I've been in Beta since September/October and can say that the game has come along way in those 2-3.  The combat can be fun, just don't get your hopes up for anything ground breaking, the combat is actually a few steps back to 90's arcade games (which isn't as horrible as it sounds).  My biggest concern with the game is, just like most games catered to consoles, this game doesn't have long term replay value.  Getting 1-30 will take the average gamers less than 20 hours, at 30 things start to look up because there is actually a lot to do at the end levels.  But then just as you think finally someone made good endgame content, boom you're then bored after the newness of the "raids" wear off and find yourself trying to find a reason to want to login more.

The Good

Nice Graphics and enviroment.

Decent storyline missions.

combat is different and fun early on.

NPC's look great, especially the major DC NPC's.

Good balance of public/instance missions.

The Bad

No reason to group or want to group before level 30 (it's actually a hinderence to group)

Combat button mashing eventually gets old.

Zero communication between players, even in groups.  (This could change after launch, but man nobody used chat or used the built in VOIP in beta at all)

Lack of choice, offering only 6 power choices is really going to turn people off from this game.  I understand the "balance" argument, but the powers they added feel more Everquest then DC comics.

Character models and animations.  I don't know what it is, but when you see how great the NPC characters look then see the EQ2 clunky models players get to use it just feels like they rushed that area.  You can only pick from 3 choices and there are no scale sliders to make yourself unique.  The limited choices are: a Tween, a "normal" build which happens to be jacked up on steroids or has the biggest painful looking breast implants, then the "normal" model that's a just a bit taller.

Particle Effects are everywhere and on everything.  I don't know what it is with SOE and their love for particle effects, but you can't do anything without having some kind of particle going off like the 4th of July.  If you're a Nature power character, then you punch with leaf particle effects coming from your hands.

UI is terrible for the PC version.  Hopefully this will change before launch.  But as of right now, the DCUO PC UI makes the SWG NGE UI look brilliant in design.

Long term?  As a console game, this is a fun game, you'll definitely get many weeks of play out of DCUO, maybe even more depending on the rate of post released content.  But being this is a subscription based game, I do question some of their design choices and have to wonder if this game will be another successful MMO launch, that has another mass exodus after first 30-60 days of game play because the game lacks a soul?

1: Not really, there's only 1 "human" face for each gender.  There's a handful of other types of heads (like annoying catgirl), but not many.  If you like customization, this game will disappoint you.  There's only 6 power choices 2 Healing, 2 Controller, and 2 Tanker.  You can't make a Superman character, if you select "Inspired by Superman" it will make you a Ice Tanker with a ton of ugly ice effects.

2: No crafting, I guess it's possible in the future to be added.  But not at launch.

3: Just Quarter 1 2011 is official for now.  Many seem to think it will get delayed again because of the bad shape it's in and many being disappointed in the lack of customization and lack of power options. 

Just ran across this video review of STO's head start over on Youtube.  Looks like Cryptic's number 1 fan from Germany isn't to happy with Cryptic or STO's head start.

www.youtube.com/watch

Originally posted by RookofKnight

i thought they left ncsoft after the release of one there issues for CoX and that CO and STO were solo gigs.

They did leave NCSoft, but they're not solo.  They were purchased by Atari during the development of CO.

I don't know, maybe you were just on the wrong server at the wrong time?  I just logged from LotRO on the Landroval server and there were 8-10 people just around the Forsaken Inn.  When I called back to Bree there were a ton of people running around.  I won't pretend that I counted them all, but I would guess there were more than 50 easily.

Cryptic games aren't about quality or creating an incredible game.  Their games aren't even about making successful games.  Cryptic's games are launched super quick with the bare bones minimum because they are trying to prove that their game engine can create MMO's in under 2 years of development.  That's their biggest goal, to prove they can make quick MMO's in hopes of licensing their engine to other companies who want to create more low quality and bare bones rushed to launch games.

