f13.net

... at E3. (http://www.gamefocus.ca/?nav=new&nid=1083)

I've also heard rumours it will appear at Comic-con as well and that Jim Lee will be talking about it. It might only be an alpha build, but it will at least show off what SOE has been hush hush (no pun intended) about.

ooooo!  I really need a new superhero game!  Like yesterday.

Some very rough details are starting to come out. Via Eurogamer, Edge Magazine and the game director, Jim Lee..

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=161093

"Some new details have emerged of DC Universe Online, the new PC and PS3 MMO in development at Sony Online Entertainment.

In this month's Edge magazine, executive creative director Jim Lee describes DC Universe as a "kick-ass hybrid between a traditional MMO and a first-person action console game".

You'll get to create your own superhero or villain, choosing their particular powers, according to the Edge article. So you'll decide whether to attack using fire or ice, for example, and move around using acrobatics or the power of flight. Other potential abilities mentioned in the article include speed-running and teleportation.

As with a traditional MMO your character will level up as you progress, and you'll develop your powers. When the game starts you might be able to fly, but only later will you learn how to pull off specific moves and attacks in mid-air.

Although you don't get to "be" any of the famous DC characters, you do get to interact with them. That might mean you end up saving Superman from being stabbed with a shard of kryptonite by Lex Luthor. Or, if you're a villain, you could cause carnage by chucking cars around downtown Metropolis, thereby encouraging the boy in blue to turn up and fight you.

Metropolis is one of two large shared environments revealed so far, the other being Gotham City. Unlike World of Warcraft, DC Universe will be comprised of a mix of these environments and separate instances. And while there will still be instances and raids, the emphasis will be on fast-paced action rather than grinding.

There will be PvP arenas, and you'll be able to make use of your superpowers and those of others in interesting ways. For example, someone might freeze your character in a block of ice, then pick up the block and chuck it at another player. In some instances, PvP fights will end up turning into giant PvE boss battles.

In the future, it's possible we could see models, environments and costumes from the game turning up in other DC Comics properties, and there are plans for plot crossovers. "We can tie-in future DC tentpole events and translate the stories for the gaming world, and have them occur simultaneously," said Lee. "The possibilities are numerous and very exciting."

UPDATE:This article previously reported that DC Universe Online is out next year. This was an error on our part. Sony Online Entertainment has not yet given any word on when the game will be released. Sorry about that."

yawn. superman is overpowered. batman is overrated. flash is imba. wonder woman is eye candy.

But. I still want to see how it turned out. COH grew old too fast past 20. Here's hoping DC online has some sort of 'world' into it.

Beat me to it - I was just in the process of cut'n'pasting :-)

That's a nice touch.


This is a design choice that will cause absolutely no complaints from both pro- and anti-pvp factions.  

Massive instancing.  Yawn.  Arena-only pvp?  Double yawn. 

EDIT:   Crossovers with what is happening in the comics?  That actually sounds realistic, given that patches often change characters' abilities randomly in ways that make no sense.   

The reality of crossover between the comics and the MMO will be limited - they might manage a launch event, but I expect the dev would be at least 3 months behind any storyline that appeared in the comics, even assuming they tried to keep up.

Otherwise you'd have the DC comics version of Leia kissing Luke appearing in the missions, or mission continuity being constantly redacted e.g. we know we said that Monarch was Captain Atom, but he's really Hank Hall!.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_(comics))

Some screens are out. Not sure if they are in-game or concept. Look awful. Dreadful.

EDIT: nvm.

Here they are. (http://news.bigdownload.com/gallery/dc-universe-online/897404/)

The Joker picture in the middle best represents my reaction to these images. It's not a smile.

EDIT 2: Here's the DCU MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/dcuo) page. Yes, MySpace. I can't see it, so it looks like you need a MySpace account. Yes, MySpace. As the official page.

EDIT 3: It might not be letting me look at the official page because I'm not being sent to MySpace US but MySpace Aus.

What is Myspace and why is it the only source of information for a game based on comic books?

I think it's one of those "blogs" young people get excited about.

Good god that same looks like utter ass.  :ye_gods:

Isn't that pretty much what the emp in EQ was?

So it's COX in a DC skin? Call me if it doesn't have the post 20 grind.

But COX still have a pretty interesting combat / power system, as well as large amounts of content that was continuously build over the years.

What I fear is that DC Online will be graphically the equivalent of COX, minus the combat fun and having only a tiny fraction of the content.

What led you to that assessment?

