Questions about the game’s launch, its difficulty, the newly released toolset, and more have been answered in the latest developer responses on the official Dragon Age: Origins forums.
Fernando Melo on add-on issues:
Make sure if you are encountering any issues to please post in Tech Support forum, there’s more eyes on that and a lot of these points are already covered there, many with solutions.
Quick responses for what I can remember…
Losings items at end of Dwarf Noble – there’s a solution at help.dragonage.com This is a bug on PC which we will address.
Getting to Warden’s Keep, or Stone Prisoner – you need to get past the village of Lothering and be able to travel on the world map in order to get to these areas. Once you speak to the quest givers for these (Levi in party camp, and Felix at Sulcher’s Pass respectively) those quests should open up. Make sure you check the DLC tab of the journal for info, or the quest tab once it has begun, for where to go.
DLC not appearing at all – this is most likely the in-game content updater service not running, which was either an installation issue or in some cases certain configuration of Windows. See the support threads for help – there’s a lot of suggested and official posts on how to resolve this.
Codes not working. Make sure DLC codes are redeemed here in the code redemption page (under your image on the left, select Profile – (Redeem Promo Code). These codes are completely separate from your game/CD key, so don’t try to use them on the game registration page. Also, for some digital customers, there was a delay getting the DLC codes emailed out – this should all have gone out now and new purchases shouldn’t have that problem. Contact your digital retailer if you did not get the DLC codes for content in your appropriate version.
Also, DLC is downloaded directly from within the game only using the updater service. If you have a separate digital game downloader (such as EADM for versions purchased on the EA Store), this is only used for downloading the game itself – trying to use DLC codes on that will not work, redeem them here on the site and then go in-game to download.
Many of the promotional DLC items (such as the rings and Blood Dragon armor) are not visible in the game DLC screen on purpose – these will only appear once the codes are redeemed. Once downloaded, most will appear in your inventory straight away (whether you load a current save, or start a new game) – some later game items will be waiting at Bohdan’s shop in the party camp.
Fernando Melo on the game’s somewhat shaky launch:
First and foremost, I have to congratulate and say thank you! to all of you BioWare and Dragon Age fans for making the launch of Dragon Age: Origins exceed all of our expectations. It has been incredible to see the fan reaction to the game, the overwhelming game activity levels online and on the BioWare Social site – a special thank you to those that PM’d myself and other team members about how much you are enjoying it.
Looking at the various data and positive feedback we’ve received so far it has been an exceptional launch for both BioWare and Dragon Age: Origins. However, it was also clear that there were a few bumps and teething pains along the way that has had an impact to a small, but important portion of our community.
Despite our best planning for the launch of a single player game of this magnitude we have to admit we clearly underestimated the desire for players to want to play connected, their pleasure at sharing their stories on the BioWare Social Site, and the overall level of interest in the launch DLC (downloadable content).
Ultimately all these factors worked together to make for a rocky start for some of you for those that did experience or are still experiencing any issues, our sincere apologies.
However, I wanted to share with you some of the things we are following, to reassure you that we are continuing to work on improving the launch of Dragon Age: Origins even further, and more importantly where we are at in terms of addressing these.
Social site and game connectivity
As most fans now know, BioWare has launched a new Social site for all of our fans to discuss their games on the forums, to share their in-game achievements, to upload screenshots and much more. If you are reading this outside the social site and have not visited yet, you can register on the Social site here: http://social.bioware.com/user_home.php
When Dragon Age: Origins launched, we expected things to get busy on the Social site as fans redeemed DLC content, used the faces they created in the Character Creator and more. We anticipated a big increase of traffic and having passed a slew of load testing we were confident that we were ready.
Unfortunately, no matter how well you prepare, sometimes things don’t work out. The process that updates the social website failed overnight on Monday 2nd and Thursday 5th due to volume of traffic. Social has a master server on which all content, posts, etc, are uploaded to. From there, for load balancing reasons, that content & the page updates are actually copied over to a number of ‘˜slave’ servers these are what you and I actually connect to and view our social pages on.
With the process to update these display servers dying, it meant that over time each of these display servers began to fall further and further behind what was actually being uploaded to the master server in terms of content, posts, etc. As such, when each of us was being directed to one of the display servers to view one of the web pages we were occasionally bouncing between older/newer content. And even something simple like refreshing the browser or make a forum post would place you on whichever next available slave server there was, which could again be anywhere from minutes to hours behind ‘˜reality’ – leading to it appearing that your post etc never happened. Ultimately each display server would end up receiving no updates, making it appear that the social site had zero updates for hours at a time – even users online would time out on the display servers, eventually looking like no one was on the site.
While no data was lost everything still arrived at the master server it created a very confusing site experience for everyone. It took a few hours working non-stop with the great folks at EA IT to resolve this issue, and once resolved it was a slow process to then get all of the missing data to each slave server in order to get caught up over time to ‘˜reality’. Before a more robust solution was put in place (on Friday 6th), we had a similar failure again on the 5th due to the start of European traffic / game launch.
As of noon on Friday November 6 this was fully resolved. Steps have already been put into place to not have this occur again and the Social site is now up and running smoothly.
