krummey

150 hours in a month? Five hours a day? So...did you like it?

I don't think so. I wanted to do the same, my wife on the ps3, and me on PC.

You should all have 8 year olds who only recently discovered comic book characters try to make character names in comic book MMOs. "Dad! Somebody took Colonel Fury, too!"

I'm a UPS driver. Snow is the enemy. Growing up there were two things I never thought I'd hate: snow and Christmas. Now, because of my job...

To be honest DC Universe is not the best example of an MMO. Well actually it quite a good example of a generic MMO, which most of them are. So in that sense it's perfect. But there are MMO's that do it better.

@Krummey said:

That pretty much reinforced what my uninformed preconceived notion of an MMO was: doing this "because".

In the end yes all of it can be boiled down to just that. It doesn't have to be, but most mmos make it easy to do so, therefore a majority of players do just that.

Can there really be a story, as one would traditionally think of it, within this structure?

Absolutely. Ironically an MMO which most others try to copy, WoW has just that if you choose to invest yourself in the lore of the world and the story. But one would need to go deep down the rabbit hole and not just in WoW but explore the backstory and important characters/events of that universe that occur outside of the scope of the MMO. In fact I would have probably quit it much sooner that I had if it was not for the lore, the characters and the story.

I assume the new star wars mmo is attempting just that also.

Is everything just in service of raising numbers on a stat screen?

If you choose to break it down to that then yes. And like I said most generic MMOs make it tempting to do so. One needs an investment in the world and fiction of the MMO in the first place to be able to choose to be interested in the stories that are there. Plus of course the game itself needs to be able to facilitate that.

PS: One other thing is that the community of an MMO is very important. If you aren't doing stuff or talking to other people in an MMO you might as well not bother and just play SP games. Some people call MMO's glorified chat-rooms and not totally undeservedly so.

I don't play MMOs. I don't play PC games, in large part due to the fact that my PC is absolute garbage. But with the excitement surrounding the launch of SWTOR, my interest has been piqued. Having no real sense of what is available, or playable, on my PC, and possessing a strong desire to avoid paying a subscription fee for something that may not be my bag, I decided to install DC Universe on my PS3. While the gigantic gamefile downloaded, I took my son out to shop for Christmas gifts for my wife. During that time we talked about what character we could make, what adventures we might go on, what powers we would utilize. We were both genuinely excited to get started. We had a great deal of fun deciding on a costume, a weapon, and our superhero name. We started off on our quest, got through the tutorial mission, and jumped into the world proper. That's when the wheels started coming off, and the "Oh yeah this is an MMO" feeling began.

I guess that's not exactly true, as we had fun exploring and beating up things on our way to quest objectives. We made progress, fought a boss, had a duel with another player, got new weapons and gear. We stalled a bit by getting distracted by various side nonsense before calling it a night. Then this morning, I let my son make his own character. After getting over the shock that "Sharp Shooter" was taken by another player, he settled on a name and started down his own path. I let him take the reigns, and went off to do various things around the house. I came back and asked what mission he was doing, and he said, "I'm blowing up these transporters." I responded, "Oh yeah, why?" He said, "I don't know, because that's what it says on the screen."

That pretty much reinforced what my uninformed preconceived notion of an MMO was: doing this "because". Can there really be a story, as one would traditionally think of it, within this structure? Is everything just in service of raising numbers on a stat screen? I'm certainly not ready to totally write off MMOs altogether, in fact I was honestly enjoying my time with my character last night. And my son is definitely ready for more. I started writing this while he was taking a shower, and as soon as he came back downstairs he asked if he could start playing again. I suppose the next step is to try to make some connections with other players, or to try to convince a friend or two to play with me. In any case, I'm looking forward to what he does with the game, and what he's able to get out of it.

I just started on F2P and didn't get that trophy. Threw them a few bucks to go to Premium, still no trophy. Bummer.