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General: DC Universe Will Make a Comeback
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
In this week's argumentative take on issues facing the MMO Industry, Drew Wood dives into the hype and fizzle of SOE's Universe Online. In The Devil's Advocate, Drew posits something quite bold: DCUO will soon see a comeback.
When DC Universe Online launched simultaneously on the PS3 and the PC back in January, the server populations in the game were through the roof. I play on the PC in the North American market and never used to have problems with finding an appropriately populated PvP server on which to jump into, attempt to do a few quests, and ultimately get beaten down by the kids who decided to camp out the Lighthouse in Gotham in a bid to gank all villains who entered the area. And, oh, how they did gank! I am not complaining though, not by any stretch of the imagination. At the time, it was a given to see a group of likeminded villains join me and soon we were neck deep in a battle of good vs. evil played out against the backdrop of Gotham's Lighthouse, or Metropolis' Hospital and mayhem most definitely ensued.
Read the rest of Drew Wood's Devil's Advocate: DC Universe Will Make a Comeback.
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Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
Comments
LOL You are funny sir. When pigs fly DCUO will have a comeback. Paid DLC for a game with a dearth of powers to begin with? Good luck with that.
He is playing devils advocate. You know what that means?
No offense but adding new powers to this game is like adding extra wheels to a car with no engine on a race track that just goes round and round and round.
DCUO sadly wasn't an mmo, it was a single player action gmae that occasionally needed more players to do things but had almost 0 reason to be massive or online.
It was pretty, it was shiny, it was polished to some degree and had potential but in the end it was an action packed pointless romp that swiftly lost steam.
People ask "What happened to the game, the fact is people FINISHED the game and moved on" An mmo that can be finished, beaten etc, that gives the player no incentive to play other then the same sort of fight one gets from level 1 to the end is frankly not an mmo and more games need to realize this. There needs to be more incentive to do things. Just fighting over and over again is not really enough.
Ultima Online was good not for its graphics but for its ability to let you do things like build, grow, train etc, more then just fight. You got a sense of accomplishment from doing those things and DC hasn't offered any alternative at this time. In fact most MMOs make the same mistake. The crop of MMOs as of late have been Massively One dimensional.
I really think this game could make a come back the combat is amazing and so is everything about the game except there is not much content in the game and the level cap is 30 if they would have added more content and made the level cape like 60-70 the game would have been alot better and would have not died like it did
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so now they are charging you for new powersets, when they only started with six to begin with, on top of a subscription fee. man dcuo players are totally getting screwed, im so glad i stuck with a true superhero mmo that is actually good.
SoE doesn't seem to be terribly interested in funding a comeback.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
With CoX and CO both being F2P (CoX is becoming F2P with Freedom REAL SOON), DCUO still requiring a subscription AND charging us for Lantern DLC makes it feel like SOE is going by CO's 1st year subscription + microtransaction store which I HATED!!!
Furthermore, I recently had a chance to play DCUO post Update 4 and I'd still place it in 3rd of the 3 superhero MMOs. (2nd to CoX because CoX is the oldest ergo it has the most content of the 3; CO is 1st to me because the character creator is soooo much better than the other 2).
Allow people to play together cross-plattform, and we'll talk ...
Devils advocate my rubbish it isn't more insane hopeful
I was one of the many, may players who details were stolen from SOE's databases a little back. As such SOE will never get my financial details again. I've stripped my profile to bare minimum information and will NOT be giving them any CC information again. I enjoyed DCUO when it first came out and I've oft considered returning, my son has a copy aswell and we had fun adventuring together but unless SOE implement Paypal as a payment option it aint going to happen for me.
This is the second in this series of articles that I have read and has left me scratching my head.
Sure you are taking the devils advocate stance of "DCU will make a comeback", but again you really do not say how...
The points you mention seem to be limited to
Fight for light bringing a new power set for players to create a character with
Server merging down to 1 server of each type.
