Cripes, I am getting really bad at keeping to this schedule. Fortunately, Piranha Bytes didn’t do anything last week, so Tuesday is free and clear for me to cover content I should have covered yesterday.

BioWare is gearing up for Dragon Age 3, and have posted another “question of the month” for fans of the series. This time, they’re asking what sort of item people would like to find in a collector’s edition of a “future hypothetical title” in the series. A picture of (male) Hawke and Morrigan in a romantic embrace graces the post…what can it mean?

Also, as I noted in my Examiner column, the short-lived Dragon Age Legends social game (for Facebook and Google+) has been shut down by BioWare. However, they have released the entire game for offline play as an Adobe AIR application, which…might be the first instance of a browser-based game being converted to something that’s playable offline. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues, as it would address handily at least one significant objection many people raise to browser-based gaming. Two, really, since it also decouples the game from the social network accounts that had previously been required to access it.

And Kotaku is claiming that the Dragon Age animated film, Dawn of the Seeker, is one to see if you’re a sucker for Dragon Age lore! Make of that what you will.

A new record was set this week in the wide, wide world of erroneous coverage of Star Wars: The Old Republic. It started innocently enough, when lead designer Emmanuelle Lusinchi let slip to a gaming magazine that:

We are looking at free-to-play, but I can’t tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on.

That is basically all he said, but of course the remark kicked off a whole lot of rampant speculation and calls for an end to the era of subscription-based MMORPGs. Electronic Arts tried to calm the rumour mill down, but…well, it’s the Internet. You can all guess what happened.

Fortunately, game director James Ohlen had something else to talk about: superservers, and the role they play in keeping The Old Republic online. It’s not really a very technical look at the backend architecture of the game, but his comments may be of interest to some; a few of you here do dabble in coding online games.

Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that the ending of Mass Effect 3 did not violate the UK’s advertising standards or mislead consumers as to the impact of their gameplay and decisions on the game’s outcome. Where this leaves the “Hold the Line” crowd, I can’t begin to speculate.

Also: the game is now being advertised at GameStop as being about the journey, not the end. Which I suppose is technically true, though for some it’s probably a rage-inducing thing to see. For others, it’s probably a fine summation of what the game really is.

Finally, BioWare are turning even more fan art into actual merchandise…t-shirts, in this case.