DC Universe Online just previewed the next chapter in the long-running MMORPG. Shock To The System will take players to Dakota City, the stomping grounds of beloved Milestone hero Static. Players will have access to a new Duo, Alert, and Raid alongside Static, as well as having acces𝐆s to a new emote wheel, vendor, and an updated On Duty menu.
This is the 45th episode and the first major updat꧂e in the MMO’s ꦰ12 years of service, yet most people probably didn’t even realize DCUO is still alive. All those years have left behind a lot of dead content and antiquated gameplay, while building up a pretty nasty pay-to-win economy. New episodes are all well and good, but what DCUO really needs is a hard refresh.
I was pretty invested in DCUO when it launched back in 2011, but I moved on to other things eventually and haven’t played since. I briefly entertained getting back into it when it launched on Switch in 2019, but the years of missed content and the reputation of its monetization strategies kept me away. With each new chapter release I check in on DCUO to see what the players are saying, but it’s always the same story -the plཧayer base is shrinking, it’s impossible to access older content, and the only way to catch up is to grind for hundreds of hours or pay a ludicrous fee.
I would love to jump i♋nto DCUO, even all these years later. I came into WoW pretty late and I still had so much fun working my way through each era from Vanilla to Warlords of Draenor and seeing how the world and story evolved over time. My veteran friends enjoyed leading me through each campaign and living vicariously through my first-time experience. I’d like to take that journey through DCUO too, but 🎉it’s not so easy.
Over the years, WoW has been revamped and♚ condensed multiple times to make sure the new player experience is as streamlined and approachable as possible, but Dimensional Ink Games hasn’t been able to manage DCUO the same way. Older content remains relatively untouched, and since the small but active community is only ever playing new content, the playlists and matchmaking queues for older content are completely dead.💯 There’s just no way to access older PVP and PVE content anymore outside of the main campaign.
That campaign is, unfortunately, where DCUO feels its age the most. The vast majority of missions boil down to kill and fetch quests, and while the combat is engaging, grinding quests on dead maps gets stale pretty quickly, especially when🔥 there’s 45 chapters to get through.
And then there’s the monetization. DCUO is free to play, but it has an optional subscription for $15/month that gives you access to all the chapters, all the power options, discounts, premium currency, and a host of other benefits. It’s a worthwhile investment if you’re ๊playing actively, and it’s not an unreasonable price for an MMO. Unfortunately, the rest of the monetization is.
In order to be competitive in PVP and useful in PVE, DCUO players say that ✃you need three max level artifacts. It would take you hundreds of hours to grind the XP for these artifacts, but you can pay to boost them. You will level your artifacts naturally over time, but it’s estimated that it would cost $200 per artifact to completely max it out. There’s lots of other pes✅ky monetization in the game, which has only gotten worse as time has gone on.
DCUO is published by Daybreak Game Company, and the Daybreak Subscription also gets your access to EverQuest, EverQuest 2, and PlanetSide 2. In 2016, Daybreak acquired The Lord of the Rings Online, which made all of its expansion and quest packs free last year, and added tons of additional content to the subscription. The reception to those changes has been overwhelmingly positive, so there's some hope that Daybreak will follow suit with its other flagging MMOs, including DCUO.
But even if the monetization was brought in line, DCUO is still an aging game that desperately needs a refresh. Dimensional I🍸nk revealed it was developing a Marvel MMO in late 2021, but that project was canceled just six months later, so as far as we know DCUO is its only game in active development. I would love to see the studio put its energy into a sequel oﷺr relaunch for DCUO that brings it up to modern standards, makes it easier for new players to get into, and builds on the strong base of DCUO to revitalize the MMO.
As impressive as it is that DCUO has lasted this long, it’s clear that it's coasting at this point. It must be doing something right to have made it 12 years, but now it's time to look to the future and the next era of the game.