It's Still Summer! Have Some More Free Stuff!

It has only just occurred to me that late summer seems to be freebie season in the video game industry. Okay, the free stuff trundles out, month on month, all year round, but it has been feeling lately like this is peak giveaway season. If only I had something like a diary of things that happen in video games that I'd been keeping for a few years, eh? Then I could just flip back through the Augusts of yesteryear and see if my theory holds true.

Ah, but that's the stuff of fantasies, isn't it? No-one keeps notes on what hapens in the video games they play. That would be crazy. And anyway, what would you even call it? Some kind of gaming log? A glog, maybe? Well, that sounds dumb! No wonder no-one's doing it.

Evidence from the past notwithstanding, there certainly seems to be a glut of giveaways in the games I'm "playing". I just did a whole post on the massive hand-outs in EverQuest II and this morning I logged into two other MMORPGs to pick up my rightful dues. (Also, that little ironic meta-conceit about the non-existence of game blogging does kind of fall apart when I link to a post right afterwards, doesn't it? If I had a decent editor they'd just put a blue line through the whole of paras 1&2 and tell me to start over. Lucky I'm self-editing this thing...)

I am now in a position to add some detail to the aforementioned post, although not as much as you might expect. I claimed the one-per-account crate plus the one everyone gets on my Berserker but now I'm wishing I'd read up on it a bit more first because it turns out that not everything in the one-time crate is Heirloom. That is made clear in the announcement but looking at the forum thread I'm not the only one who didn't bother to read it carefully.

Luckily, I did at least claim it my "main" so none of it is going to go to waste. Had I been paying better attention, though, I'd have claimed it on the character I'm working so hard to turn into my new main, my Necromancer. 

On the bright side, EQII's ceaseless vertical progression escalator moves so ludicrously fast, anything with stats is going to be replaced in a matter of weeks anyway. We've got Pandas soon and then it's the expansion, so even though the gear in this crate is a huge upgrade (It is stat gear after all, not appearance as I wrongly suspected.) I don't imagine I'll be wearing it come Halloween, let alone Christmas.

As for the rest of it, I haven't sorted through it all yet but it sure looks impressive. But there's no time to sit around admiring my unearned goodies, not when there are more to be grabbed.

Game #2 on my loot list, quite unexpectedly, is Lord of the Rings Online. I have MassivelyOP to thank for this one. They PSA'd the offer yesterday and I logged in and claimed it this morning. Well, after I'd waited half an hour for the game to patch, naturally. Is there any other online game that takes this much time to get back up to speed after only a few weeks absence? 

I last logged in on 16 June, when I moved my characters off their old 32-bit servers and onto the shiny new lag-free 64-bit upgrades. (Golf clap...) I hope you've done the same because if you haven't it's too late now. 

No! Wait! No it's not! You still have a couple of days! Go! Go! Go!!!

Out-of-place illo.
The one I took of the LotRO store
somehow vanished. Thanks SSG!

Possibly because their entire year has been such a roiling, heaving mess, Standing Stone decided to throw some bones our way and they're pretty big bones, too. Oliphaunt bones, maybe. (Oh, look! I know what an oliphaunt is and I didn't even have to look it up. I guess I must be right-wing now. They do say it happens as you get older.)

Not as far to the right as all that, though. I have no clue where Gundabad is, although I suppose it's worrying that I even know it's a place not a person. Or a weapon. These people name their weapons, don't they?  Have you ever done that? Can't say I have. I might start but first I'd have to have some weapons. I suppose I could name my garden spade. Digger. That's be a good name for a spade.

I seem to have whimsied myself into a hole here. Hang on while I dig myself out. Now, where did I put Digger?

(See? If I had an editor you wouldn't have to put up with any of this. Not that I imagine there are many of you left by now...)

The code for the giveaway is EXPLOREOURWORLD, all in caps, which presumably is some kind of GenZ thing, judging by half the bands I listen to these days, who all seem to think all capitilization is nothing more than a style choice. You wouldn't have thought the devs at SSG would be so cutting edge... 

It gets you a huge swathe of content, all the quests and expansion content up to about three years ago. There's no particular rush. The code, which you have to redeem in the in-game store, is valid through to November. Why they do it this way, rather than just make all content before a certain date free automatically, the way every other game does, I have no idea but that's Standing Stone for you.

