Yeah :/

It's a beta site though, there's all kinds of wonkiness. For instance, it doesn't work for me at all in IE at work running Win 7, but it does work for me on IE at home in Vista. Eh?

Also, it doesn't censor the name in forum posts, just in that social page. All kinds of inconsistent.

I am hopelessly addicted to this game.  Put in around 16 hours over the weekend.  And every minute I've been at work I've wanted to be home playing.

So this game gets so much easier once you get mages lol.  My warriors can actually live now.

Mages are pretty imbalanced if you know how to play and build them. I hear backstabbing rogues can also be pretty devastating if played right.

I'd say Dragon Age is the best game this year, finnished it yesterday, savegame showed around 60 hours played, which is a pretty nice  amount these days. And I started a new game right away

I was 19 by the end of the game. As for playing it again with the same character. I'm not to sure you can, but you can continue playing with the downloadable content. I'm not to sure on the specializations, but I would think you'd have to unlock them again.

This game is more than just great,it is a legend game that will be played in 10 years time just like BG2.

What? They didn't give him a mention in the credits? Man that's lame.

Wow, I've got over 40 hours in and I'm just about 30% through the game. My first time through though I take my time, look in all the corners, try to do everything I can possibly do. Also there have been a few times I've had DA:O minimized for a couple hours at a time while it was running.

Mine showed about 44% through the game by the time I finnished, and I did almost all the quests I could find. That percentage is for ALL playthroughs, so I think it includes the Origins-stories, different outcomes for storyline quests and different endings. Getting it over 50% in one playthrough is, if not impossible, pretty damn hard, considering that I also got that 'Easily Sidetracked' -achievement.

Oooh. Here's a few tips everyone playing should know. I ripped them off of Tom Chicks post a few pages after the one Mauxe pointed out. (thanks for the site Mauxe)

1) Since I'd rolled up a Dalish elf - they're the outdoorsy variety - I figured I'd bump up her herbalism skill to keep my party in potions. Only later did I realize that one of the NPCs you can't miss starts out with the second level of herbalism. And unlike poison-making, which limits who can actually use poisons as well as make them, you don't need herbalism to benefit from better potions.

2) The game seems to go out of its way to include locked chests. I've missed a lot of treasure for lack of someone with the deft hands skill. Since my character was a rogue, that should probably have been me. Instead, I end up compulsively going back through a lot of areas with a deft handed rogue in tow just to unlock the locked chests. It's probably a bit compulsive of me, but I've found some good loot I wish I'd gotten the first time around.

3) I wish I'd put at least a point into the coercion skill to leverage my cunning or strength for the persuasion and intimidation options that come up during dialogues. As with the locked chests, I was surprised with how many of these there were. And since I already had a high cunning, at least a single skill point would have made that cunning all the more useful.

4) There will, of course, be times that you're adventuring alone for some contrived reason. That's to be expected in these kinds of games. But I wish I'd known that one such time would involve me being unable to summon the corrupted spider I had invested four skill points in getting. My character has the ranger specialization maxed out, so she's been relying on a bad-ass spider to make up for her lack of melee skills. That spider was inaccessible during a stretch of gameplay that proved particularly tough.

5) I finally dealt with my inventory problems by resigning myself to never using any of the elemental resistance potions, poison coatings for weapons, or gear for one of the two party members who uses specialized gear. If I'd made this decision earlier, I would have been able to tote more loot back to camp to sell and would have had more money to buy goodies.

6) Whoa. Grenades are awesome. They played a big part in the combat in Mass Effect, but little did I know they would be so useful in a fantasy world! I slogged through many a battle that would have been a lot easier if I'd appreciated sooner the value of a judiciously applied acid flask or shock bomb.

7) I wish I'd paid attention sooner to the tactics screens. Early on, before you're comfortable with the pace of combat, here's an important tip that I must insist you follow: For every character, and especially your front-line fighters, go to the character screen, select tactics, and insert a new first line that instructs the character to drink a lesser health poultice as soon as his health is below 50%. It'll save you a lot of grief, injury kits, and reloaded battles.

