So, I payed for DCUO when it first came out. I payed for about ... half a year? Well, somewhere between three months and half a year. Now that that's out of the way, I think I'll give my perspective on it after quitting it while content was very stagnant, to a now free to play and more content rich game.

There are three levels of membership from best to worst: Legendary, Premium, and Free. You can become a premium member if you spend $5 or more on the game. Legendary access is still at $15 a month.

The Good

DC Universe Online has always had a great combat system. I still have not played such a seamless blend of RPG mechanics and fluid/fast combat in an MMO. The leveling up process is very enjoyable for those that have some sort of knowledge of DC comics characters and fiction, and it is actually very speedy. You could probably level up and hit max level between 1-2 days if you tried ... for better or for worse. Anyways, let's take a look at the changes:

• Free membership members get to play the game for free, and get updates/balance changes like everyone else.
• Free members also have a fair, but reduced, number of item slots, character slots (2), bank slots, can join but not create leagues, and get a free vault ticket per week (raffle ticket basically)
• Premium members who, like me, have returned to DCUO after paying for a while get updated perks like more bank, character, and item slots.
• Premium members also receive a vault ticket every 3 days.

For the most part, this stuff is awesome. The extra content they have added is welcome, and necessary because the level cap is still a very low 30. It's great that free members can level up and communicate with higher level characters, and that they have given extra benefits to people who have supported their game in the past. Now for ...

The Bad

The transition to free-to-play is not without some rough edges, as well as some seemingly disgusting changes.

• Premium members cannot trade cash with other players, and free members cannot trade at all. (This is really weird sectioning off part of the economy to even the free members. I understand that free members should not be getting crazy cool loot, but not even being able to trade money makes this next part even worse.)

• Free members do not get to use the auction house, mail items or cash, and have a maximum cash limit of 1500. Premium members have a limit of 2000 and can only trade/mail items. (Not only is this crazy, because repairs for high level or mid level content cost more than that, but they are also allowing players to collect more than the limit and storing the 'extra' earnings in an escrow account. In order to withdraw funds from the escrow accounts, players need to pay real money. This does not increase the maximum limit, but only withdraws cash to say 10k or 25k and any more cash collected is added to escrow again. Also, the auction house is virtually unusable as of now, because almost anything useful is more than 2000 by a long shot. Pretty despicable.)

• Free and Premium members have chat limitations. For example, Free members can only send 6 text messages per 30 seconds. Premium members - same thing but have proximity chat enabled.(I'm assuming group chat (voice) is enable for all, but what is the point on this limitation for anyone? It doesn't really stop gold farmers, or annoying people, and only hinders the necessary communication factor in a game like this.)

I understand that the whole business model is to cause people to want to pay for the game. Microtransactions, limitations, and more are supposed to make people want to pay a little extra for a cool thing. However, they have created a lot of hate by taking necessary things and placing ridiculous restrictions on them. Their business model not only makes players want to go Pay to Play, but it almost forces them. With crazy limitations on money and items, there is an even larger step to being successful in the endgame. Look at it this way, a stack of 5 or so health potions at max level is $900! That is nearly half of the currency cap for Premium members let alone free members!

DCUO has really great mechanics, but it's not exactly free to play as of now. Instead of having players pay for cosmetic or fun things, they are required to pay for things that are necessary to having a balanced experience in the game. I hope they address some of these concerns in the future, because I really want to get back into DCUO, but they are making it a very challenging experience at the supposed free entry point. I suppose no free to play game is ever really free to play, but I should feel compelled to pay for extra things in a game like this and not forced.

So, I payed for DCUO when it first came out. I payed for about ... half a year? Well, somewhere between three months and half a year. Now that that's out of the way, I think I'll give my perspective on it after quitting it while content was very stagnant, to a now free to play and more content rich game.

There are three levels of membership from best to worst: Legendary, Premium, and Free. You can become a premium member if you spend $5 or more on the game. Legendary access is still at $15 a month.

The Good

DC Universe Online has always had a great combat system. I still have not played such a seamless blend of RPG mechanics and fluid/fast combat in an MMO. The leveling up process is very enjoyable for those that have some sort of knowledge of DC comics characters and fiction, and it is actually very speedy. You could probably level up and hit max level between 1-2 days if you tried ... for better or for worse. Anyways, let's take a look at the changes:

• Free membership members get to play the game for free, and get updates/balance changes like everyone else.
• Free members also have a fair, but reduced, number of item slots, character slots (2), bank slots, can join but not create leagues, and get a free vault ticket per week (raffle ticket basically)
• Premium members who, like me, have returned to DCUO after paying for a while get updated perks like more bank, character, and item slots.
• Premium members also receive a vault ticket every 3 days.

For the most part, this stuff is awesome. The extra content they have added is welcome, and necessary because the level cap is still a very low 30. It's great that free members can level up and communicate with higher level characters, and that they have given extra benefits to people who have supported their game in the past. Now for ...

The Bad

The transition to free-to-play is not without some rough edges, as well as some seemingly disgusting changes.

• Premium members cannot trade cash with other players, and free members cannot trade at all. (This is really weird sectioning off part of the economy to even the free members. I understand that free members should not be getting crazy cool loot, but not even being able to trade money makes this next part even worse.)