Thirdly and finally, at least until the next game announces a summer gift bonanza, comes DCUO. This one's slightly different in that you actually have to play the game to get most of it. It's not a straight log-in event so much as a holiday, the holiday in question being possibly a regularly recurring event albeit not one I remember doing before.

Specifically, it's Teen Titans Homecoming, a big party the Titans throw for Starfire to try and cheer her up after her sister Blackfire confirms her exile from Tamaran for another year. I don't know what it says about my politics but I could explain all the italicized words in that last sentence, in more detail than you'd want to hear, without having to look anything up, just like a Tolkein fan could tell you all about elves. (That's the remake of the old Bette Davis movie, starring Orlando Bloom and Liv Tyler, with Sydney Sweeney in the Marilyn Monroe part, by the way.)

Focus, dammit! Focus!

Since it's a seasonal event not a giveaway as such, you do need to do some missions to get the currency to buy the rewards off the special vendor and I wouldn't normally have bothered only one of the items you can get is so weird... 

It's Starfire. You can buy Starfire and she'll come live at your base and talk to you about her life. You can ask her about her Homecoming party, her team the Titans, her adopted planet Earth, her home planet Tamaran and who knows what-all else. I'd like to know what she thinks about her sister for a start.

I'd also like to know if she thinks it's appropriate for a Princess of Tamaran to be sold like... well, I guess we'd have to say like a slave because if she was a servant she's have working hours and I'd have to pay her, like I pay my mercenaries. I've played plenty of games where NPCs come to stay in my character's houses and work for them but it's always assumed to be on some kind of contractual or apprenticeship basis. (In EQII there's literally a contract involved that you have to hand over for some of them.)

There's a kind of precedent for it in DCUO in that I have Krypto flying about my base but although technically he isn't my character's pet he is a dog. People do buy dogs. That's how Mrs Bhagpuss got Beryl. 

When I read about it (Again on MOP although I'll most likely get an email from DI about it at some point.) my first thought was "I'm having one of those!" Me and the Teen Titans go back a long way. As I've mentioned before (More than once, most likely.), I once interviewed Marv Wolfman about the New Teen Titans comic he was writing at the time and for me Starfire will always be that golden-skinned alien with the wild hair he and George Perez created but I've also watched all seasons of the Titans TV show, so I'm very comfortable with the current version, which is of course the one you get in DCUO.

It's going to take a little while before I can install her. It costs 75 tokens for the "Base Invite" (Ah, wait! Now I get it! She's my guest! That's a lot less weird. Although still a bit weird...). You can pick up a dozen tokens each day just for doing the two daily missions and the event runs for almost a month, so it should be easy enough.

I did the very easy mission Raven hands out first. That gives four tokens and takes about a couple of minutes. Then I did the Miss Martian one, which is an On Duty, meaning you have to grab a group from the group finder and let them carry you play your role to earn eight more tokens.  

Doing daily group missions in DCUO is about as painless as it gets. Mine popped in seconds and lasted maybe five minutes. I do have some idea how to play my character but certainly not after months away so I just button-mashed through the whole thing. No-one died, not even me, and at the end, when you get a scorecard, while I definitely did the least DPS (As a DPS character, too.) I didn't do none.  No-one complained, anyway. No-one even spoke. So that should be fine.

You can also pay some currency to reset the dailies and re-do them on the same day. Don't ask me which currency. There are sooo many. Whatever it is, I had plenty of it, so I did Raven's easy one again. If I did that each time it would only take me five days to get Starfire but there are quite a lot of other things on the vendor that look interesting so we'll see.  (You can also just buy the tokens in the cash shop, which seems like a great idea to me, espcially given how much DBC I have lying around doing nothing.) 

I will make the effort to get Koriand'r at least. (That's her real name. Didn't have to look that up, either. Not even the spelling.)

The Homecoming event itself has some kind of progress bar you can complete to get other rewards as well but I just want Starfire. When I get her, if she has anything interesting to say, I'll let you know. 

Until then, where's my next freebie, game devs? Don't you know it's Giveaway Season?

Here, Boy!

It's been a while since I played DCUO. Given that I post about it every time I play, it seems safe to say it was back in January, when I got stuck on Felix Faust at the end of the first chapter of the game's new "narrative-led" approach and never bothered to go back to try and beat him on a second try.

At least I did actually play the game that time. Usually, all I do is log in, claim whatever's on offer, wander around my new Base wishing I hadn't torn down the old one, put up a few posters, sigh at the prospect of redecorating, wish once again I'd stayed where I was, even if the new Base does have a better view, then log out.