You know, it's got superheroes, which makes it exactly the same as every other title in the genre. It's fantasy that's where the diversity is at!  :uhrr:

I'm interested in seeing how a non-Cryptic superhero MMO turns out. If SOE (have they even annoucned a project team for this game apart from Jim Lee?) simply turn out CoH/V v. DCU, I'll be extremely disappointed.

People really should be comparing it to CO (Champions Online) given the console-oriented nature of both.

Given that both will be on PC, it'll be interesting to see how they overlap.

I find it interesting that SOE has dropped the PSP support for this title - originally it was going to be able to do ... something ... with your characters while you were otherwise offline.

Holy fuck, that's assy. Asstastically assy. I hope that's really early days, because it looks like shit. Why is the Joker standing with a bunch of Cobra officers?

Yeah, those screenshots look like fucking shit.  Embarassing.  If that's all they had, they shouldn't have shown it.

Can't you see the impact of Jim Lee's art design?

It really looks like they've gone and based the art design on the cartoons.

The only way I can see this being saved is if this site is an elaborate joke and when people go to the ComicCon (or GenCon - whichever) launch they see the real screenshots.

Am I the only person who thinks the concept art done by Lee and the game screen shots are not even remotely similar in style?

It's kind of silly to even have concept art for an MMO based on the DC Universe. Why not just pick out a collection of comics that shows the style you are going for? They have 50 years worth to choose from.

A lot of the concept art I saw was the typical front / back / side view thing of a single character. There is nothing in those that you can't find in an actual comic. Maybe I understand a little more for the cityscapes and such, but even then I'm sure they could just find a random issue of Superman that has good shots of Metropolis.

Someone thought those screenshots looked good. At best they are boring and the Joker ones are atrocious. And releasing them on MySpace? I dunno, this almost strikes me as a joke.

From Falwell's post of the Edge article: Levels, abilities unlocked over time, flight, fire/ice, speed-runing, teleportation, etc.

These are not bad things though. CoX got a lot of things right, mostly being hampered by the early predominance of procedural sameness in the instances, and the perpetual presence of grind. SOE doing right what CoX did wrong and including what CoX did right is a win.

I sort of liked the art.  It was pretty comic book-y.  Of course, I don't read comics so what do I know?  Anyway, I thought it was nice looking.

The screenshots appear to be using an art style closer to the DC animated cartoons style. Not Jim Lee's more detailed style, which kind of raises the question of why they hired him on in that case.

The Joker shots look terrible.  Mostly because he looks stiff and unnatural.  The other shots are decent.  I wouldn't mind my character being shaded like the 5th picture.

My thoughts exactly. When I heard Lee was brought in, I was expecting more of a "Hush" type art style. Obviously I was mistaken.

As an interesting sidenote, every time someone posts a DCUO thread on the CoH/V forums, the mods scrub it. Completely - no lock, no public comment - it just disappears. There are some new-ish mods on the boards for CoH/V, but pretty much every other MMO is talked about on those boards up to this point, but DCUO keeps disappearing. ChampO threads have generally hung around for quite a while before they got locked - they weren't scrubbed.

It could just be the new mods being silly (they must have had to scrub at least 10 threads by now, all about DCUO).

My more excitable conspiracy minded side likes the idea that DCUO is getting special treatment because of NC^2's PS3 development on a sekret project, which could feasibly be CoH/V on a PS3. 

Since many of their devs once worked on SWG's NGE, that probably has more truth in it than you realize.  Heck, they just announced a trading card game for SWG that more than resembles WOW's.

I'm not 100% hopefull because of the screenshots, but I don't think the sky is falling either. Wait and see.

Oh, and the Batman and Robin picture is a little :pedobear:

There we go.

Well, we all know that B+R are gay spelled GAI, and there's a heart over the I, but look at this picture:

(http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/news.bigdownload.com/media/2008/07/dcuniverseonlinejuly2.jpg)

Robin looks like he's 12 and Batman looks juiced.

I have a worry... about the butman. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD3IxxclCxc)

Lest we forget...


http://youtube.com/watch?v=AJWpmPGCR1c

It's bad enough that we live in a society where men want women to all look like 12 year olds... now they want their superheros to look like 12 year olds too?  Oof.

The local drag king troop do a great homoerotic batman and robin thing to the Partridge Family's "I Think I Love You."

Goddamnit, I HAD forgotten much of that. And I was happy with that outcome.

God I forgot Clooney was Batman. Thankfully it didn't scuttle his career.