It's also a subscription based game.

I wonder with the Station Pass now losing a game, if they'll set the price back down to $25 again?  They said they were increasing the subscription price because they were adding a game to the pass, now that they're taking a game away one would think the price would go back down again.

Yeah, I didn't think so either.  It's funny how that official MxO Q&A didn't have any mention of that question.

Wow, I wish we were testing the same game the author was previewing. 

I can't wait for them to finally lift the NDA, this thread would easily be up to 50+ pages by now.  Sadly my guess is that the NDA will be in place for a looooooong time still.  I would bet it's in place till August 20th at the earliest, assuming they don't decide to push the date back again.

Originally posted by TdogSkal

Originally posted by Wolfdor

Huh, I just checked my SOE account and it has me listed as an active member of Free Realms as well.  That 1 million number doesn't seem so special now.

 

Yea your account is "active" but it is not counted.  You have to have a charater created to be counted.  But keep hating on SOE as I am sure they are the only compane that pads their numbers.

You guys need to get over the NGE thing already.  Dam

Whoa, back off the nerd rage kid before you hurt yourself.  Who said I'm a SOE hater?  I'm still a proud subscriber of SWG even after the NGE, and also looking forward to both DCUO and The Agency.  All I did was confirm that my account was also flagged as active, even though I never played the game.  If my chidren were under the age of 10, I would probably even have a subscription to this Free Realms.  So i'm not sure how that makes me a hater of your "compane". 

Huh, I just checked my SOE account and it has me listed as an active member of Free Realms as well.  That 1 million number doesn't seem so special now.

/pizza

I find it hard to believe there won't be any zoning at all, especially how they emphasize how much story they plan on giving this MMORPG.  That leads me to believe there will be lots of instance zones at least.  That doesn't mean the rest of the public maps won't be zone free though.

Originally posted by Vinterkrig

the game would have been amazing, so many cool classes

two things that killed it

 

1. released to early, it needed more work

2. you needed a beast of a computer to run the game

Pretty much dead on.

Game needed at least another year of development and polish.  Plus that extra year would have gave technology a chance to catch up with the games requirements.

After Cryptic Studios recent underhanded tactics, I may be looking for a new game to follow.  Who would have thought a company could be lower then SOE.  :P

First the above quote from Ironangel wasn't her quote.  She posted the statement which was from her boss Ivan Sulic.

Another big issue about this underhanded move by Cryptic, is they created an account for CoH which would then have them under CoH's User License Agreement.  By solliciting CoH's customers through CoH's forums and game mail, Cryptic broke CoH's ULA.  What does that say when a company won't respect another companies ULA, but expect everyone else to abide by their own?  It wouldn't surprise me if there is an eventual lawsuit filed by NCSoft, hell if Champions steals a huge chunk of CoH's players when it launches (which I'm thinking many would have expected even before this)  I wouldn't put it past NCSoft to try and prove that this little stunt caused them to eventually lose subscribers and they seek to be compensated for their loss.  I've heard of worse lawsuits filed.

Sadly I have to agree as well.  Nothing about any of the released screenshots thus far has me excited about this game.  It looks like a game they are rushing to get out quickly, just so they can sell their engine to other companies that want to release a quick souless MMORPG in under 2 years of development. Such a waste of an IP that has been begging to be made.

The game's still not even in Alpha testing yet.  I personally still don't think the game will be out til 2011, they're saying this is going to be the biggest game they ever created and that they are going to add lots of story content, that is going to take some serious time.  It's taking them over 2 years to get a sequel out for Mass Effect and that's only a single player RPG, and BioWare is saying that the game will be much much much larger then all of their games combined.

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by techdog

WOW! i don't know where to begin....i don't why any of you posted anything, if you have never read anything about STO except for this small review. I have been following this game since it was announced by perpetual and then by cryptic.

