DC Universe Online Panel

All weekend long players were allowed to play through a two part mission in the Metropolis area that revolved around working with or against Lex Luthor as he tries to steal DNA for Doomsday that would lead to a secondary mission to find and take Doomsday or as a hero to prevent the villains from doing so. Characters were pre-made to showcase different types of powers and character design types.

The graphics are pretty sweet and the game play looks good.
 

I took the time to speak with programmers and designers on the game and was essentially told that based upon your origin you could expect to start your career in either Metrpolis or Gotham City. No release date is currently being issued for the game and I was told time and again that the game is really in the early stages of development which is hard to believe from the look of the game.

One programmer said they are currently working on Gorilla City.
 

As far as character custimaization I was told that while it would be very easy to add things to your character that the plan right now is to allow for some interesting item drops that will allow you to do more with your appearance.

The Panel on Saturday was a bit frustrating in the sense that while interest in the game was high the panel focused more on the annoucement of the addition of Marv Wolfman to the creative team then actually revealing much more about storylines, characters, locations, powers or gameplay.

They spoke about the process of working between the studios in Austin, San Diego and DC in New York. Kicking back and forth character and location designs while a slideshow of Lex Corp base assets and vehicles and armor played.

Marv Wolfman seems to maybe have just become involved rather then having been involved and just having been announced as was clear in his comments speaking about things he was going to be doing rather then having done. The development team also seemed to confirm this by saying things like “we’re looking forward to Marv developing Cases and Capers for players”.

Heroes will have missions called “CASES” while villains will have missions called “CAPERS”.
 

Geoff Johns was credited by Marv Wolfman as having developed a very thorough storyline that was inclusive of all aspects of the DC Universe from Magic, Cosmic, to more Earth based concepts. Wolfman claimed he could not have done that but was thoroughly impressed. High praise from a leagend who wrote the original Crisis: of Infnite Earths. (much better then the recent Final Crisis)

The creative guys seemed to all say they were looking forward to playing as villains. Jim Lee said he didn’t want to rob banks he wanted to destroy the planet, to which Geoff Johns kidded him about being a bit to evil. They all seemed to say that they wanted to play villains because they so often write or draw stories focusing on the heroes side of things. Being evil is more fun.

Geoff Johns censored himself a few times when he would go to mention characters “I can’t really talk about that” or ” Characters I can’t name here”

Somebody prior to panel had apparently asked Johns if the Red Bee would be in the game which most people did not know the character but Johns said he did know the character as a villain who used trained bees. Wolfman pantomimed using tiny whips. It drew some laughter. Oh an of course the character was not confirmed or denied. The statement that thousands of characters are available to the teams to use was the simple blanket statement repeated often.

I asked wether we could expect to see some powers not currently available in other MMORPGs like size change (shrink/gorwth) or Elasticity like Plastic Man. Somebody on the panel commeneted on how they did not realize how powerful Plastic Man was until reading Wikipedia ad claimed he’d disliked the character thanks in large part to the 70′-80’s cartoon. Geoff Johns interjected. “He’s not that powerful”

My question was eventually answered in part by Chris Cao who said that they are currently focusing on the bigger more popular power types but they were aiming to bring as many power types to the game and even when you can’t that you’d have inspired type powers that might emulate the powers you are looking for in flavor if not exact in description.

Other audience members asked about Non Player Character reactions to player characters. The panel said that it depended heavily on what you are doing and where you are. Te example the panel gave was that if you are Superman in Midtowin Metropolis then people do not fear you but if you are throwing vehicles around the atreet people will run. However in an area like Suicide Slums criminals would run or scurry into dark corners. Likewise villains would draw the opposite reactions.

Another Audience member specifically asked if heroes had to worry about NPCs during battles and the panel said no. They said that would unbalance the game too much and then joked that we should just assume that if you were born in Metropolis you were automatcally gifted with great agility.

Another question that seemed to be on many fans minds was regarding the ability for PS3 users and PC players to play on the same servers. Wes Yanagi said that is how they are currently playing it in the offices but that he could not be sure how the game would be rolled out to the public.

Other questions regarding updates were handled by saying new content would be added as often as possible.

Questions regarding if a monthly charge would be associated with the game were answered by stating that the business model has not been finalized yet.

Questions regardings if storylines in the game would mirror those in the comics were answered by saying this online DC Universe is an “Ideal version” meaning that they do not feel the need to be restricted to every interpetation but that they have tried to take the best of DC’s rich history and that we might see familar storylines or missions but it would be handled on a case by case basis.

-T.