I've been keeping an eye on DCUO for some time. I know someone at SOE and the early beta is coming soon. I'll most likely be participating in beta since my station name was submitted by my source as a friends and family entry. I won’t be able to tell you much during beta because of the non disclosure agreement (NGA). I can sum up some of my thoughts on the game before joining beta and I’ll post a review AFTER the NDA is lifted and not before. I don’t want to lose my good standing with my inside source.
The good stuff.
The game’s being made by SOE. These are the guys that brought you Everquest, probably their most well known title. While it’s not as popular as World of Warcraft (WoW) it’s still successful. I’ve played Everquest and Everquest 2 for many years. The amount of content is amazing. So I can expect as much with DCUO. It’s been in development for a long time. Probably close to 5 years. In addition SOE has made MMOs before so they know what to expect.
They got Jim Lee as the game's Executive Creative Director. They actually got a well known comic book artist to be their advisor and help create the world you play in. It’s bound to have that real comic book feel to it.
The feature that I’m looking forward to seeing the most is helping the big name hearoes such as Batman and Superman. I saw this in a video about the game. The big name heroes will call you for assistance periodically. You can choose to help them or ignore them. The next time they contact you their attitude toward you will be based on if you helped or not. It’s an interesting twist on faction grinding.
The cities are HUGE! According to a video on the official DCUO site, Metropolis is 1000 square blocks. I’m looking forward to the hugeness of the city. In addition to the horrizontal size the vertical size also looks impressive. I hope all the buildings are to scale. They seem like it in the videos.
The Objects in the world can be used to pummel bad guys. This will probably be the funnest feature of the game. I’ve seen players picking up vehicles to use to bash bad guys with. The latest game trailer has someone using a helicopter to bash an enemy with. I’m sure I’ll get plenty of laughs by hitting bad guys with stuff I find in the game.
The stuff I’m not looking forward to.
In every MMO there are asshats. I’m expecting a million variations on Batman to spring forth from the minds of juviniles. Most will have misspelled names such as Battman, Bratman etc. These people are neither creative nor funny. They are annoying.
Gear that changes the way you look. In Everquest when you got new gear it changed the way you looked. Most of the time it was okay and sometimes it made you look stupid. I’m sure DCUO will have gear drops to make your character stronger. The only problem with that system in this game is that superheroes are supposed to have a distinct and stable costume. Most superheores don’t change costumes very often and when they do it usually sucks and ends up like New Coke. I’m hoping they have some option to hide all gear upgrades and stick with the original costume you designed in character creation. In addition melee weapons won’t make much sense in this game. While some heroes do use swords or billy clubs most do not. I’m hoping that there is a way to equip weapons but hide them since I don’t want to be at a disadvantage by not equiping one but I don’t want my character to use a sword.
The thing I’m worried about the most is the abilities available to players. I plan on making a speedster character like the Flash. I don’t want him to be able to do things that the Flash can’t do such as pick up a bus. I’m hoping there’s enough speed based abilities to choose from that I don’t have to choose strength or energy based ones.
The story.
The writers of DCUO had to explain why all these new heroes and villains were appearing. I was expecting a multiple universe thing but they instead did a time travel story. In the future Brainiac steals the powers of the worlds heroes using nanites and takes over just after Lex Luthor and pals kill off Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. The loss of those 3 heroes allows Brianiac to conquer Earth. Lex, seeing the folly of his ways steals Brainiac’s Delorean and travels back in time to disperse the nanites and create a ton of new heroes.
Time will tell how good or bad this game will be. I’ll post a real review of the game once the NDA is lifted provided I do get into beta.
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