In your opinion: What was the Golden Age of DCUO?

What would you say was the best time to be on DCUO? Personally, I would say it was from Free-to-Play (October 2011) to Origin Crisis (April 2013).

- YouTube videos about DCUO weren't doom-and-gloom "when will this game die?" or "people still play this?" type of videos.
- Introduction of FOS Raids.
- Lightning Strikes DLC. Having a new open-world city was exciting (Central City). (They never expanded it like I thought they would but whatever ).
- Conclusion of Brainiac storyline, which is the greatest DCUO storyline IMO. Brainiac felt like a massive threat, which I felt we haven't had recently in the game (kinda like Darkseid, Trigon, & Nekron). Fighting each of the avatars and the Prime Battleground raid lived up to the hype of facing Brainiac. I did not feel the same way about recent big bads like Perpetua, Mordru, or Neron.
- PvP was very active and even kind of popular. Meaning you were able to pop 8v8s with no problem. It also felt far less toxic but that just might be me romanticizing the past. Though I certainly never got called useless back then for losing a very close PvP arena.
- Open-world PvP was still a thing. Tension between heroes and villains. Actually felt like you were on different sides.
- Operations introduced (Hand of Fate DLC). More fun than regular raids IMO. The thing that sets these apart from the rest is them taking place in OG Gotham and Metropolis.
- Bases felt new and exciting with Home Turf DLC. All the amenities, armories, and consumables really added a new dimension to the game.
- Ended the original DCUO storyline with Origin Crisis. Great storyline and hard as heck.

Of course, this is not to say I hate the current game. I hope this games lives on forever because I practically grew up with it. I downloaded it on PS3 as a 15-year old and now I'm in grad school with a full-time job and my own place. I don't think I'll ever outgrow it What was your "Golden Age"?

I would actually be very curious to see a poll of this but as it relates to when each responder started playing the game. My guess is that most responses would identify “their” golden age to be somewhere between being six to eighteen months in to playing this game regularly and have much less to do with the content or state of the game at the time. The exception might be those who played from launch as it certainly took a few years to build this game from a promising launch MMO to the robust game it became. But yeah, knowing what I know about psychology, the power of nostalgia and MMO gamer engagement tendencies, that would be my guess. But maybe I’d be completely wrong which is why I’d be interested to see those results.

Right up til the appearance of Time Capsules...



Edit:
That's the point where one (me, at least) starting feeling less of a player than more of a mark.

Things started to rapidly decline after Amazon fury 2. DPS wasn't the same with advanced mechanics. It was 1,2,3,4 and that was your damage.

You could argue it's like that now but back in the day it was the most boring thing ever

While many hated revamp, I enjoyed it. It gave a chance to celestial and light... For a while. Then the whole thing changed when artifacts came to power

Artifacts ruined dcuo with how long to level, how expensive they are and how they almost require you to spend money on them or wait months.

Content has been the same since Amazon fury 3. Open world missions, instances. Mostly the same kind of bounties, instances

Allies was just a money grabbing scheme for those with an ego issue and require to be the best at all times.

PvP is dead.

Community is toxic af.

Skill points are harder to get. No on wants to run feats... (Community issue. Not a game issue. EU servers. Shout out aureliah, Bobby Parker and Sephiroth who run feats regularly)

been playing since 2016 so didn't get to fully experience the beginning of the game, but I do feel 2020 was. The Devs were also super interactive, with the community streams, community style poll(Where Blue Beetle won), activity on forums, Extra Life was crazy when they did all those incentives and streams. I feel like it made things way better and even if toxicity was still there, the good overcame it. It just gave more life to DCUO in general. Also, Kudos to Mepps for sticking with the community! I do hope things will get better for the best.

But if we go abit back at 2018 I used to stay up so late with my friend to chat all night and play DCUO. I really miss it.

Those were the days... :')

I started playing DCUO in 2014, and I would have to say from 2014-mid 2017 was the peak of the game, although Wonderverse to me has been masterpiece. From my own personal experience, I saw a decline in players first happen with the Stats Revamp in 2017. I myself was about to quit the game but my sister encouraged me to stay at it. So I guess you can put me in the hated revamp category lol. It was the worst thing to ever happen to the game at that point.

Something changed during this period where I think someone in the Company had the idea to treat DCUO as a mobile game and monetize it in similar manner. I do believe that individual or individuals are no longer with the Company or they are at least no longer in a position of authority to guide development/monetization efforts.