The DCUO (I so want to call it DUCO) trailer. (http://au.ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/755358/dc-comics-mmo/videos/DCUO_trailer_071408.html)

The combat looks choppy and unsynchronised.

Being able to run up a vertical plane (i.e. the front of a building) does look cool though. Also the Crackdown associations I've heard about it are a positive thing.

My big question is about targeting - how do you switch from targeting Bizarro to targeting the truck over his head in the heat of battle, especially in a target-rich (i.e. lots of cars, trucks, etc) environment? MMO targeting schemes tend to be clumsy, console targeting schemes also tend to be clumsy without softlock... see where I'm going?

Well, something like AC's targeting implementation might be a solution.  Rather than just a TAB key to cycle through targets, they had three (or was it four) sets of keys for cycling through various target types: enemies, friends, objects, etc. 

One potential issue though. I haven't seen anthing specific to DCUO yet, but one problem with having some interactive objects in a game world is the frustration of it not being obvious WHICH objects you see are or aren't interactive.  So the table and chair are interactive, but the TV, refrigerator and armoire aren't? wtf? 

My issue with having different keys cycle through different types of objects is that it doesn't work well for a PS3 version.

I'd suspect that soft lock and a crosshair for most ranged attacks could work, but I don't know if they've taken that direction.

Oh, as an internet rumour: SOE is still deciding the payment model for DCUO, but current thinking is against having a sub fee and instead having a box fee and additional costs for downloadable content.

EDIT: too many wordz

Well most of the character models turned out much better than I'd hoped after seeing the initial screenshots. Bane, Batsy, BBB, and Ollie in particular. Joker stilll looks like ass though.

Saw a lot of "clunky" moments in that clip. Poor animations and movement. I guess the big question is how far out is this? If this still has another 2 years to cook, I'm far less concerned. If they plan on pushing this out within the year, well, now I'm worried.

If i was Sony I would not have released that video.

Fucking animations people. I don't care how much bump-mapped-pixel-shaded whatever the fuck you have. If the first time shit starts to move it looks unrealistic, fake or just plain bad it's going to be immersion breaking. More then most any art direction.

And tell that to the guys over at Cryptic also. Superheros are all about movement and action. THIS MUST NOT LOOK STUPID!

Go look at the old Justice League Cartoons. The art was very simple, but they rarely spared any effort on the animations, they were always well done.

Seriously - cel-shaded Bruce Timm-style visuals and fast action combat = low system overhead, a familiar look and fun gameplay.  Why they went the 'ZOMG look at the innumerable misshapen polys (WTF is with that Joker model?)' route I have no idea.  Batman: TAS, JL/JLU visuals would have been just fine, but they went with the gawdawful shit they demoed instead.

Based on that clip, I'd say it would be foolish to launch before 2010.

That gives them time to see what ChampO does and theoretically rip off the best parts.

One MMO waiting on the launch of another mmo?

Is this comedy night at f13?  :oh_i_see:

By the way in the clip they showed you can see Joker concept art and it does match the in-game art. They just drew him to look like a retard. Why not just copy the cover of the Killing Joke?

Yeah the animation was terrible, while flying people didn't animate at all and much of the movement was really jerky. I suppose the models themselves were average but uninspired.

I wonder why they didn't show The Agency instead. That's been in development for a while now.

Not overly impressed with the video myself. The models do look better in motion (except the Joker who is just epic fail incarnate) but the animation was choppy and reminded me of the worst parts of COH combat. The fact that they mostly showed existing characters the player can never take control of makes me concerned about the individual customization options. The trailer was only better than the assy screenshots by a marginal amount. Needs more cooking and thinking, less "ZOMGJIMLEE!!!"

That's pretty much how I felt.  Most of the models looked pretty good (exceptions being the Joker was ass incarnate and Robin looked like crap as well) but once they started moving around the game looked very choppy and slow.  Will you even be able to make your own characters?  From the video it looks like it might be more of an online Freedom Force type game, where you pick preexisting characters and log into instanced missions with and against other players.  It doesn't look like there's any persistent world.

It is, apparently and despite 3 years in development, still early days for DCUO. One article I saw talked about the next build adding in pedestrians and other such things to the city environment.

And yes, I felt Jim Lee was oversold. Especially since he's been giving a lot of work to his Wildstorm artists to do instead of doing it himself (not that he needs to do it himself, but he's a comic book artist and as close as DCUO comes to name talent, so you'd expect that he would be doing it).

I don't get your point.

