DC Universe isn't really something many people currently care much about, nor essentially do they need to anyway. It's just another disappointing mistake from SOE; a company that seems intent on taking great ideas, making muchos mistakes then ignoring the small community of fans who desperately spam ideas on forums, begging for attention and recognition.
But it wasn't always this way. Two of the best examples of originality in the genre came out of the publisher - Everquest was the original timesink, and introduced almost all of the staples of the genre that we love and loathe today. Love it or hate it, EQ was the balls until WoW came along and beat the bastards at their own game with polish and grace.
SOE's heyday included yet another brilliant attempt at genre mashing with Planetside, one of the best team games I've ever played, yet probably underplayed by almost everyone else who just didn't know it existed. It did away with almost every one of the conventional traps and just let you gradually take over the world, point by heavily contested point.
You know the rest of the story. SOE fucked up almost everything after that (Star Wars, EQ2, Vanguard, Legends of Norrath) by dictating to their customers what they needed and ignoring the (originally) positive feedback that was provided to them. But that's just their post-game. Sony have never really been "one" with their audience. They still haven't understood why EQ2 failed so miserably, or why noone appreciated SWG's revamp.
Blizzard know why EQ2 failed. They know why SWG's revamp wasn't received well. They know because they understand what people are trying to get out of these games. They want clean interfaces, interesting quests and evolving structure. They want to feel like they are part of the world and things they do make a difference somewhere. While most people know the game is repetitive, they also understand that there are other things to do within when they get bored.
This, finally, brings us back to DCUO. DCUO fails because it's EQ2. It's an MMO from 1999 with a relatively decent combat system with boring quests and a "snap on" endgame system that doesn't matter. People who care about DCUO right now will not care about it in 6 months. Just like the people who cared about WAR, Age of Conan, Aion, and the countless other forgettable MMOs that launched and failed in the past 5 years don't care about them now.
Yet, I continue to fall into the same traps that I always have. I expect that the new "hook" of the next sexy slut in the red dress will entice me with such terrific gameplay and intutive controls that I will be yet again lost for months inside an online world.
Instead, I'm out $50 and annoyed that yet another random company has my credit card number on file.