Now and again, probably no more than once a year and mostly not even that often, I might go outside for a fly around. Perhaps even do a couple of missions. The days when I tried to keep up with even the most basic solo content at the start of each new Episode are long gone.

DCUO is a game I used to play. Worse, an MMORPG I used to play, making it even harder to return. How many of those are there, now? Literally hundreds, I think. 

It is, at least, one I still very occasionally write about, which puts it ahead of 95% of them, but it's a game I write about less and less. So, why am I writing about it today?

Because there's a freebie I want of course! Just about the only thing guaranteed to get me to patch up and log in to an MMORPG I no longer play is the prospect not just of something for nothing (You get that in virtually all of them every time you log in these days so it's no incentive at all.) but the offer of something I find specifically appealing, coupled with a limited window of opportunity to grab it.

It's a very weird kind of FOMO. Mostly, fear of missing out is not an emotion I'm personally familiar with. I can let most things slide without being at all bothered. If it's not too much trouble I might extend the very slight effort necessary to pick up something I'm not all that interested in or attend some event that only very mildly intrigues me but if I happen to forget to log in and miss it, I really couldn't care.

There are a small number of games to which I still think, with increasingly slight evidence, I might one day go back and for those I might make a little more effort to acquire something that could be useful, if I did ever return. Things like level boosts or an extra character slot that sometimes attend a promotion, those might be worth not missing out on. 

But these days, even the sort of giveaways that would once have had me looking up my old passwords - mounts or hats for example (I do like a hat, as I believe I have established previously.) - aren't always enough to trigger a response.

So, why am I patching DCUO as I type this? An 8Gb download it is, too. 

I'll give you one word. One name. 

Krypto.

But wait a moment. Don't I already have Superman's dog? Didn't I post about it when I got him and haven't I posted several screenshots since then of my character playing with him in her Base?

Yes, yes and yes.  

But, see, here's the thing... that Krypto can't leave my Base. This Krypto can!

DCUO has a mechanic I've never bothered with. It's called the Ally System and it's relatively recent, dating back only to 2021. When it was announced, I imagined it would be something like the Mercenary systems in the EverQuest games, an NPC you could hire and have fight alongside you as a permanent companion. That would have been great. 

It wan't that. It was more like one of those dumbfire pets EQ mages and necros get, the ones that have fancy names but really just appear, do some burst damage and vanish. They're fancy spells with a visual is all. You'd have, say, Harley Quinn as your ally and when you called her she'd appear out of nowhere, do a big AE, then vanish. 

Big whoop.

Okay, they all also had some secondary and passive effects and there was some upgrade system you could use to enhance them but once I found out you'd barely get to see them before they left, I lost interest. Until now.

What's happening in the current update is a complete overhaul of the system to turn it into something a lot more appealing. Instead of just popping in, doing a special attack and leaving, now your allies will stick around for a while. Still, sadly, not for good like a proper Mercenary but long enough to cycle through their signature attack twice and do some regular fighting alongside you while they wait for it to recharge.

I mean, it's still not great, is it? But it is better. 

The name of the update is Superboy Ally and Ally Update, which doesn't even sound like something thought up by a committee. In a committee at least one person would have vetoed that gibberish. Seriously, who's naming these things now? I'd blame AI but clearly no AI would come up with anything that dull. It takes a human to be that unimaginitive.

Also, as you've probably spotted, it's "Superboy" in the lead, not Krypto. But where the Lad of Steel flies, can the Dog of Steel be far behind?

Well, yes and no. Krypto is part of the package but he's kind of Superboy's Ally, not yours. What happens is, you call on Superboy and Superboy calls on Krypto. 

Okay, technically you do the actual calling, too, in the form of burning a Supply Drop trinket. Nothing's ever simple, is it? 

And what's a Supply Drop trinket, anyway? It's a consumable you can get from a dispenser in your base or from a vendor or in various other ways. Again, I knew they existed but I've never bothered to use one, so I'm not speaking from personal experience.

I guess that's going to change. I'll have to do it at least once, just to see Krypto appear whereupon, I'm assured, he will attack enemies, weaken them with his super-bark and if anyone happens to get knocked down, attempt to revive them. I suppose that means I'll have to do some fighting just to see it happen. 

