Free Agent: DC Universe Online

GameSpy's Free Agent is your advance recon into the world of free-to-play games. His mission: jump into a free game every week and put in some hours to see how much fun can be had without spending a cent, then try out some paid items to see if they're worth the asking price. This week he hits the streets of Gotham and Metropolis to fight crime in DC Universe Online using his super-powered penny pinching!


No Money Down

DC Universe Online might have set a Flash-like speed record by going free-to-play less than a year after release, but the switch has done a world of good. Gotham and Metropolis are bustling with players, (though the population tends to skew a bit trollish), the graphics still have that new-game smell, and its action-oriented combat plays much more like, say, Devil May Cry than WoW.

DCUO's free-to-play game (download it here) lives up to its super claims: very little in the way of features or content is locked away when playing for free, and for the most part, DCUO's free experience is almost indistinguishable from the game we were paying to play a little over a year ago. Granted, there's an absurdly low limit on the amount of cash that can be carried, and inventory space is going to be on the tight side, but few items for sale cost more than you can fit in your free wallet, and most of the high-end gear is bought with tokens and raiding rewards anyway. Access to the auction house is roped off, but given the anemic state of the in-game economy I doubt anybody will miss it one bit.


I've found myself constantly wishing that it were possible to lift DCUO's snazzy graphics and engaging combat and drop them in some other MMO that has a bit more to offer. It's great that virtually no content is locked up, because ever since it first came out DCUO's first-and-foremost problem has been a lack of content, which directly led to a ghost-town situation shortly after its paid launch. It's easy to blow through most of what's available and hit the level cap in just a few weeks of casual play, and even though you'll be arresting Bane's thugs if you're working for the Batman and sabotaging their venom injectors if you're in league with the Joker, other than semantic differences most of these quests are the exact same thing on both sides. The silver lining is that being limited to only two characters per free account would probably be more frustrating if there were more motivation to actually create more than two characters.

On the plus side, PvP is one of DCUO's strongest points, and that's fully available to free players. Self-contained arena fights are available on both sides, but on the PvP server the entire world (outside of the safehouses) is a potential battleground. Rolling with a crew is advised for those early levels when a single ambusher can ruin your day, and occasionally a massive battle between several leagues (AKA guilds) will erupt in the middle of town. It really serves to add more life to the otherwise bog standard PvE experience. There's a PvE server if that's not your thing, and you can easily switch between the two at any point in your career if you find yourself getting tired of being ganked while running missions.


As a side note: as someone who's way into making dozens of uniquely weird characters, I'm still disappointed by DCUO's character creator. There simply aren't anywhere near as many options here, and fully a quarter of the costume pieces that exist are unavailable at initial character creation and must be found and unlocked on a per-character basis -- you can't even pay to unlock them. Worse, for some reason the whole setup confines you to using a single palette of three colors across all your gear. Somehow this limitation actually makes the customization interface more complicated. For unfettered superhero creativity, I'm sticking to Champions Online and City of Heroes.

Insert Coin

Which isn't to say there's no motivation to throw down a few dollars once in awhile, especially once you've reached the endgame. Spending as little as five bucks permanently bumps you up to Premium, which adds four more character slots, the ability to use proximity voice chat, more frequently granted vault tickets, an expanded inventory, and a slightly larger wallet. If it turns out DCUO is a place where you want to live for a while it's worth grabbing one of the DLC packs just for the upgrade to the account, but especially if you're interested in having a few more endgame raids and one of the three new powersets. Alas, the Earth-tanking powers aren't all they're cracked up to be, almost as though the devs were too concerned about the first DLC set being overpowered and erred on the side of caution. The Green Lantern themed light set, on the other hand, is pretty boss as of today.


The monthly Legendary subscription, on the other hand, doesn't have quite as much to recommend it. It does offer an unlimited wallet and access to all the DLC content, along with the ability to start your own leagues and daily free vault tickets, but given that all three DLC packs could be acquired for the cost of two months subscription it almost makes as much sense to just buy them outright and live without the other perks. As of a few days ago DCUO has begun giving subscribers an additional 500 Station Cash per month, which if put toward packs actually approaches a more economical solution for the truly addicted. Or you could just drop some chump change on a Batman-themed rubber bouncy ball or something equally frivolous. I won't judge.


Free or Flee?

Considering one of the biggest complaints at launch was that the content available wasn't quite worth the cash, well, that's become the least of its problems. If action-oriented run-and-gun gameplay with solid PvP and actual licensed characters is your thing, it succeeds in standing out from the other options, and when you've used up what it has to offer you can move on without feeling ripped off. Serious MMO grognards might consider DCUO a stupid baby game for stupid babies, but it's a powerful draw for everyone else.


Spy Guy says: Only problem with free-to-play: It's nice to battle alongside Superman and the Joker, but not so much with random jerks named BONGHITZ4LYFE whose superpower is the ability to constantly share their interesting but unsolicited opinions regarding my sexual orientation. Still better than a ghost town server, I suppose.