two handed warrior. I had picked champion and had notice that my playstyle was slightly altered. And I think that's the issue, the sub classes are more about adding flavor to the class. In some cases there can be more drastic play such as going from a regular warrior to a reaver or from a mage to a warrior mage (can't remember the class name).
So in that case I think it depends on each class.
As far as characters, well sure they could have gone quite a bit more in depth but the characterizations are wonderul, even they at times seem to fulfill roles we have seen before.
I had mentioned in another thread that I thought morrigan needed more depth and was getting annoying. However, that was because I had preconceived notions of what she was about. I thought, erroneously, that she was just a misunderstood person who didn't have social graces and who was the way she was because of the life she had up to this point.. I was looking for her to change and redemm herself.
But then I realized that due to her life experiences, this was who she was. The redemption for me came in part from a small seemingly insignifiant piece of dialoge involving one of the gifts you give her which ties into an event when she was a little girl. That was where I saw more of her humanity. Also, if you take the romance option a bit farther she will give you a gift and again, depending on your dialogue choices, her reaction shows something warmer deep down inside.
I would say the characters, on the surface do fulfill very basic roles. And they sort of have to given the medium we are working in.
It's not a book so there isn't a huge amount of time to delve into characterization and it's not a movie or play where more can be revealed and the viewer can just sit back and take it all in.
And given the character acting I think the characters are fleshed out very nicely.
I think anyone could nitpick anything about the game but I think it would be doing the game a bit of an injustice. For me the sum of all the parts adds to a far greater whole than most games I have played over the years.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The yellow part concerns me in regards to the Star wars Bioware/EA MMO.
If Dragon Age is the model of "story" based gaming, then worry for the online MMO they are making. The perspectives of starting out are different, but they all meld together in Ostagar and there is little or no variance. I bet the MMO will be like Guild wars, which isn't bad. The down side is that GW is free to play.
so you start different but you still get the same story, you're still a grey warden, you still meet the douchey Allistar and the Emo wizard? geez not much replay value in that then.
The skeletal structure of any story is going to sound generic. There are only 22 or so different stories one can tell. What matters is how they are told.
I find Dragon Age brilliant as a setting and, if not as a traditional story, as a story told through a game. I think if folks understand some of the allusions and references they'd recognise that not only is Bioware's storyteller fully aware of what he's borrowing from, and how to change things around to keep you interested, but probably from many sources (including historical ones) that I suspect most players just don't even know exist so they can't recognise what's actually going into the story. If you don't listen to alot of jazz don't be surprised when you don't find a jazz song interesting and find it sounds like every other jazz song.
Dwarves and elves. Boring! Right? What if...instead of Mithril the Dwarves were peddling Spice (ala Dune)? Oh ho! That's a new twist. What if, instead of being the regal and illusive immortals of Tolkien, elves were beaten down by mankind to live either as second class citizens or as scattered and rebellious remnants in the wild? Do you go to the reservation or do you fight? Another interesting twist. And if you know history you'll recognise fantasy versions of Anglo-Saxon England, the High Chivalry of Aragon and southern France, a twisted version of the Mediterranean lands (European and North African) and even a mystical, theocratic, Byzantium in some of the places mentioned by characters and in the lore.
We're only in dark ages "England" now but there's a whole world out there and a fairly cosmopolitan and plausible one.
The story itself seems basic but given the grim nature of the Grey Wardens and the "whatever it takes" attitude they have you've got some unlikely heroes capable of doing some pretty terrible things if they must. That wouldn't be nearly as interesting is it might sound on the box copy except for the fact that Bioware's really fleshed out the world beyond the Grey Wardens, The Blight, and the main struggle. There are good people and bad ones caught up in their own struggles. Not every narrative element is best resolved by doing what's honorable but that's always an option as is becoming jaded and violent given a warden's self-justification for just about any deed.
And what's most important is how brilliantly all of this is packaged in the form of very well fleshed out and believeable characters. There's genuinely good writing all around. Humor, pathos and all the rest delivered almost flawlessly.
I'm not a Bioware fanboi. I didn't much care for either Baldur's Gate or KOTOR and certainly not for Jade Empire (despite my love of asian fantasy settings). I'm not remotely interested in playing a narrative-centric MMO. MMOs should be for players to create their own adventures and shape a world collectively (Eve Online does this best via PvP but games like Star Wars Galaxies or City of Heroes with Storyteller or Architect tools are slowly evolving in the right PvE direction).