A similar major contributor to general early game issues for some players was also due to sheer server load. Our initial estimates were created working with EA IT staff who have managed launches for numerous successful multi-player titles including FIFA, Madden, and the Battlefield series, as well as Spore our expected closest relative in terms of online usage. We put together an initial estimate for server capacity that seemed appropriate based on those figures, in conjunction with a barrage of load capacity testing on DA:O itself in the months leading up to launch.
Much closer to launch, we revised our figures coming out of the data we saw from the stand alone character creator app launch just about doubling capacity yet again from our initial figures. For good measure, we then set in place a contingency plan our plan B to allow for further rapid deployment of additional capacity to yet again nearly double that amount, should things really get going.
As it turns out, before the end of the first day (Nov. 3rd – US & Asia launch) we had not only exceeded our initial capacity, but our plan B as well! For a single player game with online features, this was unprecendented and the levels we were seeing was completely unexpected. Had this been an MMO, such as TOR, the initial setup and type of setup would have been very different indeed and we’d be laughing even with traffic in the orders of magnitude higher – but for a single player game no would predicted it would exceed this type of setup.
Since then the IT and online teams here at BioWare and EA worldwide have been steadily ramping up additional capacity for peak usage on Wed Nov. 4th, for example, we did not have any significant server issues, and at the time of writing this we are now maintaining a steady buffer of capacity over usage. It appears we have managed to get ahead of the launch curve.
Still, in expectation of the European and rest of world launch, and our first weekend where we anticipate our greatest traffic load yet the IT teams are literally building additional servers at our request to keep capacity ahead of load.
Having gotten over the initial wave, we’ve been monitoring our forums and working in collaboration with EA’s customer support group, to track and resolve the most common remaining issues that players have been reporting to us.
DLC (Downloadable content):
Some players have reported that they have been unable to see their DLC (on PC). DLC is delivered through our custom content updater service, so this needs to be up and running. The normal game installer should correctly set this up on any version of windows.
However, it appears that some digital download service installations were not correctly setting up the service as such, those games were effectively ‘˜blind’ to the DLC on the servers. In addition, despite extensive testing on all supported version of Windows, even with the non-digital version of the game there is a small sub-set of configurations where it appears that the service is still not installing correctly.
There are some manual work-arounds in the BioWare and Stardock & D2D forums. In addition, we are working on an update to address the remaining configurations.
If you still are not seeing any DLC, we apologize please bear with us as we get our updates out for these unforeseen cases. In the meantime, you should confirm that you have the DLC attached to your account (through code redemption or purchase), by looking at the registered game promotions page on the social site (http://social.bioware.com/user_entitlements.php). As long as the content is there you are good, you will not lose that content. We ask for your patience while we find a way to deliver that content dependently to your specific configuration as soon as possible.
Digital Download versions:
A segment of players, predominantly with digital game versions from a variety of e-stores, had encountered an issue where they had first registered their game key on the social site, and subsequently were unable to authenticate their game with their respective digital game service.
There was an issue resolved here on social which should now prevent this problem moving forward. If you are still experiencing this problem please contact EA support as they have a fix for this already.
With a segment of digital consumers there have been some cases where the online authentication system used was also impacted by server load, or experienced a different issue due to a specific system setup not seen before this could manifest itself as a ‘˜could not connect to EA Core’ or ‘˜WC.dll’ error. We are following this issue closely with the team that handles this technology and hope to have a solution shortly.
This system also uses Adobe Air was its web interface. As such, there have been some individual cases where the player uninstalled Adobe Air and was subsequently unable to authenticate the digital version of the game. At this time, the best solution is to keep Adobe Air installed (or to re-install).
A small segment of players also reported download issues with EADM (when purchasing through EA Store). This is being investigated as well. For now, the best solution appears to retry the download.
On reflection:
Releasing any PC title these days is always a challenge. Releasing a PC title on a brand new game engine with this many online moving parts, and as a new OS is launched, makes it that much more interesting. Still, when we look at the actual total number of players who are happily playing DA:O without any issues, it is a real testament to the level of quality assurance for a title of this scale and across the three platforms shipped on.
Despite the amount of testing conducted at BioWare, EA worldwide, and compatibility testing at various labs including the major hardware manufacturers, nothing ever quite prepares you for a piece of technology hitting the wider gaming audience and the mind boggling permutations of hardware, software, drivers, firewalls and custom configurations out there.
We really appreciate everyone’s patience as we work to iron out these last wrinkles that are impacting some of you.
Know that we are continuing to monitor your feedback here on the forums, as well as throughout EA’s support network, including FAQ usage, email and phone calls there is actually a significant number of BioWare and EA staff lurking through the various forums on social site, our previous forums and EA support sites with the sole purpose of capturing this feedback. Those issues are collated and prioritized on an on-going basis and already being planned against a roll out game feature updates and fixes, which we’ll continue to do as needed.
The relative number of staff posts doesn’t do justice to the effort that actually exists behind the scenes – please understand that our priority remains in working on any issues. We have a dedicated post launch team, which includes not only the DLC creation team but also individuals devoted to supporting the DA toolset, and releasing new features and updates to social site and the game and this team will be supporting Dragon Age: Origins exclusively for quite a while.