Dont bother with the locked chests - mostly its just elfroot, deathroot, or some tier 1 weapon... All the good loot is either dropped by mobs or freely available to everyone. Oh - one thing to look forward to, is dragons hoard loot - now THAT is fun

As someone mentioned, right now there is a memory leak in the game, causing many people to experience some sort of lag, longer loading times and so on after some extended playtime (around 1 hour for most people) Restarting the game and / or the computer resolves this.

There is a patch now that makes everyone's attack, defense and hitpoints a bit bitter on "Normal" play difficulty, and some bioware people have released unoffical mods - one is that you get the shared loot stash in your main camp WITHOUT having to buy the DLC Wardens Keep , the other is that Archery is much  improved, since right now its pretty much not working. There's some issues with dex not adding up to damage on bows, only str, which isnt much fun for dex based characters, such as Rogues.

Oh, and I've restarted the game now with 5 different characters sicne its just too much fun not to try out all the origins quests

I believe i'm about to encounter my first dragon in the Urn of sacred ashes quest. So far my elf mage + Alistair + Wynne + Zevron have been decimating enemies with not much problems, but what hope could such a group have against a dragon?

Loving the game so far, i can't believe i was going to pass this.

Use Cone of Cold whenver you can, and then get some Crit based characters up against it - crits on coned creatrues can either destroy them outright, or deal massive damage - also, it holds them in place, making it easier.

A general note of warning though when dealing with dragons. dont clump up and stand together in front of it - The dragon will think its very nice of you though, but I'm not sure your characters will

Spread out, tank it, heal your tank, and dps from sides and rear is probably the best way to do it.

its actually kinda interesting that the holy trinity of MMOs works so well here as well - Tank, healer, DPS is a must in many situations

http://social.bioware.com/browse_bw_projects.php

I went looking for the unofficial chest mod and found it on this Bioware projects page.
There is also a mod on here that tones down the blood splatter in the game.  I am not opposed to bloody battles or brutal deaths..  but it can be a little over the top when you are standing around after a fight chatting with each other covered in gore.

There is one scene near the very beginning of the Human Noble origin where you need to get your dog out of the larder and end up fighting a handful of large rats.  Afterwards you step out into the kitchen and start talking with the cook and both you and your dog are COVERED in blood.  I thought to myself...  wtf kind of rats did I just fight?  Some type of medical hybrid bred for the ability to harvest ridiculously large amounts of blood?  And why is this cook (whom I've known all my life) not handing me a rag...  or my mom not asking me to clean up a bit as I stand and talk with her social friends...  at least a little wipe of the face or SOMETHING.

Otherwise the game is great.  I still feel a little bit of tedium creep in whenever I step into a new camp or town but overall they have done a stellar job with keeping the pace of the game going.  Not just in the combat sense but in the interest level. 

Another thing I'll mention is that it really seems that they have optimized this game to run very well on the PC at least.  I have not experienced the memory leak issue but besides that - the game loads extremely fast.  I am amazed when I load it up how quickly the menu pops up..  then a few seconds later I am playing??!  Loading games is streamlined as well.  the fact that they group your saves by character is super.  I started a new toon to show a friend the process and the game saved it.  When I loaded up later to play my main I had a mild palpitation when all of my saves were gone...  until I saw the change character button..  nice.

On the Steam forums there was a post by a Bioware dev confirming there's no New Game+ mode on Dragon Age pity, it was my favorite feature of NWN and Mass Effect, the ability to take my rear-kicking hero decked in shiny armor through the entire campaign, decimating anything in his path. Though apparently you do keep the specializations you unlocked, well, unlocked so you *can*, with proper care, make a Champion/Reaver spec'd Warrior if you'd like.

As for the blood, you can easily clean it up by removing your armor and re-equiping it again. Except for your dog, he stays messy regardless of what you do but he doesn't show up much on cutscenes so its no big deal.

Ohh, and a few tips:

- First off, create a character using the Character Creator, then upload it to the Bioware servers. That'll give you a special ring with +1 to every stat in-game, and it's a 5 minutes procedure.

- And secondly, play the free flash game Dragon Age: Journeys to unlock even more stuff in-game (plus it's pretty fun, kinda like a Dragon Age version of King's Bounty in case you've played it).

Love this game. Already ran through it once with a human noble warrior, now doing a human mage. I loved how all the options I chose effected my ending. Heck even the little things I had forgotten played some part in my characters ending.