Also, as I have only just discovered, Krypto has been in the game as an actual Ally in his own right since 2022. So maybe I should just go to Cyborg and buy him. Cut out the middle-dog, so to speak. In fact, seeing he was once given away as a freebie, chances are I already have him and I've just forgotten about it. 

Oh, and Superboy will be there too, of course.

I have only a very vague understanding of who Superboy is in the DC Universe these days. 

I used to know exactly who he was. He was Superman when he was a boy. Just like Superbaby was Superboy when he was a baby. Even a kid could follow the logic.

I have literally hundreds of comic books featuring Superboy's adventures in and around Smallville, growing up on the Kent farm, going to Smallville High, hanging out with his best pal Pete Ross and, of course, courting and being courted by my favorite character in the entire Superman mythos, Lana Lang. 

Sadly, Superboy hasn't been young Clark Kent for a long time. I know Jon Kent had the name for a while but who's using it now I'd have look up. Hang on... let me do that... okay... that's a new one on me. 

So, in answer to my google query "Who is Superboy in 2025?", Gemini's summary reads

"In 2025, Superboy is primarily known as Kon-El, also known as Conner Kent. He is a genetic clone of Superman and Lex Luthor. Conner Kent is a prominent member of the Superman family and is known for his involvement with the Teen Titans and Young Justice. In the Young Justice animated series, he is a founding leader alongside Aqualad, Kid Flash, and Robin, and his relationship with Miss Martian is a significant part of his character. "

I'm not vouching for all the ancillary detail there but after cross-referencing the substantive point then, yes, it does seem that the Superboy we'll be allying with is going to be Conner, who I do actually remember from when I watched Titans. I seem to recall he was a colossal ass then but that was Titans. Everyone was. 

Anyway, I don't care about Conner. Or any of the Superboys, unless its the Silver Age Superboy I grew up with. I'd take him as an ally although it goes without saying I'd rather have Supergirl. Any of the Supergirl variants, really. And believe me, there are plenty of those.

Would I rather have Supergirl's pet Streaky the Super-Cat as an additional Ally instead of Krypto, though? Hmm. Not so sure about that. Streaky was always kinda sneaky. He had a great line in that side-eye cats like to give you. Also he was not exactly what you'd call reliable.

Moot point. No-one's offering me Streaky. Or Supergirl. I'll just have to settle for the boy and his dog. 

And after all that, the game has patched up and I can log in. I believe there's a bit of work to do before I can take possession of the pair ("Complete Patrol 3 in Campaign 2025", whatever that entails...) so I'd better get on with it.

I'll report back when I'm done. With pictures to prove it. 

To Cut A Long Story Short - A Day Of Reckoning For DCUO's New Narrative-Led Approach

Following on from yesterday's post, where I talked about how reliable Daybreak's patcher is and finished up promising I'd say something about the actual content of what I'd downloaded with it, namely DCUO's latest update, Light and Rain: Day of Reckoning, I thought I'd probably better go play the thing. So I tried. I managed about half of it.

The first part was fine, although I can point you to a forum thread where 98% of the posters would beg to differ. No-one had any problems with the setting, a snowy town in the Balkan state of Kaznia. Most people agreed the snow looked great and there was lots of detail. The art department was clearly having a good day.

Unfortunately, no-one really plays DCUO for the scenery. The game engine is getting quite elderly now so even a good-looking map only looks good relatively speaking. None of them are going to be winning any prizes for looks in 2025. I don't think it would be controversial to say no-one plays DCUO for the story, either, which could be a tad more of a problem, given the whole, new, narrative-first rebrand. 

Okay, I'm sure someone plays DCUO for the story. Someone probably plays it for the music. Speaking of which, the music in Day of Reckoning is probably the best I can recall hearing in the game. In fact, it's the only time I can remember noticing music in the game at all, except when I've turned it down in combat because it was too loud.

Again, though, no-one's here for the music and Dimensional Ink isn't pretending otherwise. They are, however, trying to sell players on the concept of more story than they've been used to getting and this update is the first practical evidence we've seen of how that change of direction is going to look. So far, it seems to be going down about as well as Spinal Tap's pivot into free jazz.

As I said, I've only seen maybe half the first installment so my judgment is necessarily incomplete. It's  likely to remain that way, too, because the reason I had to stop halfway through is that I can't even come close to beating the first of the two storyline bosses, Felix Faust. 

