BioWare's Mike Laidlaw (who just joined Twitter!) was up at PAX in Seattle last weekend, dropping a few hints on future Dragon Age 2 DLC, as well as what Bioware is planning for the next iteration in the series, Dragon Age 3.

Neogaf has kindly summarized a few reports on the panel, and we'll go even one further for you "TLDR" types: Dragon Age 3 will feature the world of Ferelden at war between mages and templars, with the player traveling around to places as far as Orlais and Tvinter to try and calm (or maybe stoke, knowing Bioware) the fighting. One of the maps shown was "four to five times larger than Ferelden," and cited as the future of the series.

The story of the first game's Warden "is over," apparently, and while Hawke's story has some left to tell, writer David Gaider hinted that the protagonist of the third game would be yet another new hero. Co-op is possible but not likely, followers will keep their "unique" armor designs but still change visually over time, and combat will revolve around "preparation, teamwork, and positioning," with less button-smashing and more thought given to prepping your team for, and adjusting during battle.

In closer plans, Laidlaw said that we'll see more of Varric in upcoming DLC for Dragon Age 2, as well as Leiliana and Flemeth. Morrigan will be back as well, and BioWare says that the Legacy DLC was received well, so that will be the model for updates in the future. Minus that last boss fight -- the team agrees that the AI in there wasn't quite as smart as they would have liked. Though it doesn't seem all that hard to program fire to equal bad, right?