DCUO - nice try, but you failed

 

DCUO, on the other hand, I have really enjoyed.  After playing the beta I decided it was good enough to buy.  What I reallylike about the game is they made it work on a console very well.  It is an action based MMO - very heavy on combat.  They made it work well on console by having the combat be button combos - like Street fighter.  No huge button bar across the bottom of the screen like PC MMOs.  It plays well on the PS3.

 

However, after several months of the game being out the server populations plummetted.  I figured as much.  They did not understand their target market.  Console gamers are not happy paying monthly fees.  If you want a monthly fee on a console you need to make it cheap enough that people are willing to pay it.  At $15/month I think it was too steep for most people.  Since I got the game at launch I am in a special $10/month plan.  At $10/month I think is the sweet spot for the game.  I wouldn't pay $15/month for the game, especially now.

 

With the plummet of the server populations Sony decided to combine them into one gigantic server.  this was hte start of a downfall for the game.  When they implemented this they underestimated how, as they put it, "chatty" the PS3 players were.  Their text and voice chat server kept crashing.  Well, duh, how else are PS3 players suppose to communicate?  I think PC players use outside sources like Skype.  In game voice chat sucks in the game.  It's better now but for many months it had a ton of bugs.  Becuase of this issue they kept restarting the servers until they could get a patch out.  This was extremely annoying.  Once they got hte issues ironned out the game started to better again.  

 

To try and get people back into the game Sony decided to switch to a free to play model.  At first I thought this was a good idea, and I still do if implemented correctly.  The F2P model started a week ago.  There are 3 levels to the F2P model.  The first level is completely free.  A person in that level is very limitted - 2 character limite, half the inventory slots, and many other restrictions.  Basically, it allows someon to demo the game.  That's cool.  Then if you spend $5 (only once, not monthly) in game you get bumped to premium.  Premium gives you 6 characters, normal inventory size, very close to what a person had prior to the F2P model.  This is cool because it is cheap to upgrade to this level.  Then ther eis legendary, the $15/month subscription.  Legendary gets free DLC, unlimited characters, and other unlimited perks.

 

It is a cool idea, however, Sony did not learn from their past mistakes.  They underestimated how many people were going try the game or come back.  The servers are so flooded that there are 10,000 log in queues.  And then when you do get int he game for some reason the public areas in the game seem dead.  This is not going to convince the people that came back ro new people to continue to play the game.  Sony dropped the ball.  They had a really good oppurtunity to make the game awesome but failed miserably.  Because of this it is going to backfire on them and cause a worse situation to occur.  Nobody signing up yet the game is now free to play so no income.

 

I still say if you want try the game out.  If they get past this and the servers settle down it really is a good game.  However, since Sony cannot seem to keep the game stable I don't know where my $10/month is going.  I don't see any reason to be a subscribing member if Sony cannot get their act together.