I'd say she has to be freezing in that costume but then, y'know... magic.

This is entirely down to my complete incompetence as a DCUO player. I can't play my own character - as in I literally don't know what most of her powers or abilities are, let alone which sequence of key-presses activate them. Ironically, after playing a ton of FPS and action rpgs these last few years, I no longer have any real issues with keyboard dexterity. I can press the buttons now - I just have no clue which buttons I ought to be pressing.

I tried to beat Faust three times and the closest I got him was halfway. I'm reasonably confident I could learn and improve enough to beat him in a few more attempts but I'm neither interested or motivated enough to try. The only reason to do it, other than to be able to write a more complete and balanced post about it, would be to see the story through to the end and sadly that's no motivation at all.

Coming to Day of Reckoning off the back of the Riniscita storyline in Wuthering Waves feels a bit like putting down Animal Farm to go read a three-year old their Peppa Pig book. I mean, they both have pigs in but otherwise...

Okay, that's a bit harsh. I'll make a fairer comparison. Yesterday, I played a fair bit more of the Scars of Destruction storyline in EverQuest II. There's a lot of narrative to get through there. EQII NPCs are chatty as hell but generally I enjoy the house style, verbose and off-topic though it often is.

Scars of Discord, though, feels like one of the weakest expansion storylines to date. The plot is the main problem but the writing in general feels a little tired, as though whoever was responsible knew they didn't have a lot to work with. Even so, SoD is orders of magnitude more interesting and entertaining than what I had to plow through in DCUO yesterday and today.

They grow 'em big around these parts, it seems.

The writing in the game has always been terse, to put it politely. I think it must be someone's very misguided idea of how DC comic books work. As a lifetime reader, I'd say they were never that basic, even in the glory days of Bob Haney, but it's been the game's house style since launch so I don't expect anything different.

At least, I didn't until DI started to hype the new, narrative-driven approach by issuing press releases about it and posting short stories on the website. That does kind of raise expectations, which is unfortunate because this goes nowhere at all towards meeting them.

The players complaining bitterly in the thread I linked seem to object mostly to the story being there at all, although a minority would like more story in their game, just not this one. I had a slightly different take. Had I not read about in advance, I would have had no idea this update was any different to any of the others I've played in recent years.

I found the story, such as it is, to be so slight it risked slipping my notice altogether. If I hadn't been looking for it I'm not sure I'd have spotted there was one, or at least not any more than usual. 

Every chapter I remember from the old format began with a message over the communicator sending you to a new map where some questgivers would be all standing close to each other, handing out a bunch of combat or collect quests. This one does have an introduction of some sort, although I've forgotten it already. It probably also came via communicator but it was even shorter than usual. 

Then came the inevitable new map with its combat and collect quests, same as always. The only notable difference I could see was that instead of a bunch of superheroes all standing around like greeters at the mall, handing out quests, I had to keep running in and out of the Laughing Hound pub to get them from John Considine.

The cavernous interior of Considine's local.

The voice actor playing Considine spoke in a stilted and unconvincing way and employed a hard-to-define accent that was probably supposed to suggest London but occasionally sounded closer to Sydney. After a bit Zatanna turned up outdoors to hand out more quests and a local hero called Voivode, also hanging out in the pub for no obvious reason, added a few more. After just about every quest I had to leg it back to the pub and talk to Considine again.

All of this felt pretty normal to me but on reflection that's probably because it's how questing in most MMORPGs works. I'm so used to it, I don't even think about it any more. 

I'd not really thought about the way DCUO does it differently either. Or used to, I guess. Judging by the many comments complaining about the utter pointlessness of having to keep going back to the pub to get the next quest instead of just picking it up on location via the communicator, I don't get the feeling many players appreciate the old-school legwork.

The quests themselves were not popular either and for good reason. There's a lot of "talking" to NPCs that comes down to nothing more than listening to them spout the same handful of phrases over and over. Which, to be fair, is what NPCs in DCUO have always done, only until now they did it mostly while you were killing them. You didn't generally have to stand around waiting for them to finish before your quest would update.

As several people mention in the thread, there was also a lot of lag and the quests had a nasty tendency not to notice you'd done them. I had to speak to a lot of witnesses before I got all my updates. I do find it a little ironic that the forum, as it always is, is full of people claiming the update is so bad everyone is going to quit, while at the same time moaning about the lag caused by the servers being full of people throwing themselves at the new content...

