Psykoboy2
12-06-2010, 11:37 AM
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5009/5235039921_5d0e916f3f.jpg
Let me start this out by saying I don’t play MMOs. Or well, I’ve only ever really played one. I tried World Of Warcraft but it never sank its teeth into me, so I can’t give you any comparisons there. Nope...the only MMO I have ever played, all the way from beginning to level cap, was City Of Heroes (CoH).
Fitting then, I suppose, that the next MMO for me to take interest in is DC Universe Online (DCUO), another comic book themed MMO. So you can probably expect some comparisons along the way.
This is going to become a regular thing as I make my way through the beta. Currently, I can only give you my experience through the first 9 levels, but that will change in the coming weeks and I’ll have access to higher levels.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4128/5219196015_ae4603c692_z.jpg
A carry over from my CoH days, this is Mobieus.
Let’s begin with character creation. No one, and I mean absolutely no one has outdone CoH in terms of character creation. That thing could be sold as a stand alone with how vast and detailed it is. And DCUO isn’t going to try, but what they’ve got is pretty good. You start out choosing male or female and then the body type - no sliders here, it’s either big, average, or small - and then you pick your side, hero or villain. You can choose to grab a template costume and power set based off a number of characters from the DCU or you can go your own way with power sets and costumes. But at some point in the creation, you have to pick a mentor. This will determine things like your starting point in the game, experience of the world, and the categories of weaponry and armor you’ll have available to you. Doesn’t affect combat or any stats like that, but for instance if you select Superman as your mentor, then you’ll start in Metropolis and have a lot of contact with him and his enemies.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5282/5219825714_52a196f058_z.jpg
This is MPH, not to be confused with NPH.
The powers are pretty vast ranging from fire, ice, gadgets, and mental just to name a few. These determine your strategy of combat and what role you’ll play within groups. After that, it’s on to a travel power. So far you can only pick from flight, acrobatics, and super speed. ALL of these can get you anywhere in the game. Super speed gives you the ability to run up walls and acrobatics gives you large jumps and the ability to grip to any object - also allowing you to reach the tops of buildings.
Then there’s a choice of weapon. This determines aspects of combat like speed, style, and range. Your choices here are staffs, guns, bow & arrow, mental, brawling, and martial arts - again...just to name a few.
Once done there it’s on to costume selection where you can pick skin type, hair style, helmets (masks), chest emblem, shirts, capes, wings, gloves, boots, pants, belts...it goes on and on. While not near the customization that CoH has, DCUO’s character creation is extremely vast and varied and it’s unlikely you’ll ever see two characters look the same - unless they go with the pre-built templates and make absolutely no changes to their appearance. Which should be difficult to do because as you play the game you’ll earn extra gear from drops that can be assigned to your character on the fly at which point you can decide if you want that gear to be represented on your character visually or just statistically.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5044/5219810972_9b4b24e3db_z.jpg
Once you are out of character creation, you have to break out of Braniac’s ship. This is the tutorial of the game and will get you acclimated to your combat skills and movement ability. The first time I did this took me forever since I was new to what I was doing and felt pretty helpless fighting 5 on 1 at times and only having very limited abilities. However, I noticed my second time through that it would take a strong willingness on the players part to die in this section. I imagine it can happen, but with health re-gen and how weak your enemies are, it’d take some real effort on your part to die.
Once out of that it’s on to the meat of the game and you’ll be transported to your starting point depending on who you picked as a mentor. As far as I can tell, this is either Metropolis or Gotham. Metropolis is like a future city where the sun is always shining and is, for the most part, pretty clean. While Gotham on the other hand is in perpetual night with rain occasionally and overall gives a more gritty sense to the city.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5167/5234960511_d33acfe4a8_z.jpg
Image Provided By Sony Online Entertainment
Now on to the combat in the game. You’ll almost always be fighting more than one enemy at a time and this usually isn’t a problem but you can attract more attention in a fight and suddenly become VERY outnumbered. You have the option of a target lock on, but I’ve yet to use it outside of the tutorial except when wanting to focus on an exploding canister in the middle of a group of enemies. Otherwise I just start attacking the target I’m facing and then move to the next one in the group. The left mouse button is used for a melee attack while the right mouse button is a ranged attack. These can be combined to pull off other moves as you increase your skill set in those departments. Your powers are activated with the numerical keys and these are the ones that take away from your stamina while the mouse button attacks are never depleted.
Missions in the game are focused on killing x amount of baddies and collecting x amount of items and the like. Your journal keeps up with what missions you have waiting for you and you can start and stop these at your leisure. So, for instance say I’m on one side of the map trying to complete a mission and see that I can also take care of part of an objective in another mission, I can jump in and out to do that. So far the missions don’t seem too repetitive but then again, this is only with levels 1 through 9 at my disposal, so we’ll see.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5086/5235526302_334a268554_z.jpg
Image Provided By Sony Online Entertainment
Overall, I’m really enjoying the game, even in its beta stage. To be honest, I haven’t enjoyed an MMO at all since my CoH days and this looks to be right up there with it as something I’m going to really have fun with. If you are looking for more specifics, feel free to ask for them and I’ll do my best to answer them in my next article on the game. I realize I’m not very experience in the MMO category so I’ll need your help in finding out what you want to know.