Yeah, 2017 was a very bad year for the game. My memory is a little fuzzy on it but I think that is the same time PvP was de-emphasized and a lot of PvP players became dissatisfied and left.

I am optimistic that even better days are ahead with new story lines and intriguing game play. I would like to see more than just 1 raid per episode and to always have 1 solo.

For me it was the earlier stages of the game. Before replays were introduced and the game revolved around a more team oriented environment. There was more skillful audience at the time and as we grew with the game, we were looking for more challenging content. It was normal to form groups for open world bounties and work together with others. Before replays, we would find more players spending time online with their alts earning marks and chasing feats. Chances of running into a non experience player at end content were also slim. The chat were filled with multiple feat groups forming all the time.

Leagues also served a more meaningful purpose back then. Players actually enjoy running content with their league-mates and would help run content even though they were loot locked.

Been playing since the first day of free to play, without a break (except for the week I spent in hospital in 2014), and still play every day because I enjoy the game.

For me the "golden age" started about when I first began playing ("Fight for the Light" was new then, and I bought it straight away, becoming Premium and a Green Lantern recruit at the same time - man, I loved hitting people with trains and attack helicopters, cackling fiendishly the whole time) and lasted until the start of monthly episodes (when everything started to get too frantic, and seemed to dip in quality - a dip that I don't feel it has fully recovered from yet).

Also don't remember gold seller spam being such a big proportion of the chat back then.

Before time crapsules came out. Before the stats revamp happened. Before monthly content and it’s ridiculous gear system. Before eleet content started. Before crafting generator mods. Basically before Amazon fury 2. And also before weapon mastery.

Properly between 2011-16 anything after that pretty debatable; Main thing is got some good memories and friends along the way.

I started playing about the time fight for the light dropped then I left for a bit then I came back when electricity dropped left again then was back when earth became a power.

To me I think op is about right the beginning of the game to about origin crisis (where we saw the first saw people leaving the game in large numbers, not due to the hack but because of in game decisions) that would be the golden age.

There was also way less content so there wasn’t a whole lot of content that was ignored. You could get into any t1,t2, t3 instance with no trouble at all.

You’d see people in the watch tower til the 4am pst system shut down…. You’d also still see people in pvp phase in Robinson park fighting til shut down as well and not just a few people hoards of people.

A lot of people left at origin crisis when they realized the best gear was no longer in the vendor which I still think was a very bad decision and was of course a big push to sell replays.

I think replays hurt the game even tho I benefitted from it when I came back and played during gates spam which I regret. But they had to do something going free to play. I just wish they focused on selling cosmetic stuff and other fun things in the market place rather than replays to keep the lights on.

Replays just kinda ruined the experience. With out replays it kept people coming back each week to play the game. Although one could argue that people were playing on weekly reset day logging off and not coming back til the next reset anyway, but I’m sure there were other measures they could have done to keep people playing every day.

So I’d say replays sorta started some of the issue (instant gratification) and origin crisis killed the golden age and sparked the silver age… cause by the time we got the lantern dlc after origin crisis things were picking back up. The difference between vendor and dropped gear was almost nothing.

Oh I forgot to add also back then you only needed 80 something skill points to completely max out your role. Anything more was just put into other weapon combos if I remember correctly. And achieving 80 some sp was not difficult to do

Absolutely this. While i joined during Hall of Power P1, i was already introduced to replay badges early on. The way they would be used to reset content hurt the game so much. It become so relient on luck, credit card limit and other none game factors that it just become a chore.

Replay badges should have ONLY been used to unlock feats. Hell, i would go further to say that your account should be a "Family" or "Group" of heros. This in turn should grant you all the feats you have unlocked on other chars. Not only will it make the levelling experience easier for the veterans who are trying out a new power, movement mode etc. But i would have also helped the new players. No one wants to go into a game, spend 6hours - X Days to try a power, to end up not liking it, to then eventually ending up making a new character, trying a different power but being met with "OH. LOL. YOU THOUGHT YOUR PROGRESS AND STUFF WOULD BE SAVE? LOL NO. DO IT ALL AGAIN OR GIVE US YOUR MONEY".

Monthly content was ****. End of story. Dont need to explain that situation.

The game would have survived on it own if content was good, subscriptions was up and so many more styles. innovations and more was added. Its just a shame they went down the greedy money route. Truly hurt the game.