PC crew v NPC crew:

this has been discussed in length on the cryptic forums and ultimately lead to closing (not necessarily banning people or deleting threads) any thread about it. basically the system will work like this, since everyone is a captain they can go solo in the game if they choose to...you can form teams or not, its up to you...if you choose to go exploring a planet you bring your npc bridge crew with you or you can bring PC team members that replace your npc crew. its entirely up to you...

yes i understand the arguement about entirely PC crewed or at least PC bridge crew ships. I was one of the proponents for it when it was under perpetuals control, but cryptic has made a good point its like creating 6 games in one...an engineering game, medical, tactical, science, etc. it would take a long time to create not to mention having to come up with new content for each "game" itself continuously... yes i know thats a cop out, but is a sensical cop out to say the least and i'm ok with it. There is only so much to do while pvping, exploring, and spending time between traveling. you can only upgrade a system so much before the upgrades become trivial. there is also the problem of people going l/d on a planet, what happens if the ship leaves where do they respawn at....are they stuck on the planet until another ship comes by or do they have to sit and wait until the ship warps all...the...way...back just to pick up that person. then there are the travel times, are they fast or are they realistic, if they are realistic then what does the captain do all this time while engineering, medical, tactical, etc. are doing their things.

PvP:

It seems as if most people who write about this game concentrates so much more on PvP rather than on PvE. PvP is delegated to PvP areas, so your not going to see PvP everywhere...PvE is very important part of the game, exploring is a major center piece. they have even gone to the trouble of creating self generating content as people continue to go farther out into space. there are goin to raids, dynamic events, PvE space and ground combat, etc. the game isn't centered only on combat

Ship Interiors:

Ok so they are not going to have major ship interiors at launch, with exception to major hubs like DS9...big deal...they said its on the to-do list post launch, besides what are you going to do in those ship interiors, stand around and look at the view....

 

QFE. The community at the offficial website is ten times better than the one here at MMORPG. This site seems to be the last refuge for disgruntled players that hate the fact they can't troll and flame over at a game's website.So they come here and cry about how they are being "censored."  Anyone that has spent any time at the official website knows the facts and those that troll here know nothing. Hence why the trolls refuse to acknowledge this post that refutes every bit of garbage and lies they have been spewing.

It's funny how interested Cryptic and Jack seem to be in putting this game over to us "disgruntled players" on this site and forums.  The official forums might seem ten times better for you fanboi's, because anyone who criticizes the development gets chased off those forums or has their threads locked no matter how constructive.  If you read neutral sites like this one or Massively, you'll see what the average player market (who Cryptic care far more then the community they already have drinking their koolaid) think about this games direction. 

Keep on enjoying those official forums and thinking everything there is fact, I remember the AoC offical forums telling everyone the "facts" on how great and bug free that game was.  While these "disgruntled players" told everyone how the game was far from ready and needed more content.  Wonder who had more facts?

All us "disgruntled players" talked about how WAR wasn't ready, wasn't well balanced, and needed more ORvR options.  We talked about the game having short playability and predicted that people would cancel out of boredom 2-3 months later.  400 thousand cancelations later, I'll bet they wish they listened a little better.

I'll bet we were disgruntled when we knew Tabula Rasa and Vanguard were going to be massive disappointments, when so many of their fanboi's declared their games the next WoW killer.

You might think people are "disgruntled" because they post their opinions here and don't just say "yes yes yes" when they know the developers can make a better game and tell them what people are going to expect from a big named IP.  We might seem disgruntled, but it's funny how much the people here are correct on predicting how well or bad a MMORPG will perform in the market.  The people here have their finger on the pulse better then any of the more recent Dev teams, who just can't quite get that pulse anymore.

Champions Online is supposedly due out in 1-3 months.  But you might want to try the beta or a trial for that game, the beta leaks haven't been very promising with lots bashing it for being another dumbed down game that loses its fun factor after a month of play.  I want to try the beta myself, hopefully they have a open beta before launch so I can judge it for myself.