The first rule about beta is "you don't talk about beta".

wtb DCUO beta key

*Le sigh*

More waiting for me then, I suppose.

You'll be able to PvP with your created character(s), yes (there will be missions where heroes and villains square off against each other and there'll be arena matches similar to what you'd find in other MMORPGs), and If you pre-order the DCUO Collector's edition you'll be able to "Play as Batman in a two-on-two arena battle". SOE have said nothing about playing as other iconic characters... yet.

It turns out that you CAN colour individual costume pieces; new character creation/gameplay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14uH8pj6AEU

Originally posted by Priestr

thx dude, the youtube guys channel actually has some more videos like villian gameplay and so on, pretty cool! gonna pre order right now :D the vids got me sold in ^^

 Yeah, it's looking very good; very smooth; and if it looks this good a few months prior to launch, imagine what it's going to be like on release. :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14uH8pj6AEU

Originally posted by Scot

I am not saying the whole of DCUO or even their character creation is dumbed down. But the decision to stop players making up their own colour schemes on individual items is an example of dumbing down. Less choice because they think too many players will be too stupid to make the right choices, that’s dumbing down.

 

Your understanding of "dumbing down" must be different to mine then because I still see an awful lot of freedom and flexibility even with a three-colour scheme. Sure, a choice of three colours for the overall scheme does sound confining, but you're still going to be able to choose from a palette (i.e. an entire spectrum) of colours for your scheme, resulting in thousands of possible combinations. It's like painting a room: yes, it might be only one room to paint, but I'm not restricted in the colours to paint it.

In the scheme of things (no pun intended), there are of course going to be other ways to give your character a unique look (i.e. costume). You could have a hundred heroes/villains standing next to each other with the exact same colour scheme, but what they're wearing may be different and the differences may be as subtle as one hero/villain wearing an eye patch on either their left or right eye.

Originally posted by HitechLolife

Hopefully it's something more than an extra costume slot. Actually.. have they confirmed multiple slots..?

I believe you'll be able to make changes to your costume on the fly, but yeah: saving "default" costume arrangements is something I'd like to know about as well. This is something CoH/V did very well.

Originally posted by HitechLolife

Originally posted by Trinitarian

Originally posted by jinxxed0

From these comments, I can tell this game is going to bring in a lot of comic book nerds that know nothing about videogames.

 

You're looking at it the wrong way: there's nothing wrong with easy PvP targets. ;-)

 

Because the learning curve on MMOs is so steep. Give them a week and they'll be fighting videogame nerds on equal terms.

Then there's people like me who's pastimes include reading comics and melting your face.

 

Hail to you, king of the nerds. ;-)

Originally posted by Haegemon

Originally posted by Trinitarian

Transformers Online

- Create your own Transformer: pick a robot look, pick a vehicle, customise them;

- five classes: leader (offense/team buff), soldier (offense/tank), medic(defense/team buff), engineer (, and scout

- pick a side: Autobot or Decepticon (and change sides later if you want, i.e. "turncoat/betrayal" missions);

- fight alongside Optimus Prime, Megatron and other Transformer A-listers;

- level-up, upgrade weapons, upgrade armour, make your vehicle faster, stronger, etc.

You know? All that stuff. ;-)

 

How would you handle these important things though:

 

Junkticons - because they're cool, and the game will flop with no way to insert a Wierd Al song.

Unicron - Raid that face

Headmasters - folding-people-robot-suits go! would be a fun avatar mechanic though

Stan Bush - A Transformers MMO is going to need a truck load of bad-ass 80's power-rock ballads. He'll need time to write them all, say 30%+ of the overall soundtrack.

High Moon Studios - TF:WFC was a damned fun game. Not so much saying on the MMO front, but if you haven't played it, you'd like it.

Don't ask me; I'm just a producer... that stuff's for the devs/design team to work out. ;-)

Originally posted by dnarris

 but the thing with beta is that it's usually a select number of people and those people are sacked with a nondisclosure agreement. So, they really can't share anything with us or at least they aren't suppose to.

