Patchwork Economics

DC Universe Online came out today. Kris got his copy and couldn’t wait to play it. Unfortunately, he had to wait after all. I talked to him at one point and he had already waited two hours for patches to install. He was installing the third patch, that was crawling its way through. He disappeared from our chat an hour later, so finally got to play it. His character is Sidekick, seen here.

I’m really interested in seeing what DCUO is like. I have this weird relationship with MMORPGs where I really want to like them because they’re all the rage, but I can never find one to get into. I tried the free 14-day demo for World of Warcraft three different times, trying a different character type each time. Each time I gave up after a couple of days bored out of my mind. The constant fetch missions without any real story never really grabbed me. City of Heroes/City of Villains sounded interesting, but I’m not that interested in playing with a bunch of comic book hero ripoffs.

DCUO let’s me bypass the ripoffs and go straight to the source characters. I’m also hoping that a game steeped in comic stories and history that I already know would make the early fetch missions more interesting. It’s one thing to be fetching beaver pelts for some random Tauren Shaman, but quite another thing to be fetching a copy of the Gotham Gazette for Batman! DC is really putting a lot of momentum into this game. Not only was the DC editorial staff heavily involved in it’s creation, but in February they’re launching a 26-issue biweekly tie-in comic. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be adding backstory to the game or somehow ties into the current happenings in the game, but it’s still an interesting idea.

We’ll have some thoughts about the game from Kris on Friday after he’s has a couple of days to play it. I’m also hoping I can sweet talk him into letting me create a character on his account to try it out. Granted, I’m anti-social and a cheapskate when it comes to monthly gaming fees, so the chances of me picking up DCUO regardless are pretty slim. Still, it’ll be good to know that if I was going to start playing MMOs that there was one out there I’d go for.