DCUO Goes to the Free to Play (FTP) setup...

Hello Web Monkeys!
Interesting thing happened as i was cruising my PSN store the other day, I found out that DCUO had gone free to play...

Now for those of you out there that have NOT experienced this genre of game... It falls into the MMORPG... or MMO... or MMOG... or online game category - truthfully the genre has been used to label any game that has an initial cost and some sort of "payment option" in it - think Dungeons and Dragons with snazzy graphics and MIRC chat... Still not sure? Sorry can't help you - stop reading now and go download it, or go play a FB game (if the FB game confuses you...Nevermind...)

Of course i had purchased this game at the behest of a friend Robert, who literally spent release week doing nothing BUT playing... Finally i purchased the game and started my online adventure in the DC universe...

The Superhero online roleplaying game genre has a few notable titles worth mentioning as they sort of helped shape DCUO in some form... City of heroes/villains/wombats/titty twisters/whatever they are adding this week... and Champions Online... As i have paid for all three i can give yo my insight on these I feel pretty objectively, not because I'm better at it, but because i feel i am not playing favorites. I gave all three 60 days to convince me to stick around - below is the findings from each.

City of Hero's/Villains:
The first real offering I heard of for the superhero game was this one. Pretty standard issue MMO you installs your game you gets your Plastic out and you gets your free month...
Character creation was amazing! so much so its the only real part of the game i recall having fun with... past that i remember the game overall just being almost ridiculous in scale, what i mean is there seemed to be more "outside" than anything else... Quests seemed a bit blah... All i really got out of it is "cool you have an epic costume..." The game overall just didn't engage me or i didn't engage it, and i recall a LOT of complaining...

Champion's Online:
So this game was also recommended by Robert, I picked it up after playing 1 day of a free trial, convinced that this was gonna be unbelievable... Boy, was i right on that... CO gave you a pretty awesome costume setup, a really nifty 50-60s storyline type feel, but that's about as far as i felt i got into it. Same thing most of what i remember was the character setup... That and TONS of really lame superhero names... I mean you're playing a superhero who's gonna call XxtommylikeshamsammichesxX??? I digress - people who have no imagination sadly seem to like these games - and while this is something small to most folks... i REALLY think that games should police this more often... i mean if you are going to have a snarky name at least be inventive about it OK? OK where was I, oh yeah... Leveling... BORING - enemies... unimaginative and BORING looks... the game went almost reverse of COX...it seemed TOO sandbox y... and the NPCs were TOO vague... All in all i just felt like there was just too much emphasis to say "we're SO not COH" which makes a lot of sense... go read about it on wikipedia if you want to know more about these two games, its actually quite funny! That and the customer service sucked so so so very bad, I hadn't even broke out of my trial, had already added my keys and CC and i was already bored with the game... I called up for options... I was curtly informed "we don't do refunds at all" and told to have a pleasant day then disconnected... Customer Service to me is as important as the game itself... I felt very disregarded like "we got your money piss off!" this one thing will kee me from buying any more IPs from this company...

DC Universe Online:
Ok let me get this VERY big Gripe out of the way... to ME adding the term "online" to ANYTHING is about as annoying as adding "Mc" to items on the McDonalds Menu or Apples legacy of "i" stuff - WE GET IT... every time i hear an ad for "high speed online" I want to smash my Adams apple with a crowbar... SO when i heard the announcement for DC Universe Online, you can imagine the Cluster headache i gave myself, then the Virgo kicked in... and it applied in this case and i got over it... However - INTERNET ACCESS MEANS YOU ARE ONLINE... THERE IS NO HIGH SPEED OFFLINE YOU FREAKING IDIOTS JUST CALL IT HIGH SPEED INTERNET OR HIGH SPEED WEB ACCESS OMFGWTFBBLROFLLOL!!!!!!!!1!111! OK 'nuff said.

Where was I?