 

 

That's true, but for a majority of beta testers, it's a "try before you buy" kind of deal. Once the NDA is lifted (usually when the developer moves to the Open Beta phase of testing) you'll see an assortment of write-ups around the web be they positive or negative critiques of the pre-release product. Primarily, the hype is built in the hope that one will be selected for beta testing.

Transformers Online

- Create your own Transformer: pick a robot look, pick a vehicle, customise them;

- five classes: leader (offense/team buff), soldier (offense/tank), medic(defense/team buff), engineer (, and scout

- pick a side: Autobot or Decepticon (and change sides later if you want, i.e. "turncoat/betrayal" missions);

- fight alongside Optimus Prime, Megatron and other Transformer A-listers;

- level-up, upgrade weapons, upgrade armour, make your vehicle faster, stronger, etc.

You know? All that stuff. ;-)

Originally posted by jinxxed0

From these comments, I can tell this game is going to bring in a lot of comic book nerds that know nothing about videogames.

 

You're looking at it the wrong way: there's nothing wrong with easy PvP targets. ;-)

Originally posted by Scot

This is designing your MMO for the lowest common denominator. They know that some players will mess things up and have silly looking costumes because they can’t design something decent in Character Gen. So we have to put up with less design options because of the morons who can’t work out how to mix and match colours.

Another example of dumbing down in the industry for sure.

You've asserted all that because of DCUO's three colour scheme? Don't forget there's going to be a plethora of costume options aside from colour (i.e. clothing and other accessories).

Originally posted by CrowInvictus

Originally posted by Trinitarian

Originally posted by stine96

I am concerned at how SOE was going to release this game in Nov 2 with little content. Hopefully they raise the lvl past 30.

 You realise the game has been pushed back to a Q1 2011 release, right?

 

 I guessing you don't realise that attention span has dropped to about a-oooh, shiny-sorry, a minute (that shiny part was a joke to empasize a point)

 

Joke fail if you have to explain it. ;-)

Originally posted by stine96

I am concerned at how SOE was going to release this game in Nov 2 with little content. Hopefully they raise the lvl past 30.

 You realise the game has been pushed back to a Q1 2011 release, right?

I'm not too concerned about the Green Lantern Corps and "Light powers" being included at launch. We are probably going to see a Green Lantern or two make an appearance in the game at launch, but the Green Lantern mythos is another world all together and would make a great expansion/content update.

Hal Jordan as a mentor for heroes and Sinestro as a mentor for villains; heroes and villains would need to "prove themselves" if they wanted to join the Green Lantern Corps or the Sinestro Corps on Qward (i.e. be a green ring bearer or yellow ring bearer respectively). "Light powers" would still be viable contextually as a powerset if the "exobites" infused in heroes/villains "emulated" Green Lantern/Sinestro powers and abilities and they would later work to earn a ring (green/yellow) which could possibly give them additional powers and abilities or intensify existing ones.

Originally posted by dnarris

I do think, however, that even with the delay SoE and the DCUO developers need to keep up the hype and keep up the interest in the game.

 That's what the beta process is for; it has a two-fold functionality:

1.) ongoing refinement, fine tuning, polishing, quality control of the client, server stability, etc.; and

2.) a litmus test for anticipated sales at release - it gives an indication to the publisher of how many boxes/copies of the game to produce and ship.

DCUO closing beta applications and offering spots in the beta test for pre-orders is a positive step; it both builds hype for the game and tells us the game is nearing release (Q1 2011 is not as far away as some people may think). SOE - like any other game publisher - wants to keep people interested in this game so expect to see a lot more information about it publicised on week to week basis.

DCUO has the potential to become SOE's flagship game - their golden child - much like World of Warcraft is for Blizzard.

If SOE get DCUO right - and there's a lot of pressure on them to do so since they're toting the DC Comics brand name - this game alone could do away with the stigma SOE carries with it at the moment as a "game breaker" (i.e. what they did with Star Wars: Galaxies, what happened to The Matrix Online, and so on) and not to mention do a lot for DC Comics, basically what Lord of the Rings Online should have done for Turbine and Tolkien Enterprises.

I was interested in the game right from its announcement, and I'm only now looking forward to the game's release even more now having seen what DCUO had to showcase at NYCC. The game's looking pretty darned good now; it can only get better by the time they release it next year (January, hopefully!).