The first few years.

When I started, before the server merge, playing on a pvp server was intense. Every mission from 1-30 was met with resistance from villains. It made me a much better player. And when I got to the first bounties it was even tougher. Not only did I have to fight Bizarro, I had to fight 5 villains at the same time.

The arenas too, when it was rock paper scissors, there was a level of strategy. As a team we had to communicate, identify the roles in the opposition and attack accordingly. Combined with power interactions, team work was essential and gratifying.

Then, fight club. Spending hours on the roof of star labs, fight 1v1 heroes vs villains, always at the verge of a complete war breaking out, nothing like that today.

Replays wasn’t the only issue back then for money grabby stuff tho

Just before origin crisis they began “rebalancing” power sets.

That wanted to rebalance the original powers (excluding light, electricity, earth) I forget their reasoning as to why but I believed they did 2 powers at time I remember mental and gadgets were the first. It was clear that were “rebalanced” and came out OP af… gadgets being the most op. And everyone flocked to the power set which sold a ton of power respecs. Each time they did this for the power sets the powers came out ridiculously op and it would take a month or so for them to nerf it into the ground just in time for the next waive of rebalances.

Then new powers were introduced again and would come out pretty op. Celestial for example. But soon got nerfed when rage came out. Quantum came out before those two but I don’t really remember it being op, other than it was probably the best troller power in the game.

That does tend to happen quite often in MMORPGs however so i wont hold it against them for that. Yes it sucks, but its not the first to do it.

People see "Ohhh, shiny new thing that is good".
They have their fun with it
It changes
They go back to their norm again.

I guess I’m still salty after all these years because when that rebalanced ice and gave it new visual effects as they did with fire. I’ve lost their original ice armor… now you see it with all the icicles hanging off you etc. but back then you actually morphed into this awesome looking ice armor. I wish it was a toggle like natures morphs… they said that had trouble with it visually which maybe that did but I don’t see how natures morphs had no issues…. Anyway haha I really liked that transformation especially in tank stance it was very awesome looking

I agree but adding the timeline I would probably add right after the removal of advance mechanics. that first year or so, if you remain in the game, you see a lot of stuff to get like styles and skill points but not too overwhelming and seemingly out of reach aspects. After the revamp we started getting introduced to time capsules, artifacts, allies, massive total skill points( which even then was being argued as useless); and old content that was irrelevant and non-queue-able. All these later additions made it harder to achieve IF you are coming late into the game WITHOUT having to put real money in to catch up with the rest.


I think content has basically stayed the same in terms of difficulty, number of per dlc, and interest although it fluctuates. One thing that stands out, was it Battle for Earth that gave us 4 distinct styles in one DLC? one unique to each role. i thought that was great and i never even questioned buying power respecs just to get all of the armor and feats attached to each role.

And I'm sorry but I AM one of those people but I won't utter the hated 2 words to incite another set of arguments. But I am one of those players who looked forward to reaching a certain number of CR where you can return to an instance and be like Superman as he was in the Golden or Silver age. To see all those red numbers blooming off my character and it bounces off like bullets off Superman' chest; unfazed. Because I do not need a challenge from content that was 10 episodes ago or 200 CRs below; I already went through all the challenge and feats when it was new AND relevant. The enjoyment left for me in those old content was to reach that line where I came in and just went, "superman SMASH!!!" I didn't know exactly when content was about to reach that line but it was something I deliciously waited for. But alas, that is gone now and it is what it is.

Also, time was we got a new set of powers to explore every 2 or 3 Dlcs; something new to explore and play with?

I still think a better era is still possible with the game and I don't think it lies in an upgraded game engine or better or more realistic graphics.

IF each new Dlc delivered a unique gear style for each role, had 2 raids, alert, and combo of duo and solo with an open world mission, and each year we got a new powerset, additional legends characters, new emotes, new pet styles; more dipping into DC character-based styles. Add these things and I think players will return to grind content out, switch powers for play variety.

Meh, i'm ending my rant here and I don't feel like getting my hopes up today.

The good old days were when there was no upgrade, artifact, augmentation, omnipotent and ally chore, the game was fun then, because you played for SP and people were motivated to earn their SP, Now all the character boosting stuff has greatly de-motivated players to look for SPs, feat nights are becoming more and more rare and above all, are more and more chaotic and also, when there wasn't this chore of open world boss farming. ..

At that point, we could really say that we were playing the game!