demo

vio · Post by **vio** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 10:19 am

tomorrow (tuesday 22nd Feb) the demo will finally be released

vio · Post by **vio** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 11:19 am

demo's up but predictably the website keeps going up and down due to high traffic
guess it's safe to say their marketing is doing well at least

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 11:28 am

I know people with the game on preorder still downloading the demo..... I'd say marketing is very effective :laugh:

BTW - Love your sig.

GoldDragon · Post by **GoldDragon** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 1:48 pm

Might I suggest that any who wish the Demo get it thru other places like Fileplanet or Gamershell? The latter is giving around 1-2mb/sec dl rates...

Chalk up one more who pre-ordered DA 2 and still getting the Demo.

Stworca · Post by **Stworca** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 1:58 pm

I shall patiently wait until someone says how long the demo realy is. 5 minutes intro movie + 2 minutes inventory / class / appearance settings to get a minute of gameplay wouldn't be appealing..

Yep, i'm lazy

vio · Post by **vio** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 4:38 pm

I didn't time it but I'd estimate about an hour-ish. can't customise the appearance or mess about with inventory though. it's mostly showing off the combat, and a little bit of the new dialogue system. also a preview of talents, quests, journal, codex stuff. it's a fun time killer and gives some idea of what to expect from the game, in some areas at least

GoldDragon · Post by **GoldDragon** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:33 pm

Speaking of the Dialogue system, those who have played Mass Effect (1 or 2) will be pretty familiar with it.

ANyone know how to manually update the DirectX to 11? All I'm getting from the Microsoft Website is v9. Win XP pro SP3.

vio · Post by **vio** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 4:07 am

GoldDragon wrote:Speaking of the Dialogue system, those who have played Mass Effect (1 or 2) will be pretty familiar with it.

I have to say while I preferred the DA:O system over ME, the addition of the icons on the choices is a huge help. always was annoying to pick a dialogue choice that from the wording you think would be one thing then to have Shep/Warden say it in such a way that the meaning changes

sesobebo · Post by **sesobebo** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 5:44 am

GoldDragon wrote:ANyone know how to manually update the DirectX to 11? All I'm getting from the Microsoft Website is v9. Win XP pro SP3.

Last time I've checked, dx10 and dx11 were only available for vista and win7.

As for the demo, it's structured the same as mass effect 2 demo: an introductory part, where the mechanics are explained, and an excerpt from a later (companion) mission.
About half of the skills are enabled with full descriptions, the others, as well as the inventory screen, are locked.
All in all, it took me about two hours to complete (but this includes reading all of the skill descriptions).

GoldDragon · Post by **GoldDragon** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 10:26 am

Apparently, the DX9 functionality still works, but you are limited to medium level graphics.

DaveO · Post by **DaveO** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 3:55 pm

The demo's pretty short. I went thru it under two hours. It's primarily a promo of skills and the story. There are links to the original DA:O, but I'll leave it up to others to determine if approximately two hours of time is worth the 2 gigabyte download.

GoldDragon · Post by **GoldDragon** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 4:03 pm

Meh. The Challenge was met, with ~1 day to spare. Now, if you have a facebook account, log in to that, and go to the DA 2 Facebook page and share that day's post.

If 1,000,000 impressions, you get the third, and most powerful book: Of things not lost. Don't know exactly what it does, but here's the facebook link:[url="http://www.facebook.com/dragonage?ref=s"]Here.[/url]

Stworca · Post by **Stworca** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 4:09 pm

I have to say - quite a unique way of promoting. Seems working tho

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:20 am

Stworca wrote:I have to say - quite a unique way of promoting. Seems working tho

Yeah - they're doing something similar for The Old Republic, where they entice people with information and tidbits if so-and-this many "like" on facebook or something.
But if you think back to their "community" (only US) treat some time ago it was an auction which basically was about spamming up forums to get clicks.

Bioware's marketing is increasingly aggressive, but it does seem to work.

vio · Post by **vio** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 3:31 am

tv ads, giant posters, invasive ads on websites, nothing has ever worked quite as well as the power of word of mouth
granted the reason we usually consider word of mouth so highly is because the friend telling us has nothing to gain by us listening to them, and this kind of advertising does change that
but then again the gain is only in game and if people care enough about the game to want in-game rewards that does speak somewhat towards the quality of the game...

GawainBS · Post by **GawainBS** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:26 am

Can anyone deduce wether there's an Arcane Warrior equivalent in the game? This would greatly influence my class choice.

GoldDragon · Post by **GoldDragon** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:50 am

Playing thru the Demo, I could detect nothing about Class Specializations.

However, here is what I could find on [url="http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/world/classes/mage/"]Mages[/url] and [url="http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/world/classes/warrior/"]Warriors[/url]. I could find nothing about Rogue Specializations.

GawainBS · Post by **GawainBS** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 11:13 am

Thank you.

GoldDragon · Post by **GoldDragon** » Tue Mar 01, 2011 7:08 pm

For the sake of completeness, Here's [url="http://dragonage.bioware.com/da2/world/classes/rogue/"]Rogue[/url]. This was put up sometime today.

And you're welcome.

GawainBS · Post by **GawainBS** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 10:31 am

Thanks once again. Terribly disappointed that there isn't a melee-mage spec.