Let me start this out by saying I don’t play MMOs. Or well, I’ve only ever really played one. I tried World Of Warcraft but it never sank its teeth into me, so I can’t give you any comparisons there. Nope...the only MMO I have ever played, all the way from beginning to level cap, was City Of Heroes (CoH).
Fitting then, I suppose, that the next MMO for me to take interest in is DC Universe Online (DCUO), another comic book themed MMO. So you can probably expect some comparisons along the way.
This is going to become a regular thing as I make my way through the beta. Currently, I can only give you my experience through the first 9 levels, but that will change in the coming weeks and I’ll have access to higher levels.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4128/5219196015_ae4603c692_z.jpg
A carry over from my CoH days, this is Mobieus.
Let’s begin with character creation. No one, and I mean absolutely no one has outdone CoH in terms of character creation. That thing could be sold as a stand alone with how vast and detailed it is. And DCUO isn’t going to try, but what they’ve got is pretty good. You start out choosing male or female and then the body type - no sliders here, it’s either big, average, or small - and then you pick your side, hero or villain. You can choose to grab a template costume and power set based off a number of characters from the DCU or you can go your own way with power sets and costumes. But at some point in the creation, you have to pick a mentor. This will determine things like your starting point in the game, experience of the world, and the categories of weaponry and armor you’ll have available to you. Doesn’t affect combat or any stats like that, but for instance if you select Superman as your mentor, then you’ll start in Metropolis and have a lot of contact with him and his enemies.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5282/5219825714_52a196f058_z.jpg
This is MPH, not to be confused with NPH.
The powers are pretty vast ranging from fire, ice, gadgets, and mental just to name a few. These determine your strategy of combat and what role you’ll play within groups. After that, it’s on to a travel power. So far you can only pick from flight, acrobatics, and super speed. ALL of these can get you anywhere in the game. Super speed gives you the ability to run up walls and acrobatics gives you large jumps and the ability to grip to any object - also allowing you to reach the tops of buildings.
Then there’s a choice of weapon. This determines aspects of combat like speed, style, and range. Your choices here are staffs, guns, bow & arrow, mental, brawling, and martial arts - again...just to name a few.
Once done there it’s on to costume selection where you can pick skin type, hair style, helmets (masks), chest emblem, shirts, capes, wings, gloves, boots, pants, belts...it goes on and on. While not near the customization that CoH has, DCUO’s character creation is extremely vast and varied and it’s unlikely you’ll ever see two characters look the same - unless they go with the pre-built templates and make absolutely no changes to their appearance. Which should be difficult to do because as you play the game you’ll earn extra gear from drops that can be assigned to your character on the fly at which point you can decide if you want that gear to be represented on your character visually or just statistically.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5044/5219810972_9b4b24e3db_z.jpg
Once you are out of character creation, you have to break out of Braniac’s ship. This is the tutorial of the game and will get you acclimated to your combat skills and movement ability. The first time I did this took me forever since I was new to what I was doing and felt pretty helpless fighting 5 on 1 at times and only having very limited abilities. However, I noticed my second time through that it would take a strong willingness on the players part to die in this section. I imagine it can happen, but with health re-gen and how weak your enemies are, it’d take some real effort on your part to die.
Once out of that it’s on to the meat of the game and you’ll be transported to your starting point depending on who you picked as a mentor. As far as I can tell, this is either Metropolis or Gotham. Metropolis is like a future city where the sun is always shining and is, for the most part, pretty clean. While Gotham on the other hand is in perpetual night with rain occasionally and overall gives a more gritty sense to the city.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5167/5234960511_d33acfe4a8_z.jpg
Image Provided By Sony Online Entertainment
Now on to the combat in the game. You’ll almost always be fighting more than one enemy at a time and this usually isn’t a problem but you can attract more attention in a fight and suddenly become VERY outnumbered. You have the option of a target lock on, but I’ve yet to use it outside of the tutorial except when wanting to focus on an exploding canister in the middle of a group of enemies. Otherwise I just start attacking the target I’m facing and then move to the next one in the group. The left mouse button is used for a melee attack while the right mouse button is a ranged attack. These can be combined to pull off other moves as you increase your skill set in those departments. Your powers are activated with the numerical keys and these are the ones that take away from your stamina while the mouse button attacks are never depleted.
Missions in the game are focused on killing x amount of baddies and collecting x amount of items and the like. Your journal keeps up with what missions you have waiting for you and you can start and stop these at your leisure. So, for instance say I’m on one side of the map trying to complete a mission and see that I can also take care of part of an objective in another mission, I can jump in and out to do that. So far the missions don’t seem too repetitive but then again, this is only with levels 1 through 9 at my disposal, so we’ll see.
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5086/5235526302_334a268554_z.jpg
Image Provided By Sony Online Entertainment
Overall, I’m really enjoying the game, even in its beta stage. To be honest, I haven’t enjoyed an MMO at all since my CoH days and this looks to be right up there with it as something I’m going to really have fun with. If you are looking for more specifics, feel free to ask for them and I’ll do my best to answer them in my next article on the game. I realize I’m not very experience in the MMO category so I’ll need your help in finding out what you want to know.