It took me the best part of an hour to finish the first map and it wasn't always a fun time. It was okay, for the most part. Not terrible. The story was all over the place and hard to follow, the dialog was dull, Considine was annoying and everything felt undercooked but it was no worse than average for an MMORPG. It reminded me a lot of Guild Wars 2 at times in that there seemed to be about a quarter as much actual story as the time it took to see it play out suggested there should be.

Meet Voivode. Makes you wonder about the drinking laws in Kaznia, doesn't it?

Once that was out the way, it was on to the first solo instance. It takes place in a sprawling graveyard which , once again, looks very good, given the limitations of the game engine. The first part of the story there involved wresting control of an obelisk from Felix Faust by playing king of the hill with his lackeys. I enjoyed that part.

It was followed by an escort quest. Oh goody! No, wait, three escort quests. Even better!

You can imagine how well that went down with the regulars. And with me. No-one likes an escort quest, let alone the same one three times in a row. I failed it the first time but I soon got it figured out so I only had to do it four times in total, which was three times more than I wanted. And that's being generous.

After that it was straight to the throw-down with Faust which, as I said, did not go my way. He wiped the floor with me and Considine did nothing to help. As things stand, I can't imagine wanting to git gud so I can go back and finish the story. It isn't anywhere near interesting enough for that.

This is part one of the four-part arc that forms the spearhead of the new narrative-driven approach. It's not an auspicious start. I really hope the other three parts are a lot better than this one, especially since as it stands right now you have to do the whole thing on every character you play if you want to get to what most players think of as the meat of the game - the repeatable content.

I'm quite glad I don't have to deal with that although I'd bet it gets changed to Account access pretty quickly. If there's one thing that might really get people to quit it's having to play through this storyline on every alt they've got.

I'll Tell You When I get There...

I'm sitting here writing this as I wait for DCUO to patch. I want to log in and check out the new "narrative-focused" update, Light and Rain: Day of Reckoning, the video for which makes it look rather intriguing, if not much like the DCUO I'm used to. I'll embed it a little further down so you can judge for yourself.

I feel like I do an awful lot of that, these days. Sitting and waiting for things to patch. Or update. Or install. Or verify. Or validate.

Recent posts here have seen a litany of moans and complaints from me about not being able to find the time to play games as much as I used to, or as I'd like, but among the many reasons I've given, I don't think I've mentioned - and I'm certain I haven't sufficiently emphasized - the cumulative effect of  modern update procedures, particularly on Steam.

I think I did mention it once and someone in the comments put it down to the way Unreal 5 works, although I might have imagined that. Anyway, it doesn't seem to be limited to games using UE5. Almost everything I ever have to update on Steam feels like it takes significantly longer than it used to and updates fail and have to be repeated much more often. 

The obvious conclusion would be that there was a problem at my end, most likely with  my drives or possibly my broadband but I'm pretty sure that's not it. I have no problems downloading large files or updates for other services and although I've swapped the Steam installations from mechanical to SSD to external drives, it's much the same any way I try it. 

It's very anoying when it's a game I want to play but worse still when games I'm neither playing nor planning to start to patch and then hang, preventing me from closing them or doing anything else. Even logging out of Steam or rebooting won't stop that. As soon as I log back into Steam and before I can do anything at all to stop them, they begin again from where they left off .

When Once Human got stuck in that loop, the only way I could stop it was to go to the directory where the files were and manually delete them. Uninstalling via Steam didn't work because Steam constantly flagged the files as "Busy". I was able to "stop" the download but that just put it into a permanent state of "stopping" that never actually stopped.

I find the whole thing particularly galling because I never want any of my games to update until and unless I'm about to play them anyway. I don't want anything updating at all unless I specifically tell it to do so. On Steam I have everything I play regularly set to update only when I log in to that specific game.

Unfortunately, as many others have complained, Steam won't allow users to set Update On Play as a global default. You have to set it separately for every game and every time I fire up Steam it seems to find some old demo I'd forgotten about that now urgently needs to add Latvian language support or fix some essential problem with hairstyles.

Unless I'm fooling myself, nothing like this used to happen. I only started turning automatic updates off last year, when I noticed a problem. Before that, if there were any updates, they seemed to take a minute or two and involve a few megabytes, not a couple of hours and 70gb.