Word of mouth from the players
Looking at that I don't really understand that basis of your viewpoint that DCU will rebound as it doesn't really resolve the problems that caused DCU to be in the situaiton it currently is in.
People didn't leave because there wasn't a 7th power set. A few perhaps, but this doesn't resolve WHY people left.
The servers being empty was a result of a much larger set of problems. Empty servers came AFTER people left, not before. Merging servers does not resolve the reasons why people left when the game had brisk and healthy populations.
Word of mouth is currently horrible for DCU and each content update has not resolved that. It arguably has actually made it worse, but what would possibly make you think word of mouth will suddenly turn the game around?
Again you seem to spend more time talking about the problems of the game and never really spell out what you think will turn the game around. I'm not saying a rebound will never happen, because that is an absolute and we live in a world of infinite possibilities, but I just don't see what you think will cause the rebound.
This.
SOE has NEVER put ANY effort in reviving a "fallen" game. See Matrix Online, see Vanguard, see Pirates of the Burning Sea. DCU would need a TREMENDOUS effort, tons and tons of more content. You can see all content of villain and hero side in a few weeks! Even at a VERY casual gameplay. So the game would nee about 10 times as much content.
Lol, as if that is EVER going to happen.
No offense, but thats more the fools advocate believing Sony of all companies can pull that. As with a mortally wounded animal: shoot it to spare it the misery, I say.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I don't think DCUO will make a comeback for one simple reason: MMOs tend to not make combacks after they crash and burn.
I've always considered this game kind of a flop. Nearly every online game is popular when it first comes out, because of the tremendous hype they garner, but the general reviews and player feedback were pretty average even though it did get a few good scores. SOE could still make the game better, I'm not going to argue with that. Anything is possible. But I wouldn't call it a comeback.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I have that Sony account thingie. I'm loving Vanguard right now (a lot more polish now) and I play DCUO when I want to go lay out some smackdown (PvP) I hope you're right. Maybe if they released more content and offered a Welcome Back weekend or something similar the pop would grow.
I love the combat and the travel powers, but I usually look for a little more MMOness in my MMOs. I'd like to see crafting - someone has to make the gadgets and giant poison clouds after all - secret hideouts in the form of housing (in-world please, instanced housing is pretty much BS) and vehicles.
I normally like playing the devil's advocate myself. However, I can't go with you on this. DCUO has already failed and I do not believe there can be redemption. (not with SOE's current management team in charge)
DCUO for PC is beyond rescue.
Case closed.
Honestly my biggest problem with the game is not having "duel specs."
The games awesome.
Jeremiah 8:21 I weep for the hurt of my people; I stand amazed, silent, dumb with grief.
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I wish there would be a comeback, but in all honesty, there just isn't enough right now to come back to. I definitely wouldn't pay for 1 new set, unless it was paying the subscription price to come back and test it. Apart from that, I can't see myself coming back... and it has nothing to do with the game, and everything to do with SOEs management here.
Patches came way too late, content updates never hit their scheduled mark, and eventhough I was in beta for a while I stated simply, even while being a large proponent for the game that if SOE could keep the game updates coming they'd have a shot, but they just bogged themselves down and then started bleeding subscriptions.
This content doesn't scream COMEBACK to me. It seems to be saying "We're still here" and thats about it. They don't want people to forget the game is there, but they also don't (can't?) focus themselves on what needs to happen to breathe life into this game. It needs some major updates for any type of major resurgence, and SOE just doesn't have that in them.
the problem isnt so much dcuo as it is soe. I will never give soe another buck out my wallet they destroyed that game almost as bad as they destroyed swg. How soe gets any franchise titles is beyond me? they just unr franchises into the ground lol. So you can tell your 2 friends but i will be telling my 2 friends and so on how soe destroys franchise titles and has lousy server protection and how i got a call from visa asking if im thailand and trying to purchase 20 thousand dollars in marble flooring LOL.
