Though last week’s big announcement of Planetside 2 was pretty massive, it wasn’t the only big news to come out of Las Vegas during SOE’s Fan Faire 2011. Also announced at the show was DC Universe Online’s first DLC pack “Fight for the Light.” Among a host of alerts, duos, and other content, the real shining part of this DLC is that players will gain access to the Green Lantern and Yellow Lantern power sets for their own characters. Long a requested addition to the game, these new powers should give alt-a-holics something to look forward to. On top of the powers though, come all sorts of new alerts (group dungeons) and duos (small-group content), and gear upgrades. Due to be released later this summer, the DLC will retail for $9.99.
Now here’s the contentious points for some: DCUO was originally supposed to receive monthly content updates for free. The team has had a lot of trouble keeping it to even bi-monthly, and now many players are questioning whether or not they should be charged an additional fee for a “mini-expansion.” Their feelings are that if the game needs more content like powers and such, and if the team hasn’t met its promise on the monthly content, why should players be forced to pay to get access to such iconic powers?
On one hand, I completely get this mentality. There are plenty of folks who feel that DCUO needs either a lower subscription or needs to go F2P, because of its action-oriented MMO-Lite nature. Meanwhile, it’s been perfectly acceptable in recent years for companies to sell downloadable content alongside their regular subscription fees. The difference is, in most of the games that do that lately the subscription is optional (LotRO, DDO, Champions). In DC Universe, you’ve got to pay the $15 no matter what. And while the Fight for the Light content sounds like it will be worth $10 to me, I can understand why some might be a little miffed.
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My thought is this: if they don’t shirk on the regular free content updates, and as long as Fight for the Light has the goods to be worth its asking price, I’ll gladly buy it. What SOE should probably do however is let people test it on the PTS, and when it launches hold a free weekend for all past and current subscribers to check out the new power sets. This way we could all gauge whether or not it’s a purchase we want to make.
In the long run though, given the new items available in the game’s store, and the low population of the PC servers, I’m wondering if Lex Luthor might not come up with a brilliant proposal to lower Metropolis’ residential taxes and get more people playing again… can DCUO Extended be far off?
