2008 Merchandise & Miscellaneous News Archives

DC Universe Online

July 31, 2008: Comic-Con - Part 1: DC Universe Online MMO RPG

By Neal Bailey

Hey, folks! Neal here, with my first of few but relevant reports on the San Diego Comic-Con. For those of you who weren't here last year, here's my policy: I can't beat Newsarama for speed. I can't top CBR in terms of numbers. Instead, I go, I get my impressions, I analyze, and I frame the debate, per Hunter Thompson. So here's part one: The DCU MMO RPG.

Oh yeah, punk. I've played it!

Honestly, of all the places that give us difficulty for being a website presence, video game makers seem to get that people get their news from websites, and treat us accordingly. Of all the places I visited in San Diego, I can honestly say the Sony guys treated me the best. Maybe that's because they have a giant corporate sponsor, or maybe it's because they're earnestly trying to create a great game. Regardless, I had a great experience.

In the interest of full disclosure, they gave me a light up necklace to hang things on, the raddest pen in the world (press a button and it emits an LED batsignal), and free passes to a party. I didn't attend, given my current level of near absolute, total exhaustion, which I'll elaborate on later, but I have to say, though I can't be bought, those were rad little trinkets. I'll do what a doctor would do, and prescribe that you all get an awesome Batman pen just like mine.

Click "Read More" below to read Neal's complete article and see a gallery of images.

But now to the nuts and bolts... the gameplay.

It's obviously being roughed in, but for roughed in, it was pretty rad. I've played quite a few MMORPGs, Star Wars, City of Heroes, Vanguard, WoW, and the only one I've really enjoyed has been World of Warcraft, with City of Heroes a close second.

If your experience is the same as mine, the DC MMORPG is looking good for you. It has the fast paced battle of WoW (a little faster, actually) with a cooperative feel not unlike that of the battlegrounds. What I played was essentially an instance, with major hero and villain characters onhand, and other guys in other kiosks playing lower level heroes with me aiding the heroes stop the bad guys.

My handler guy, Oge Young, was very kind and patient explaining what was going on, dealing well with the fact that I haven't held a Playstation controller in years (I'm an Xbox man currently, though I prefer to game on the computer, and own a Wii). He explained that though nothing is set in stone, the demo was just that, a demo. He explained that they have models for approximately 75 mainline DC characters, and that though there were many, major prominent villains present in the demo (Luthor, Brainiac, Bizarro, and others) with underlings, typically, an encounter outside of a mission with majors would be less common, but not so common as to be a Jedi in Star Wars Galaxies, IE, impossible to find and rare as hell.

He showed me how to ramp up to superspeed, which was awesome. I went up buildings and back down. He showed the relatively simplistic few major powers. There were four buttons and four powers, designed for the PS3 controller, but I imagine it would be the standard 1-10 for computers. That was left undetermined.

Superman and Bizarro were trading blows with Supergirl on the side. Basically, I attacked Bizarro to aid Superman until I started getting some big blows in, then I aggroed and Bizarro froze me, beat the crap out of me, etc. Good balance, fast-paced, and fun.

When I died, I had to wait a second, press a button, and then I just popped back up, also very fast paced. He explained that they were still deciding how to res, but he indicated that there would be loot, which wasn't present in the demo, and that they hadn't determined a level cap yet.

I was "camped" a few times briefly by baddies, but despite that, Superman would actually move in and rescue me, which was rad.

Check out the included screenshots below... this baby seems to be coming along really well, and where before I was rather apathetic and disconcerted by other property efforts in this regard (cough Star Wars cough) I think I'm going to be buying this now, provided it expands from instances into something I can play with a bunch of people.

So, who's in my Justice League when it comes out? Anybody down?

Neal Bailey

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