Ill agree dcuo was a decent game but bieng associated with soe really hurt dc and soe doesnt care about anything but $$.
look soe's track record
matrix - gone
swg- destroyed by nge update turned into pokemon trading card game and pink rancors finally shutting down
dcuo- went back in when it was free after thier hackfest at soe. Server was dead saw a total of 3 people in game tryed again a week later in boredom and could not que up a pvp match saw 2 lvl 5's at police station uninstalled the game after that.
Soe let the game die to by not working on exploits and bugs even when i played it again it still felt like a rushed out game and trying to get out of beta still. They finally fixed thet god aweful chat system.
It is a shame b/c i do love dc comics and the franchise but it was poorly done and left to die by soe.
I cant see this game making a comeback unless soe is out of the picture and the game is re beta tested and polished a lot more and they reinvested in content updates and that green lantern garbage should of been free if anything to keep interest in the game. I cant see buying content when there was only 3 people on the server and a week later less lol.
r.i.p dcuo
A Green lantern Powerset and Mega servers are small, short term fixes. Theymay generate a bit of hype and excitement, but when that wears off things will be as they were before. DC's launch generated short term excitement and hype too. I remember reading all of the little reviews here that would point out a list of things that were wrong (basic things like chat and friend's list functionality, shallow on content, leveling pace too quick, shallow end game content) but then would go into how "OMG the PvP is Open world and sooooooo fun" and then gush on for paragraphs. Well sorry to say, but a MMO cannot stand on "OMG PvP" alone.
DCUO needs depth, and it really does not have any. Where's the guild/league system that Chris Cao said he was going to bring over from EQ2? Where are other features that they dropped from launch for whatever reason? Where is the game heading past "OMG Green Lantern"?
It's getting harder for games to recover from a poor launch. Players got bored and moved on to other things, or went back to previous games, because hoping that everyone would be so in love with PvP that they would not notice that the rest of the game was shallow.
Now I don't think DCUO will shutdown. And I think that it very well may make a comeback. It's going to take a lot more that a new power and nothing to do with it and some new alerts. maybe in a year we can start thinking about a "comeback".
It will not make a comeback. Right or wrong the window developers have for ensuring their game will be a longterm success is very small and is a one time shot. If you screw up your launch then you can be assured the game will never fluorish to its full potential. Gamers are very unforgiving especially considering the amount of debacles that companies have done lately. If there was such a thing as a mulligan in the gaming world than a lot of these games that eventually ironed out their wrinkles would have made a comeback themselves long before DCUO came along.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
OP? You toke'n weed br4h? Honestly, I wish DCUO could be revamped, make a real come back, but in truth it is right now pretty much what it will always be and won't ever be fixed enough. It died during launch month and I am not sure that even going F2P would save it. The PC version may survive off the PS3 profits for a time. I don't know what it is with SOE. They have talented developers with good ideas that could become good games but manage to screw it all up from early releases and poor lauches to non existant after purchase product support EVERY TIME. I want to like them but they hurt me for it too often. Even if they rebranded DCUO somehow for a relaunch, I'd not trust them enough to re-try...
You people are pathetic and shallow. Do you know how hard it is to actually create a game? The developers work day and night to do WHATEVER THEY CAN and all you people are doing are whining like little babies. WHEN A MMORPG COMES OUT! THAT DOESNT MEAN IT IS PERFECT!!! Look at wow. When it started, no one played it and it was FILLED with glitchs and exploits. So for you to think that a game can't have glitches is absurd. In order to create even a the tiniest bit of content, the developers have to work day and night. Stop acting so spoiled and ENJOY THE GAME!!!! DCUO WILL make a comeback so if you don't like it, go play you dumb@ss maplestory and wow while the ADULTS play something better. Please, the next time you write a comment about ANY MMORPG, show some respect to the people who worked their soul out to make you guys happy