Do you have to play dragon age 1 before 2?

Is it necessary to complete dragon age 1 and understand its plot in order to fully enhance the experience of the sequel dragon age 2 (when it comes out of course) ?Do you have to play dragon age 1 before 2?
if i remember correctly, it comes out in 8th march.

and no, there is no real continuity, so i say you may play in whatever order you want.

for example, if you import your character from DA to DA2, it only means that some decisions that you made in the game will apply (who is the king of the dwarves %26amp; humans and so on) but in DA2 you'll play a human character called Hawke and not the one you had in DA
Not required. They give you a lot of the background in DA2, and if you have not played DAO (or the Awakenings add-on), DA2 will make some default assumptions about how the Blight ended, the Dalish, Denerim's Alienage, the Circle of Magi, Ameranthine, and who is now King/Queen of Ferelden or King of the Dwarves.

None of these is directly critical to the story in DA2, not even in the case of Anders and Justice who become Wardens in Awakenings, and are severely changed by the events that follow the end of the Blight.

But Dragon Age Origins is awesome in it's own right, and therefore a good game to play anyway.Do you have to play dragon age 1 before 2?
Bioware took the approach that both games are self contained stories set in the same universe. As oppsed to ME where each game continues the story of the first. DA2 will give you the background information you need if you haven't played the first. They intentionally made it so you don't have to play the first. Basically, if you play the first you can import a save to have some of your actions mentioned in DA2. But since you play a different charactor and team, it won't have a direct impact on the story.
Dragon Age 2 starts during the timeline of the first game. It starts somewhere in the beginning of the first game and ends ten years after that. From the demo I got the impression that all relevant events from the first game are narrated by the character Varric. The majority of Dragon Age II takes place in a different country and the story is for the most part unrelated.Do you have to play dragon age 1 before 2?
You probably will be fine - it looks very self-contained to me...