Setting details -
* There will be ruins in DA, yup. I think it would be a very unusual setting that didn't have them. Something had to come before the current civilization, right? Unless you're playing immediately after the hunting/gathering stage of evolution (unless your setting bypasses that, which would be strange to me). When ruins are done right not only is it a cool setting, but it gives you a sense of history.
* There are dragons during this age, as one would fairly expect. The game is not about dragons, however, and the main character has no special relation to them. Nor are they some dominant feature of the world or the story
* Religion is a large factor in the culture of every race and background in Dragon Age.
* There are, like, 8 whole Ages prior to the Dragon Age... and before that, you have to move onto the old Imperial calendar which is a completely different ball of wax.
* 8 Ages might sound like a lot, but by the modern calendar they're each about 100 years long (if that offers any sense of scale for you), with a new Age being named according to some event or portent at the very end of the last one.
* The previous Age was called the Blessed Age -- no idea if that means anything to you, but there you go.
* The older civilizations weren't the epitome of everything... there has been general progress in some areas which the ancients never had... but we're also talking about a world which has seen some major upheaval and that means that knowledge is sometimes lost and things fall to the wayside.
* Magic in DA is Low Magic in the sense that it is rare -- your average commoner is unlikely to encounter anything truly magical in his entire lifetime, and actual magic items are the things of legend
* How each culture treats their dead and what they believe actually happens to a person after they die is a rather important distinction.
* The cool thing about our world is that we can fit all sorts of religious beliefs into it.
Each culture can have a different opinion of creation, heaven, and the afterlife, and we get to make them all up.
* There are no alternate planes of existence that you can physically enter. Certainly no planes as they exist in the D&D sense.
* No vampires at all -- or, at least, nothing that you would recognize as a vampire, I'm sure.
* There are "undead" creatures in Dragon Age -- as in animated corpses of varying types, things that continue to move and act even though they are clearly dead.
There is a distinct rationale for how and why these creatures exist, and it provides no further proof of the divine or in the existence of souls and an afterlife than anything else, though some may choose to believe otherwise.
* Q: Is the DA world generally human-dominated or is it relatively diverse?
A: Primarily human-dominated, though that domination is and has been occasionally contested.
* Of the races that can inter-breed the child is of one race or the other -- there are no half-breeds.
* ...the many dwarves who live on the surface are considered no longer part of the caste system and therefore beneath it.
* Our dwarfettes don't have beards.
Well, except maybe for the Silent Sisters.
* If you mean that elves are supposed to be haughty, immortal, nature-loving super-beings who are superior to humans in every possible way -- then no, those won't be our elves.
* Gnomes? Halflings? What are those?
* It's a design rule for DA: no anthropomorphic races. Period.
* Most people can't read…
* No, education is not common. Like in our own, similar, period of history it's restricted to the privileged few.
* The "common" tongue spoken is English (in the English version of the game anyway, yes) and it is a human tongue. It is also spoken by the other races of the area for economic reasons (in addition to their own, generally speaking).
There are other human tongues, however, such as the one that was described as "Imperial" in the article. There are in-game reasons why we needed to develop the Imperial tongue for this title. Other languages might be visited and developed later.
* Currency exists and has been spread by one particular culture (though the names for and appearance of currency varies from place to place). There are no banks, but some places have moneylenders (most often that same culture).
* We will have different types of coinage (not just the standard "gold piece"), with names that vary according to the nation of origin. Why? For flavour, I guess. It's not much cost for the feature, after all.
* Yep. But the land is in the southern hemisphere, and thus you have the wacky arrangement of things being cold in the south and hot in the north.
* I think the feeling here is that culture should be the primary thing that differentiates a new race, yes.
* There certainly wouldn't be organized sport of any kind in the DA world, though there are some cultures that have spectator sports of various kinds.
* If I remember correctly it literally translates to "forest valleys", from 'ferre elden'.
Ferelden is not the name of the world, but rather the Kingdom where the story primarily takes place. Other nations are referenced, and it's not unlikely that other stories will take one beyond Ferelden... you've got to start somewhere, after all.
* The adjective for Ferelden is actually Fereldan. So you are Fereldans.
* Well, literally translated it means People's Valley. But the language the name is rooted in isn't spoken anymore.
* Kinloch Hold - the tower depicted in concept art