Be sure to read Bill Murphy's thoughts about Update 2.
Be careful what you wish for, am I right? Last month's update saw a Catwoman arc that was too easy for my liking. I breezed through it without dying once in about twenty minutes and I had words to say about it. The newest content update, I can't even say this month's because even though it dropped in April, it was supposed to be March's update, brings us another solo instanced scenario, this one pitting Two-Face against the Penguin. I would love to be able to tell you what fighting the Penguin's all about. Just one problem: I couldn't make it that far. I have to live with the embarrassment of saying that, no matter how hard I tried, no matter which tricks I pulled out of my hat, I could not beat... I can't believe I'm going to say this... Pengbot Maximus.
Over the span of three days I tried on countless occasions to do so, intermittently stopping somewhere to get my equipment fixed, and today, being Sunday the 10th, I've (un)graciously thrown in my hat. Now, I know that many of you (if many of you are still playing the game, that is) are saying “What are you talking about Drew? I destroyed that metallic little tuxedo-wearing punk in a matter of minutes!”. Understandable, and I'm not about to make excuses. Except for this one: I haven't been playing “grind for gear”. I hate “grind for gear” and it really turns me off of any game that forces me to do so to enjoy endgame content.
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So what's a boy in my situation to do? I don't want to do Alerts, Raids, Duos, buy one piece of kick-ass gear and then do it all again. It's infuriating. But then, I suppose that's what I have to do in order to keep playing throughout the endgame of DCUO, isn't it? But wait, there's more. Even if tempted to start grinding for gear, the queues are so long because, let's face it, the server populations are dead. I sat in a queue for three hours yesterday and nothing popped.
Here's my open plea to SOE. Merge your servers. Yeah, maybe the PS3 doesn't require this kind of attention, but I'm not playing it on my PS3, am I? Neither are the (however many) people who are still playing it on the PC (I'm pretty sure there's about five of us). Merge your PC servers and force your populations to build up. Without a decent server population, people can't do their grouping content, people can't grind for gear, people can't get the decent gear required to complete the endgame content that you add on every month rendering the monthly subscription useless. Why would someone pay every month, even for content updates, if the server populations are so low that they can't build up their gear to be able to do them?
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I really would like to give you more information about the update, but unfortunately, the possibilities just weren't there. In all of my time playing the update, I encountered one enemy player, who promptly and thoroughly kicked my ass. Do I know if the PvP bugs have been ironed out because of one encounter? No. Could I even get into the new Raid to test it out?
I stand by everything positive I said about the game leading up to its release and shortly after its release. However, this fundamental flaw is preventing people from doing the very content that they're trying to add every month to make your subscription worth it. That makes your subscription not worth it. It doesn't matter how you spin it, or how you slice it, until the server populations are increased somehow, useable gear becomes easier to obtain (Item mall? I know Pay to Win isn't popular) and we start to see a little meat in the game again, the endgame stuff just isn't even worth touching. In my opinion, anyhow.
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I'll continue to play through on my alts, there's still a lot of paths I haven't yet taken and there's still enough I like about the game that I'm not going to give up on it entirely just yet, but in my mind, there's really very little keeping me with this game. I hope in the coming months, this changes. Until next time...