I'm not even sure I like the gameplay in Dragon Age, at least as it manifests on the rather fiddly console version, all that much.
But the world, the characters, the story...? This is as good as it gets for single-player RPGs.
Always notice what you notice.
I love Dragon Age, finally a good proper RPG with a decent story and interesting characters! I've been waiting for something like this for years now. Planescape torment is probably my favourite game all time, but this one is pretty close. But what will probably keep me playing this game for years is the toolset, hopefully the community will be like that for Neverwinter nights!
The ratings and good reviews Dragon Age is receiving is more than enough to prove that all the hype around the game wasn't just that.
This isn't some piece of crap game with a bloated advertising campaign that spends millions generating media hype around it to make a quick buck and then doesn't give a crap if ppl hate the game afterwards.
This is BioWare you're talking about, they have done more than enough in the past (a long time before WoW was even out) to prove themselves worthy in the RPG making business. How can ppl say that they copy WoW... you fanboys really are thick in the head aren't you?
Dragon Age is clearly a continuity project from BioWare , it contains elements from several of their past RPGs... taking stuff from NWN, from SW:KOTOR, etc...
Someone complained about the UI not expanding!? Well, sincerely don't know why, my interface expands perfectly according to resolution and aspect ration I choose (currently playing at 1680x1050 in 16:10).
People talking about storyline, quests, gameplay, etc... differences between this and MMORPG X. Making the argument that "it's not like WoW" or <insert another MMORPG name here> is not even remotely close to being anything worth reading. Since when is Dragon Age competing against MMOs? Unless some really strange stuff happened that I don't know of. I believe this is a single player game and comparing it to an MMO in anything that relates to gameplay is just flaming with no intention of actually making any sense.
You want mods for the UI? bohoo... They released an amazing toolset, if you can master that you can come and talk about mods for the UI.
Seriously... nothing against the OP, but this seems like one more thread invaded by trolls and ranting fanboys that give no valid opinions on the subject but feel like their incessant rants should be read as if they were incostestable truths.
The fact is the experts say it's a great game, the players say it's a great game. As far as I know it's selling pretty well (and no I don't want to get into the marketing strategies of EA). I'm proud to have one the CE edition and I'm really enjoying this game. So as far as I can tell gathering all the straight facts... this game is good. You might not like it... but that doesn't make it a crappy game.
TU2 Closed Beta Testing... looking very good so far
What you didn't read the box?
LOL
retRA-11B
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Played FFXI, AoConan, Silkroad Online, Ether Saga Online. Waiting for FFXIV!
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see thats just it is i don't think what i wrote is a nitpick.
story - lets see evil monsters are trying to take over the world. a secret group of trained warriors are trying to unite the lands to stop them.
companions - snarky righteous character ... check! Emo i hate everything wizard - check! brute warrior - check! geez these haven't been done before
I play a human Warrior 2 handed tank, was able to play that way from the start and when i got Berserker there was no change in my playstyle.. and the limited skill it unlocked was extremely disappointing. i was expecting a whole new set of skills to pick and choose to personalize my class. i got 4 extra skills ...wooo
The whole point of your post was lost on me as I waded through your whining that Dragon Age didn't dumb their game down enough for you to play it successfuly. I think the game held our hands enough, considering it does map out everything for you and does show these big shiny arrows over NPC's whose quest you completed. I'd of been happier if they made us think more and explore more. My exploration was guided, because I could always open the map and see where I haven't explored yet.
At any rate, I find it revolting that you actually WANT other games to dumb things down so much that you don't have to use your brain anymore.
Dragon Age is an awesome game. I know alot of people will criticize it because of its single player but in all I get a more compelling story,gameplay and even the loot is far superior than most mmos offer. I hppe someday they make Dragon Age into a mmo.
Yup! Agreed.
The loose reference to WoW in order to have an excuse to say "Dragon Age: Origins" on the front page one more time is pretty nauseating. Especially when it's just plain wrong, in that the systems mentioned that they borrowed from WoW were around long before WoW existed. Boo again on your 'journalism' mmorpg.com.