EDIT FOR ... SOMETHING: SOE announce that DCUO has been internally released! (http://www.massively.com/2008/07/16/e308-dc-universe-online-already-released-inside-soe/) What's that? All other companies call this 'alpha'?

My point is that waiting on other MMOs before releasing yourself is a hilariously dumb strategy. Every mmo I've kept tabs on has gotten massive delays (hey to you Darkfall, TCOS and now Mythos). Any team is grossly incompentent if their project can't follow through on a plan until someone else releases first.

Not only are you giving up on the first mover's (possible) advantage you may be putting your budget in jeopardy by sitting on your hands.

                                                       Batgirl

                                         What should we do now?

                                                       Robin
                                         Pray!

From here: (http://www.massively.com/2008/07/17/e308-the-dc-universe-online-trailer-explained/)


Having seen the screenshots... no. Lego Batman looks more edgy than DCUO.

Also, apparently the writers of the series Jim Lee worked on mean nothing.

Well, he did found Image Comics. I can't think of a place where writers mattered less than early Image.

New article(s) about this in USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2008-07-21-dc-universe-lee_N.htm

Basically a short Q&A with lee about the game and his MMO history. Nothing very revealing, but noteworthy none the less.

IGN has some more videos. (http://au.ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/755358/dc-universe-online/videos/DC_ONline_offscreen_ccSD08_thebeginning.html)

Pretty. Superspeed running looks really good, especially flipping over vertical surfaces.

However, combat still looks really, really choppy and unfocused.

The game looks like it still needs some definite work. 

I'm not sure if the whole DC thing will draw me in though.  Right now I'm still looking forward to Champions Online.
However I wish there was a Marvel MMO coming out still. 

Video makes it look like CoH junior.

At some point I plan to write something up about DCUO vs ChampO vs CoH/V somewhere.

DCUO just keeps pounding the "fight alongside Jim Lee's Batman!" angle - it's all IP focussed. That's nice for the first 15 minutes, but what players get into is developing their own character(s).

Plus the combat looks quite stationary when it comes to actually fighting. ChampO's comparative video looks a bit smoother and more AOE focused.

Apart from the obvious problems of a MMOG heavily focussed on stories already told, I really think they are overestimating the number of people who know or care who the fuck Kim Lee is. I for one have no clue, and no wish to be enlightened.

Most people into comics are going to know who Jim Lee is, and that's going to be the biggest target audience for this game.

Geeze, the city art looks identical to CoH. Were they even trying? Gameplay doesn't look as good as CoH, but its impossible to tell from that rather lame demo.

I hear they hired Wim Lee.

This is the funny part about all the paid-media coverage. Almost none of them are pointing to the very obvious ripoffs of CoH. They've got the same archetypes, the same origin choices, the same categories of abilities, the same types of abilities, the special effects even look the same (SuperSpeed looks almost exactly the same iirc), and heck, even the world itself does too.

However, having said all that, I didn't hate CoH. They were on the edge of being almost awesome, kinda like AoC, but with some dumb adherence to bad ideas. if SOE can keep the console-esque controls, make this work on the PS3 too, and don't screw it up with the old skool grind thinking, they might have a hit. The IP will move boxes, but the superior gameplay will keep players. As long as its superior.

Jim Lee hasn't done a whole lot of significant work in comics since the 90s and his current reputation is that of a slacker. Creating a hugely expensive game with a target audience of "people who know who Jim Lee is and think his involvement in a project is awesome" is incredibly dumb.

Marketing a game to people as "Batman is cool", sure that works. "Jim Lee is cool" not so much.


I listen to the 1up podcasts and I think those guys honestly don't know all that much about CoX. Nor should they really, it's a niche game in a genre that apart from one title is niche itself.

I was thinking more of the article in PC Gamer this month. Same difference really though. If anyone knows anything about MMOs, enough to be talking about any other than WoW that is, they've heard of or played CoH. Even aside from recognizing the similarities in all of the details, it being a generic comic MMO by itself would be enough of a comparison. It'd be like making a fantasy MMO before WoW and not at least referencing EQ1.

You've got a point though. In popular media, WoW is often seen as year zero for MMOs, with "B.C." being everything through EQ2, and "A.D." being anything that follows (unless it was developed prior to WoW and is an obvious throwback like VG). We joke about the newbies seeing WoW as the "first" in the same way veterans joked about newbies saying "UO" was the first in the same way newbies were mocked for thinking Bohemian Rhapsody was that pretty cool song from Wayne's World.