DCUO - right... So remembering Meridian 59 and EQ1 and lots of MUDs.I keep finding this one little grain of truth. The games that last the longest do two things well:
They have an immersive mythos/storyline.
They Don't require you to upgrade your system every 6 weeks...
That being said, Let focus on the first part of this... how much more "comic book" or "nerdy" or "USA-centric" can you get than Superman, Batman, and Wonder-woman. I mean c'mon! EVERYONE knows these names right??? Amazingly this transferred over well to Character creation, where you get to pick one as a mentor (there are villains as well, but I'm more of a glass half full kinda guy, not a My glass can be changed to take over the world and steal all the hostess pastries in it! (bonus if you get the reference!)) then get into the rest of the creation process... Now DCUO isn't as extensive as the above games, but it still offers a lot more options than say World of Warcraft... Here's the catch that almost made me cry... you get your character all gussied up, pick your epic color scheme (because color is as important as your name) log into one of the best tutorial instances i have seen complete with voice over acting that i swear are the same actors as many of DCs movies... and you get some new gear - and SUDDENLY ALL THAT AWESOME TIME YOU SPENT IN CHARACTER CREATION IS LOST BECAUSE YOU PUT ON NEW ARMOR!!!! I picked the halter top on my female because she had huge boobies and now all that cleavage is covered in off world tech armor FAH Q SONY!!!1! I HATE YOUR EFFING GAME!11!1 Oh... You can change the look of your gear in the appearance section WHILE IN GAME? The colors too??? This to me was one of the BEST options in the game... Now i could mix and match tech armor, demon armor, and druid armor and not look like some time traveling demon-druid with bad taste in costuming, this to me is an option i think should be found in every game... Even WoW could learn from this!!! Of course past your initial costume you have to collect "looks" by adding them from the various items you pick up... a few of theyse sets mix and match well, so you get to sort of have a mini game in that alone... And yup you guessed it, achievements exist for donning new looks. Graphically, the game is very pretty, and doesn't add too much to your clocks on you PC - i think this is for two reasons: 1. the game ports exactly over to the PS3, but i don't if you have mouse and keyboard mapping there ( I played ot for an hour on my PS3 and the contoller setup IS intuitive, but i still like Mouse Keyboard I tried playing with my 360 controller on the PC and the same thing.. while it is intuitive keyboards are just almost a must with MMOs ... 2. They use a lot of really cool tricks for manipulating the surrounding, load times are uber low when going into a new area... but you still still see peoples characters "load" in some places... other than that about as clean as WoW.

So why didn't i continue to play? Well after a few days really hitting it hard i had 2 characters at 20+ and rapidly running out of content... Other things came into play, like a social life outside the house, and here we are! Why is it different now? Honestly I think its because I'm NOT paying for it monthly... I dint feel obligated or entitled" to play, so its less pressure. that and the DLC content is not TOO shabby not overly priced and the game uses Sony cash so you can use it on other stuff if you don't use it on DCUO - i will admit though... the DLC s currently a lil "meh". gameplay overall is a bit off the beaten path relying completely on mouse/controller "aiming" and combination button pressing - for instance one of my favorite moves requires me to LMB, the hold LMB - then hold RMB to finish... this is one of like 5 i have for combo attacks and they link together pretty easily, THEN you have all your hotkey actions so for the above lets say I'm fighting Solomon Grundy while doing the Poison Ivy quest line? A few "metahumans( i LOVE that word say it with me Meh-Tuh-Hyoo-Mens VERY GOOD )" join up and we go after him... So, lets follow my attack - I stealth (batman is my mentor and the games options and experiences change according to who you're a fanboi of) and i roll up on him and hit him with sort of a backstab, then ill hit him kick him unload six arrows into his face, THEN i start in on the hotkey hits... taser him, sticky bomb him, hes now stunned do a quick buff up and then drop choking gas - and were only 5 seconds into the fight - and i still have like three other combos and hotkey attacks (called loadouts) i can use... add this to the nice quick role switch and you can see how the fighting at least gets a lot more tricky than 1,1,1,2,3,4,4,1,4,5,wait for cooldowns... its actually pretty awesome... fights are very dynamic! the even more insane thing is for healer types heals do both damage and heal simultaneously.

The downside to this going FTP is also the boon of it going FTP - people are flocking to the game and there are log in queues - most people HATE this, but I'm kind of relieved. It appears Sony took a page right out of Blizzards Play Book and underestimated the response to this setup and the servers have been agonizingly getting shut down more then they are up it seems, but when you get 120 thousand new gamers and 300 thousand total logging in at once on two mega servers, you're gonna have some issues. Sonys dev. team and management have handled the issues with as much transparency and grace as they can, but for those of you who are in the know, you know that its always the most ignorant that yell the loudest... or the "Snowflakes"...
The setup is pretty awesome actually - for those players that want "legendary accounts" you pay 14.99 a month and you get basically unlimited everything. For players that actually spent he cash on the game and have a "key" you get some limits - you only get six characters per server (plenty for the roles you'll need.) you can only have 2000 dollars on your character and everything else goes into escrow. the free to play bunch get 2 character slots, no email transfers and very limited monies. Other than that all the content is the same as well as the character customizations. All the accounts are upgradeable. So really you get out what you put in. In all it seems very well thought out. There still is that feeling of entitlement with the legendary/premium players against the FTP players... But i think its more ignorance and frustration of the servers failing as of late.

In closing, I think there are a lot less savory MMOs out there on the FTP side, with lots less back story and pretty lame production values... DCUO is really good IP with a strong story and amazing game play overall. Best of all its 100% free!!! You can do a LOT worse than this game. If you have any questions ping me and ill do my best to answer ya!

~Dan

For any that play: Bloodmoon USPCPVE