Social games and free to play games are, if not the future, a future. We can’t dismiss or ignore them. In fact, we should celebrate those of them, and those elements of them, that do approach things smartly, and in doing so bring worthy gaming to a gigantic audience. But we can make it quite clear that we expect to be treated better than this slovenly, cheating, cynical wolf in in RPG’s clothing. Especially when it’s clothing hundreds of thousands of us were very fond of.

Dragon Age II and Dragon Age Legends are a gigantic money grab. I haven't played DA:Legends on Facebook yet, but I have played a chunk of DAII.

They removed a LOT of the RPG mechanics / depth from DAII. As in, only your main character is fully customizable. It really should have been a different game in the DA universe -- kind of like a DA Light.

Yes, I like some of the enhanced fluidity of the visuals of the fights. But just make Diablo if that's what you're aiming to make.

Oh, right, I'm supposed to be ranting on Facebook games :P On both smartphones and Facebook, I think you can make great games. Please focus on great games and content first, let me choose whether to invest time or money. And the invest time only experience should be *great*.

Paying for virtual items should enhance or shortcut the core game, not BECOME the core game mechanic.

http://files.atari.com.s3.amazonaws.com/nno/rollover.swf

So, I'm just about to start playing some Dragon Age II, and people are already telling me that I'll probably be better off waiting for Neverwinter.

I was a little worried playing the DAII demo, and yup, it looks like they turned it into a mainly action oriented game.

I'm not happy with how Dawn of War II: Retribution got changed. I *loved* the previous two versions, now they've dialed the RPG down and dialed the RTS up, making it more suitable for online multiplayer, but less fun for me.

Feels like the "app-ification" of everything...

The mistake is the appearance of greed, of swindling your initial customer. When additional content came out a few months after the release it at least gave the impression that the developers had just kept on making the game after it was finished out of sheer momentum. Revealing that entire chunks of plot, quests, characters and abilities are being deliberately designed in order to not include them in the game just seems like a “fuck you” to the customer. Before DLC was an option, such content would either be artificially held back until it was really too late for people to have it for their first play of the game, or more likely just be contained in the game. Now it’s dangled in front of us, with no other message than, “Sure, you can spend only the £35/$50 on this game, but look what you won’t have.”

I have to agree with this. I am a HUGE fan of DLC, especially in the way it has been done recently in the DA series.

But, I want to see the core game come out with DLC over time that can extend the lifespan of the core game, rather than this nickel-and-diming.

UPDATE: I had a comment from someone within Bioware get to me that says, in essence "the linked article is mistaken about how downloadable content gets made". It would be great to hear from Bioware directly, via, you know, a comment or something :P The message from me is, regardless of how the DLC is made (or the planning & resourcing for it), from a marketing / user experience perspective, I feel like I'm being nickel and dimed.