As I wrap this up, I can see more and more of our European players (and beyond) going online for the first time and enjoying the game and DLC we’re looking forward to hearing more from you, and to deliver even more content in the future to expand your DA:O experience, in addition to continuing to address these issues as they come up. We hope you will continue enjoying DA:O as much as we loved making it.
Fernando Melo on the in-game screenshot feature:
Off the main menu, if you go to your Profile you’ll see a screen with your achievements, and another tab for the Screenshot Manager.
Depending on your Online settings in the game, these screens are either uploading to your social profile here, or you have to manually upload them using the Screenshot Manager.
There are 3 types of screenshots that are taken:
– Player taken – this is you hitting the printscreen key
– Story – this is you doing cool things in the game, meeting key characters, solving quests
– Achievements – this is you having unlocked an achievement
All your screens reside in your My Docs / BioWare / Dragon Age folder, so you can also manually use them as you like.
Fernando Melo on delayed pre-order emails:
There was a delay in getting emails out (not only for EA Store) with DLC codes, which then basically created a backlog. From what I heard, as of friday these were definitely going out.
Also, keep in mind that for some countries they would not have emailed earlier than the official street date (thurs 5 / fri 6 for most outside north america) – but you should certainly have already received it.
If you still do not have it by monday then do contact them again.
Bryan Derkson on the toolset breaking the game:
The toolset allows people to modify the main campaign, so unfortunately that also means the toolset allows people to break the main campaign. There’s a command under the “Tools” menu called “Empty Export Directories” that might be useful for un-breaking it without having to manually delete directories, it removes exported things from the override directories. It doesn’t handle modified art resources, though, and I don’t think it’ll reverse changes done to module properties so it’s still useful to keep those directory locations in mind for manual intervention.
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The reinstall may not have deleted any broken resources that were exported by the toolset. It’s the files that were added to the override directories that are likely causing problems, not anything missing from the install.
I should also note that modified core resources will affect the main campaign too, BTW. So check the core/override directories for stray exports as well.
Allan Smith on toolset install issues:
Creating a sticky for this topic, since a number of people are encountering this issue, and are not finding the solution. Full commentary is at http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/8/index/111603.
To save the trouble of reading through that thread, here is the solution.
If your Installer seems to be stuck at the line Execute:regsvr32.exe for an extended period of time, it is likely that regsvr32.exe has hung. If you encounter this problem on installing, open the task manager and kill regsvr32.exe. (not the toolset installer). The installer should continue on installing after that’s done. This could mean that engine.dll won’t be registered, which is needed in order for the lightmapper to work. however, so you may need to do that manually.
To manually register the dll, go to “run” in your start menu and type in the following command:
regsvr32 “C:\\Program Files\\Dragon Age\\tools\\Engine.dll”
(substitute the actual path to Engine.dll if it it’s different from that, make sure it is contained in quotes). It should pop up a “success!” message. If it fails, it should hopefully pop up an error message that will tell us how to fix it once and for all. It should be safe to re-try this command over and over, registering the dll more than once is harmless.
Allan Smith on the toolset requiring Windows XP SP3:
There is a bug in MS SQL Server 2005 (which is installed as part of the toolset) than may send your computer into an endless reboot cycle.
If you are running XP please make sure you are on SP3 before you install the toolset. This is not an issue with Vista or Windows 7 installs.
If you are already into this loop, help can be found in the following thread. http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/8/index/110833/2
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Agreed. We are hoping to have the next version of the installer check the service pack and refuse to install if you don’t have SP3. We certainly would not have let this go out like this if we had been aware of this particular bug.
The game requires SP3, but it will install regardless. We did not explicitly test XP SP 2 for the toolset as it was not supported. It was only after we released it and people started installing the toolset with SP2 that we ever saw the issue.
Andrew Eric Knight on the game’s linearity:
Dragon Age is really only linear for the first few hours of gameplay.
I personally found running around for hours in empty landscape in oblivion a little boring. Basically using the quick travel map once i found a location.
I would think of Dragon Age as a visual novel. You are the main character in that novel, and your journey is to alter the pages in this story. The general plot will be the same, but how it plays out is up to you.
If sandbox is for you, Oblivion would be a good trade in. Though I would give the game a bit more time, your profile says you are only level two, how far have you gone in the game?
BW Lee on the game’s difficulty:
Don’t just assume that this game will play a certain way “because it’s a BioWare game” or, “because it’s an RPG”.
Too many people make this assumption these days, and it leads to developers producing generic games, at the risk of scaring people away with anything that deviates from the norm.
It’s been established that the game is challenging. It’s also been established that Normal difficulty requires you to pause-and-play and take each encounter seriously.
The game is built around this mechanic, so it’s kind of unreasonable to expect that you should be able to bypass deliberate game design and play it in a different way. Easy difficulty is there if you simply don’t want to pause-and-play and treat these encounters tactically. It doesn’t make you less of a ManGamer, it just means you are not as interested in tactics as seeing the story progress. On your second playthrough, you will likely want more of a challenge, and that is why these multiple difficulty options exist.
