With all the talk about DA2 popamole combat, appealing to CoD & Farmville players etc. I was getting the impression that it was mostly targeted at consoletards. However, it only recently appeared to me that it's actually not (or not as much as everybody talks about) - the primary PC audience for DA2 are actually WoW players. Of course, Mike Ladilaw couldn't say that in an interview (that's why he bullshitted about Cod, Farmville & Co.) But if you go with that hypothesis, it actually all starts to make sense:
- practically auto-leveling character attributes, once you've chosen a class (auto-leveling in WoW)
- armor requiring primary class attributes - i.e. rogue armor like hoods and boots requires dexterity and cunning ("you see, this plain canvas hood can only be worn if you're smart enough") - WoW does the same thing
- level-scaled secondary skills, i.e. you have an item that gives you +10 hit, which translates into hit percentage depending on your level (the higher the character level, the higher hit amount you need to get a 5% increase) - not to mention that this is not "chance to hit" (because there are no misses in the world of DA2!), but scales how much of your base damage potential do auto-attacks do - these level-scaled bonuses are quite characteristic of WoW mechanics
- pretty looking, if somewhat nonsensical talent trees choosing sub-variants of the base class (quite similar to WoW, just split up into 6 + 3 trees instead of just 3; notice how specializations don't require a trainer anymore?)
- visible DPS on all weapons - same as WoW
- tons of generic descriptionless loot that makes no in-game sense whatsoever (i.e. an item named "belt" with a description of "belt" giving "+3% physical damage"; 2 hours later, you replace it with one that gives +4% etc.) - actually very similar to WoW greens, with their mudflation mechanics and lack of detailed item descriptions BioWereEA (equivalent to "were-wolf"
) used in older games
- color-coded higer quality items - yellow and purple - think it's a coincidence that the highest tier WoW items are purples?
- meaningless filler quests - duh
- trash mobs guarding the approach to bosses, which have somewhat unique-ish fight mechanics that have to be learned, with "adds" appearing in predefined fight phases - quite like WoW dungeons and raids
In conclusion, if a WoW player who never bothered with any "serious" RPGs before tried to play DA2, they would feel right at home.
I'm guessing that Swotor team members were actually heavily consulted on DA2 mechanics, and that many elements of the underlying design are shared with Swotor. That way, BioWereEA: a) optimizes the experience for WoW players trying their games b) gets to test the mechanics a bit before they debut in Swotor. And lets not forget cinematics and voiceovers, which are about as prominent in DA2 as they are expected to be in Swotor. And how about the lack of C&C (i.e. pretty much most "choices" in the game leading to the same outcome) - doesn't it fit perfectly with MMO worlds, in which monsters respawn 30 seconds after they're killed and finished quests must not alter the world too much because of the other players?
The reason they are frantically trying to boost DA2 impressions and review scores is then also obvious: if even mainstream non-RPG players consider DA2 crappy, do you think they'll praise the same basic gameplay in Swotor? 4/10 actually feels like the right score for DA2 (4/10 = "Fair" in the holy Fallout scale, and DA2 is right there - not a complete unplayable turd, but definitely below average even "for what it is"). And if Swotor meets the same reception... Sure, they'll get some SW fanboys and WoW burnouts - but with a 100+ million budget and 2 million subscribers thrown around as profitable levels... Buy popcorn now while it's still cheap, cause the demand for it is going to soar when Swotor hits the fan - and you can resell it for a profit even if you won't be ogling the trainwreck