• Free members do not get to use the auction house, mail items or cash, and have a maximum cash limit of 1500. Premium members have a limit of 2000 and can only trade/mail items. (Not only is this crazy, because repairs for high level or mid level content cost more than that, but they are also allowing players to collect more than the limit and storing the 'extra' earnings in an escrow account. In order to withdraw funds from the escrow accounts, players need to pay real money. This does not increase the maximum limit, but only withdraws cash to say 10k or 25k and any more cash collected is added to escrow again. Also, the auction house is virtually unusable as of now, because almost anything useful is more than 2000 by a long shot. Pretty despicable.)

• Free and Premium members have chat limitations. For example, Free members can only send 6 text messages per 30 seconds. Premium members - same thing but have proximity chat enabled.(I'm assuming group chat (voice) is enable for all, but what is the point on this limitation for anyone? It doesn't really stop gold farmers, or annoying people, and only hinders the necessary communication factor in a game like this.)

I understand that the whole business model is to cause people to want to pay for the game. Microtransactions, limitations, and more are supposed to make people want to pay a little extra for a cool thing. However, they have created a lot of hate by taking necessary things and placing ridiculous restrictions on them. Their business model not only makes players want to go Pay to Play, but it almost forces them. With crazy limitations on money and items, there is an even larger step to being successful in the endgame. Look at it this way, a stack of 5 or so health potions at max level is $900! That is nearly half of the currency cap for Premium members let alone free members!

DCUO has really great mechanics, but it's not exactly free to play as of now. Instead of having players pay for cosmetic or fun things, they are required to pay for things that are necessary to having a balanced experience in the game. I hope they address some of these concerns in the future, because I really want to get back into DCUO, but they are making it a very challenging experience at the supposed free entry point. I suppose no free to play game is ever really free to play, but I should feel compelled to pay for extra things in a game like this and not forced.

The Lineage II F2P model is amazing.

I started playing a bit and have generally been enjoying it, but I wasn't aware of some of those trading restrictions, that does seem like a pretty big issue and withing 30 minutes of playing, I could already tell that the cash cap was going to be a huge problem.

The bigger problem at the moment is the fact the game doesn't work. Servers are ridiculously over loaded and if you can get on, you have such bad lag, quest objectives are near uncompletable. It doesn't even seem as if the developers are doing anything to fix the problem, their solution is to just wait until the mad rush dies down.. which will surely work, but how many of the new players have already lost interest, especially with the release of really big games coming in the next few weeks?

It has to be one of the worst F2P transitions I've seen and it really doesn't bode well for the future of the game.

The reason they do several of the restrictions is so they avoid free accounts farming and advertising in game currency sale through chat. That's my theory anyway.

@CL60 said:

The Lineage II F2P model is amazing.

Yeah, that's the absolute best way to model a free to play game. I hope it works out for them, cause I'd want more publishers/developers to adopt it.

I wish the Green Lantern DLC gave you a new mentor instead of Batman, Superman or WW. Also, without the F2P DCOU would have tanked pretty bad.

SOE desperately needs to add more servers. Two (PvE and PvP) per region may have been enough when the game was still on a subscription model, it just isn't enough now.

@WinterSnowblind: I was kinda surprised, but also kinda not when I logged in to find that I had locked up at the loading screen. I was then annoyed when it happens 5 times in a row. Then I successfully logged in and played for 15 minutes before the game started locking up every 5 seconds for a second at a time. I then relogged and got stuck at the loading screen again. That is to say, yes, you are very correct about the issues.

@clumsyninja1: It doesn't give you a Lantern as a mentor??!! What.

@DougQuaid: They had a bunch of servers, but the population got so low that the que times were sometimes over an hour, so they had to reduce it down to two each.

yeah i've played a bit and it seems super fucked right now. its playing as an mmo that just launched, not one that has been out for some period of time.

@clumsyninja1 said:

I wish the Green Lantern DLC gave you a new mentor instead of Batman, Superman or WW. Also, without the F2P DCOU would have tanked pretty bad.

No it did tank, the developers knew this wasn't WoW. But Warner Bros. and DC went "Nah son, give me that 6 million 15 dollars a month WoW moneys". It tanked hard, and they ate their humble pie. This going Free to Play was the last fucking thing investors and license holders wanted to happen.

But yeah @huntad: thanks for illuminating the problems.

1500 dollars limit didn't seem too bad because when I looked at the iconic armors they each cost like 300-500 dollars.

But I guess it's a super fucked amount. I was having a little fun mashing around as it froze and stuttered along, I even got 2 friends to hop on to make heroes, but I guess they messed this up too. Skyrim and Zelda are almost out, I'll just do my second character on Dark Souls and stop playing.

But yeah this game is crazy and had absolutely no business asking for a subscription when it was released. And now they have their chance to catch and hook all these newcomers and they can't even get their shit together for this one either.

It's pretty sad, they could make tons of money with this game and they just drop the ball. They could look at League of Legends and really learn something.

Don't even think about gimping players, make the game run smoothly and instead just sell super cool cosmetic stuff.

Hell make it so players could even buy armor and powers too, but have it so a guy could grind it out in a reasonable amount of time.

Whatever, I'd love to read a post-mortem on this game.