Damned kids. Get off my lawn!

I got to play for a few minutes at Comic Con. It's got a nice clean, colorful look that is appealing, but does kind of look like CoH v2.0 - I guess there's only so much you can do with an urban environment. I wasn't able to tell much from just a few minutes' playtime, but after chatting with one of the game artists who was demoing the game, it does sound like they are very much just counting on "It's DC! Batman! Superman!" to sell the game rather than any new or interesting play mechanics. I'm sure the game has a ways to go, so who knows how fun the final product will be.

Was the animation better than the trailer video? I honestly don't know how that trailer was acceptable. :(

It did look better than in that trailer, yeah I don't know what it up with that.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/37573.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/37626.html

Not looking too shabby. 

I've seen other videos of the same area, so it looks like this location is their most polished.

It doesn't look bad and will be interesting to see how it plays out on a PC.

aaaaaa - it gave me a headache in my eyes!   :ye_gods:

Now those are MUCH better than the earlier ones. It reminds me of X-Men Legens without the pausing, which isn't necessarily a great thing in my eyes but could be good for a laugh.

I'm wondering what the hook in this game will be?

CoX did a good job of making things simple and fun for the most part. Start with a couple powers, get fun new ones every couple levels, quick missions to go smash things. Fun. Problem was thier "Hook" was the grind.

Assuming they don't have another horrible grind--and post WoW it would probably be suicidal. How are they going to keep people playing past a month or two?

Didn't you hear? JIM LEE! FIGHT ALONGSIDE SUPERMAN!

Jim Lee!

Superman!

...jim lee...

...superman...

Why would the guy who invented spiderman help DC?  Or is this another guy?

Stan Lee != Jim Lee

/facepalm

Those three posts from Triforcer through Haemish are going to be repeated everywhere that people are subjected to DC Online marketing.

Jim Lee is not famous. Stan Lee is only famous amongst spiderman fans and reality TV obsessives.

No, I think Stan Lee is pretty famous and I don't even read comics and I'm sure his reality tv show was simply awful.  I have never heard of Jim Lee.  My favourite Lee has always been Christopher.   :drillf:

Jason Lee is pretty entertaining.  It's still sad what happened to Brandon Lee, though.

Sadder what happened to Jason Lee.

Scientology :(

Edit: Scientology worse than accidental death? Interesting angle, schild.

There's still the hope that someone can be cured of Scientology, though!

I'll see your Christopher and raise you a General (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSeUTfZk2ic)    :drill:

That right there is a given. Here's a few more sample scenarios though: Scientology vs. post-mortem anal buggery, and Scientology vs. catching the rage virus.

I'm not sure what an American Civil War general has to do with online comic games, but they really need to put a different trailer up on their webpage. Looks like everyone has 13 sticks up their butts.

I'm looking forward to hearing what they are doing for "loot" and leveling.

Link (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=205979&page=3)


I'd have to see it in practise, of course, but that seems ... exploitable.

I think it's been firmly established that a superhero game requires an xp mechanic that's exploitable in big hugpiles, that will subsequently be nerfed and piss off the existing playerbase.  :-)

What is this, 1999? The people developing these games have had years and years worth of predecessors to observe and learn from. There's no way the DC Online folks will repeat the mistakes of the past. That's crazy talk!

No, I think they'll learn from the past. They'll just tone down the global xp rate so full groups can't powerlevel up to max in a matter of days.


In other words, past the newbie levels it will be impossible to make meaningful progress in the game without finding a group.

I don't agree. I see this as potentially them going the WoW route where hitting the cap isn't the fedex to subscription cancellation that everyone prior feared it to be (except Wolfpack, but then the whole gaining of XP there was dumb anyway for what the game was). What Cao seems to be implying is that the advancement rate of a person is independent of whether they're grouped or solo. This way players don't feel like they're advancing slower while grouped so feel less ripped off XP-wise.

Besides, we all know though that the majority of players will want to solo a good chunk of time, so what DCUO will probably do is borrow the other parts of WoW like:

• Instances for the best stuff, but not make that stuff required to solo. ePeens only for the instance runners. The unwashed masses can run around with commons but still do ok.
• Instances for completely major story arcs and therefore seeing/interacting-with the major characters. Unlike WoW, for something like DCUO, that could be a big huge draw.
• Vast majority of endgame goods being untradeable, with the leveling-up drops and leveling-up instance drops being enough to give the impression of a vibrant economy (heck, they could rip off disenchanting too).

As always, just an opinion.