Dragon Age Origins Issues and No Support From EA

The_Grump

NOTE: There seems to be problems with the formatting of this post, even though previewing the post showed everything to be normal and issues still remain after editing. My apologies.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask for some help from the folks that frequent these forums. I'm having some serious, serious intermittent problems with Dragon Age Origins and after a detailed discussion with EA Support it seems that there is only technical and account support. I was told to go to the Bioware forums to see if other players can help as it seems that neither EA (the publisher) nor BioWare (the developer) offer game support. Game support, unlike technical support, would deal with problems within the game rather than conflicts with software outside the game and bad installs.

First, the content that I have are: Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age Awakening, The Song of Leliana, The Stone Prisoner, Warden's Keep, Return to Ostagar and Darkspawn Chronicles. I am using v1.04.

Second, The issues I am facing are intermittent, however occurring with alarming frequency. Since they are intermittent

they do not occur 100% of the time, however if they did I would simply say that they were game mechanics even if odd ones. I have looked into the Dragon Age wikis and these issues do not seem to be game mechanics:



1. Dog not moving, attacking or using abilities after using Dread Howl even though there is a condition met to use another tactic and/or the behaviour setting is on Default (e.g. Dog should at least use the default attack on the nearest visible target). I have noticed that the game says Dread Howl is being used (the icon appears near Dog's character portrait) but the ability is NOT being used. It is not grayed out or recharging, it simply has the golden border around it as if to say it is queued for action;



2. No characters move to the controlled character after halt movement is turned off;



3. Characters do not engage enemies that meet conditions for their tactics/behaviour when halt movement is selected even though enemies are within range (e.g. Sten will not attack something in front or to the side of him even though he is within range to do so);



4. Enemies with 0 health and no life bar remain standing, 'alive' but not attacking, forcing me to pull targets off of them. This has become most noticeable in the Caverns with human enemies. Ash Wraiths are another of the more

common glitched enemies;



5. Visibility going through walls (compare this to the 3rd issue I am reporting). For example, Leliana is stealthed

and goes into combat mode when an enemy is within attack range. Dog, in a hallway below Leliana but still visible on the compass, begins to constantly use Dread Howl even though Dog cannot 'see' the target.



There has also been one occassion where all of my Lesser Health Poltices and Health Poltices where gone after exiting Party Camp. No, I didn't sell them.



Any help on these issues would be great, unfortunately all I was told: (1) first response from EA to (a) uninstall and re-install the game and (2) second response from EA to (a) empty the Temp folder, (b) shut down background processes, (c) update video and sound card drivers, (d) post a dxdiag.txt file and (e) to come to the Bioware forums because....well, there is no official game support, only technical and account support. Now, I did not uninstall and re-install the game but I did follow all of the other steps as necessary and the issues still persist. I had a clean install for everything, not errors.