your fave could never
Aug. 11th, 2020 10:58 pmAlmost by accident I've started playing DC Universe Online again, a game I last played before the Great Sony Hack of 2011 that took all their games and the PSN down for a month or more. I remember enjoying it at the time, but having mixed feelings given the shoddiness of the UI and UX (console ports ftw) and the lack of transparency in the game mechanics.
Well, none of that has changed, but maybe my opinions have, about what an MMORPG should look like. I reinstalled it just for kicks (and because now Australia has slightly less-slow internet, it's not a chore to do so!) and logged in intending just to have a fly around, and got distracted changing my outfit (my main hero now looks incredibly badass) and then sort of got interested in the content and now here I am a few days layer, re-subscribed and getting stuck in.
The engine is still clunky and the graphics are certainly showing its age (but for all of that, the environments are prettier than World of Warcraft which had a graphics upgrade much more recently.) But what I'm impressed about is the quantity of content they've released. In the, what, nine and a half years since the game launched, there have been 39 "episodes", periodic updates of playable content which advance the storylines and provide character progression.
For the last four years their model has been to release a new episode every few months (anywhere from 2 to 6) which contains a new open-world zone with repeatable quests, new levels of instance content for various sizes of group, and at least one full raid, often two. 21 new raids in less than four years. Admittedly none of them are huge, but when you're getting three or four new episodes a year, that doesn't matter! And, as a bonus, it's all included in the subscription, or if you're a free to play player you can unlock specific episodes for a one-off payment.
Dear Blizzard, this is how you drip-feed new content - you know, that thing you've been saying you want to do for over a decade.
It's also kinda interesting because I've read a lot more DCU fanfic since I first played, thanks largely to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
musesfool and her recs at unfitforsociety. So I feel a certain amount of interest in the setting that I didn't when I first played. Bumping into Superman or Wonder Woman in game does nothing for me (exacerbated by the fact that Superman is voiced by Adam Baldwin, whose crappiness has kind of tarnished everything he's touched, for me) but flying around in the Justice League Watchtower kind of does.
Well, none of that has changed, but maybe my opinions have, about what an MMORPG should look like. I reinstalled it just for kicks (and because now Australia has slightly less-slow internet, it's not a chore to do so!) and logged in intending just to have a fly around, and got distracted changing my outfit (my main hero now looks incredibly badass) and then sort of got interested in the content and now here I am a few days layer, re-subscribed and getting stuck in.
The engine is still clunky and the graphics are certainly showing its age (but for all of that, the environments are prettier than World of Warcraft which had a graphics upgrade much more recently.) But what I'm impressed about is the quantity of content they've released. In the, what, nine and a half years since the game launched, there have been 39 "episodes", periodic updates of playable content which advance the storylines and provide character progression.
For the last four years their model has been to release a new episode every few months (anywhere from 2 to 6) which contains a new open-world zone with repeatable quests, new levels of instance content for various sizes of group, and at least one full raid, often two. 21 new raids in less than four years. Admittedly none of them are huge, but when you're getting three or four new episodes a year, that doesn't matter! And, as a bonus, it's all included in the subscription, or if you're a free to play player you can unlock specific episodes for a one-off payment.
Dear Blizzard, this is how you drip-feed new content - you know, that thing you've been saying you want to do for over a decade.
It's also kinda interesting because I've read a lot more DCU fanfic since I first played, thanks largely to
musesfool and her recs at unfitforsociety. So I feel a certain amount of interest in the setting that I didn't when I first played. Bumping into Superman or Wonder Woman in game does nothing for me (exacerbated by the fact that Superman is voiced by Adam Baldwin, whose crappiness has kind of tarnished everything he's touched, for me) but flying around in the Justice League Watchtower kind of does.
