DCUO Beta Journal 12/17/2010

So, my original intent was to play some DC Universe Online and write multiple updates over the course of my time spent with the game. I ended up getting incredibly engrossed and spending more and more time playing my Hero to the point I forgot to even write an update. I'm now level 18. The level cap for the beta is currently level 20. I have played a lot of this game and there is still lots more to do. This article will be spent detailing character creation and my first impressions of the beta. I haven't played a villain yet so I can't get into that and I'll save it for another update.

The game opens with an awesome heroes versus villains cinematic that you may or may not have seen before. It's pretty epic. I've embedded it below. Take that into your eye sockets. Enjoy.


After a gritty battle between the heroes and villains in the future, Lex Luthor has gone back to team up with the heroes of the present day to stop Brainiac. Luthor explains to the heroes that he's stolen energy from Brainiac (who'd been sapping it from the future heroes in the first place) in the form of exobytes and released them into the earths atmosphere. Exobytes are nano-machine like devices that give powers to the person they're inside. This is how the game explains every player character having powers.

After this opening cinematic you're dropped into the character creation screen. Here you're prompted to select a gender, male or female (sorry hermaphrodites), and a body type which can either be small, medium or large. Unfortunately the shapes of the character are preset meaning you can't pick large and then make your character insanely obese or adjust settings to make the worlds tallest midget. These three body types are fine though because the way you really define your character is through your costume and abilities. After you choose your size you choose a template for your character. This is where you get to choose your powers, skills, and if you want, weapons. Choose "custom" and build your character completely from scratch or choose "inspired by" to pick the hero or villain you want to be the most like. The current list of heroes and villains on the "inspired by" list is: Batman, Superman, Catwoman, Lex Luthor, The Joker, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Deathstroke, Bane, Circe, Beast Boy, Mister Freeze, Green Arrow, Steel, and Martian Manhunter. I don't know if they plan on adding to that list in the future or not but from the looks of it, they've got their bases covered.

Instead of picking from that list I chose custom and was prompted to pick a hero or villain morality. After picking hero I had to pick a personality to "determine social behavior". From what I can tell, all this really determines is how your character stands when idle. There are five of these options: Comical, flirty, powerful, primal and serious. I chose serious and then had to choose a mentor. If you choose to be a hero your mentor choices are Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Your mentor choice factors in to where your starting area in the game is and what armor and weapons you have access to. Obviously, if you choose Batman you're going to be dropped into Gotham and working with the likes of Batwoman, Robin, and Nightwing who all favor acrobatics and gadgets. I picked Wonder Woman for my mentor though because I wanted to play a powerful sorcerer type character. If you're a hero, your mentor also factors in to what deck of the JLA Watchtower you'll spend most of your time in. There are decks for Tech (Batman), Meta (Superman) and Magic (Wonder Woman) and each has it's own set of brokers and banks for your chosen hero type.

After my mentor selection I was prompted to pick a power. These range from fire or gadgets to mental powers or sorcery. There are six total and depending on which one you pick you'll play a different role when teamed up with other players. For example: I chose Sorcery and now my focus is DPS and healing depending on the given situation. That didn't stop me from tanking my way to level 18 solo, though.

The next part of character creation is picking a movement mode, (flight, acrobatics, or super speed)and then picking a weapon. There are quite a few weapon types and I haven't gotten to try them all out just yet but my first character used dual pistols and my current favors one handed melee weapons like axes and swords. You can choose to just be a brawler if weapons aren't your thing or you can blast people with your hands. Like I said, a lot of options here. Especially if you take into account the power and movement type you chose for your character. You might think super speed, gadgets, and dual pistols sound cool at first but when you actually start playing the character? Not so much. At least the way I was playing that particular hero.

Once you get to the summary screen it gives you a list of everything you just did so you can go back and change the things you may or may not have liked. The best part of this screen though is the "costume" option at the very top. There are quite a few options for costume pieces here and selecting the gear option gives you nine more categories having to do with your characters appearance. Things like masks, helmets, capes, pants, footwear, gloves and the like are all here. Backing out of that menu and picking "body" will allow you to change your hair and skin type. If you wanted to be a furry, this is the part of the character creation screen you want to go to. Backing out again and selecting color may be the most important part of this whole process though because every piece of equipment you pick up in game and equip to your character will be those colors forever.

Upon finishing character creation you find yourself prisoner aboard one of Brainiac's ships. This is an instance that acts as a tutorial and gets you acquainted with combat and using your powers early on. It's a pretty awesome first area for the game as well. Oracle contacts you to give you the low down on your escape and the next several minutes are spent navigating the bowels of the ship and wrecking robots all along the way. Now, if you know me, you know I absolutely hate MMOs. I think they're a boring, tired grind, that consume a ton of time and have very little substance. This game changed that for me. The combat is fun. Why? Because it has more of a focus on action than any MMO I've attempted to play before this. Square is your light attack button and triangle is used for heavy attacks. Holding L2 will allow you to use powers mapped to triangle, circle, X and square and holding R2 will allow the same thing. L1 acts as a lock on and R1 is used for blocking and dodging. I can't even imagine playing this game on a PC without a gamepad of some sort.

The start of the game doesn't have you do much more than mashing square and occasionally triangle but as you level up you'll spend skill points that allow you to unlock additional combos and abilities. Leveling also gains you power points that you use to (duh) gain more powers. At certain level milestones you can even choose an iconic power like Wonder Woman's innate ability to deflect bullets with her wrist bands or Superman's heat vision.

As you smash a ridiculous number of robots and reach a teleporter room in the ship you find yourself teaming up with Superman. It's one of the first moments that, as a DC comics fan, made me really excited. A character that I had created was wrecking robots alongside Superman! After a few minutes of wildly swinging an axe through waves of enemies and then taking down a much larger boss robot, I spoke with Superman and hopped into one of the teleporters and found myself in Metropolis.

The cities are huge. Parts of them can't even be reached right now either because my level isn't high enough and I'll get wrecked by higher level enemies or because Brainiac has parts of the city sealed off. Another thing I like about this MMO is how you receive missions. You don't constantly have to travel all over the place to get missions. There are three police stations in both Gotham and Metropolis (in the areas I can access right now anyway) and you can go around, talk to people, get all of your missions, leave and go do them. It's super convenient. Plus Oracle, your mentor, and other heroes will call you to give you more info on the mission as you're traveling to it. Missions are actually fun too. Mostly due to the way combat plays out. This doesn't mean you're just beating up bad guys all the time though. On several occasions I found myself picking people or objects up and transporting them to a safe zone.

I was a rhino here.

Missions usually play out through various parts of the city before sending you into an instance to fight groups of enemies on the way to a boss. The bosses I've faced so far, just to name a few: Bane, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Circe. I've found these instances to be the most enjoyable part of the game thus far because not only are you fighting a well known character, you'll often team up with another hero to do so. All of the fights play out differently as well. When I teamed up with Nightwing to fight Bane I had to dodge debris that he threw at me from across the room. Pieces of ceiling were also falling because he'd been hitting the support structures. My favorite fight so far had me team up with Wonder Woman to take on Circe. When I entered the room, Circe turned me into a rhino and tried to bend me to her will. When she failed she called more beasts into the room and while Wonder Woman fought her I had to keep groups of other rhino's from transporting exobytes into a portal. This game has a ton of epic moments like this.

I'd imagine this is "Legends PVP" mode.

Player versus player is the way to go when you choose what server you want to play on. It adds another level of depth to what's shaping up to be an awesome game. I was flying over Metropolis University and noticed a bunch of low level villains attacking the students there. I wasn't having any of that so I dropped down and cleaved my axe into one of the villains spines, killing her instantly. I then turned around, summoned a demon to chase one of the other baddies, and stunned one with a spell so he couldn't move and began hacking at him with my axe as well. It was about this time I realized that they were probably doing a mission of their own. On another occasion, after I'd leveled up and stood on a building in the powers menu, several villains swarmed around me. I didn't know they were there until I dropped out of the menu. They'd just been standing there watching me for however long. As soon as I went to move they beat my ass into the ground. It's moments like this that make you wish you had team members. You can form leagues with other players but it's kind of a pain in the ass right now and happens to be one of the things I hope gets fixed by betas end. Part of my problem with teaming up is that the social tab in your menu is just plain bad. It's hard to navigate and text is hard to read. Actually, text is hard to read in general and it's not just because I'm playing on an SDTV. I've read that people with HDTVs have been having trouble with the size of the text as well and luckily its size is supposed to be increased next time the beta is patched.

There is still a lot left to do and see in this beta what with Alerts, Arenas, and PVP Legends available in my mission log. I haven't done them yet but once I do I'll write another update here.

All screenshots taken from http://www.dcuniverseonline.com