It's not just a problem with the downloading, either. Those 70gb always need to be verified and then installed and that takes even longer. And doesn't always work. Again, I'm perceiving this as a fairly new problem. I'm sure it wasn't happening a year ago. It's beginning to put me off using Steam a little.

DCUO, of course, isn't on Steam or rather that's not where I'm playing it. I access the game through Daybreak's own launcher, which is excellent. It never gives me any of these problems. The issue I'm having with DCUO today is a much more familiar and acceptable one; coming back after a break.

I haven't played the game for about nine months and as anyone who's ever played an MMORPG should know, a lot can change in under a year. In this case it's about 13gb that's changed or at least that's what the game is now installing. And doing it smoothly and quickly, I'm pleased to say.

In fact, it's all done, in less than the time it's taken me to write this. And I've passed the time usefully by writing this post, which also solves my problem of not having anything in mind to write about today.

Granted, it hasn't made for a very interesting post but you can't have everything. Now all I need to do is log in, take a couple of screenshots, promise to write something about the new update itself, when I've had a chance to play it, and that'll be my job done.

Thanks, Daybreak patcher! If only Steam was as reliable. It used to be...

Free To A Good Home - Or Any Home, Really...

Since I mentioned it yesterday, I suppose I ought to do something about it. Collecting all those freebies, I mean. There comes a time, though, when logging into multiple games you have no real intention of playing, to collect items you don't particularly want and are never likely to use, starts to feel a bit... crazy?

Not that any of that applies to the giveaways in EverQuest II, of course. They're all either practical or pretty and I'm sure I'll get some very good use out of each and every one of them. Definitely.

They come in two sizes - the one-size-fits-all Milestone Celebration Crate currently being handed out for free to every character under all payment plans and the deluxe Milestone Celebration Subscriber Crate that's reserved for paying customers only and which comes one per account.

I won't go through the contents in detail - there's a comprehensive breakdown on the official website complete with all items and applicable restrictions - but I will mention a couple of things. 

The per-character crate is auto-gifted to each character as you log them in but the Subscriber crate has to be claimed. All the contents of the latter are Heirloom, though, so it doesn't matter much which character on the account grabs it. All the contents can be handed around as appropriate later.

The giveaway runs until September 23rd so you have a while. I'm not entirely sure I'd say it was worth logging in if you aren't subbed and aren't playing at the moment because the freebies for F2P are far from essential... although the Toyger vanity pet is very cute and probably does count as essential for cat-lovers. 

The bow isn't particularly special and I don't care for the illusion much but there is an advisory to that last. I actually don't like illusions at all and have them switched off but I always forget that when the game gives me a new one, which is why I clicked this one on to take a screenshot and of course nothing happened... except something actually did.

I got smaller. A lot smaller. It seems that even with illusions toggled off, the Milestone Guardian Illusion shrinks you to the size you would be if you could see it. Since being really small is something of an obsession with some players, this might be a very welcome side-effect. I don't know if it's intended - I'd bet it isn't - so it might get nerfed but for now it's a handy way to shrink your character while keeping your original appearance.

As for the Subscriber pack, I would strongly recommend anyone who's paying for All Access at least logs in once to claim it. It's a good one. 

There's a very nice set of fancy wings that also act as a flying mount. They come in a choice of light and dark but you can only have one or the other. The dark ones look a lot better in my opinion but I guess if your one of those people who have to make your character light up like a magnesium flare you might disagree.

There's a set of cosmetic armor which I didn't have the space to open (Oh, don't. Just...don't.) without shifting it through the shared bank to someone whose bags aren't completely full. There's also no illustration on the website, which seems odd. I might log back in and get a screenshot of it before I post this. [Edit - I did not.]

There are also some item unattuners, which people always seem to appreciate. I hardly ever use them but I think I'm in a minority there.

With considerable irony, the final item in the pack is a 66 slot bag. That would have solved my space issues - for about five minutes. I was very excited when I saw it because, as the name of this blog might suggest, inventory management is a bit of a thing of mine. Well, inventory, anyway. Managing it, not so much.

After the initial excitement faded I started to wonder whether 66 slots would actually be an upgrade to any of my six character inventory slots. EQII is insanely generous with storage space. I counted the available slots per character once and it goes well into four figures. Even character inventory, the stuff you lug around with you, easily passes five hundred slots.

I checked and the new bag does actually beat two of the six I have equipped, albeit one only by a couple of spaces. I have two 88 slot bags, a 72, another 66, a 64 and a bog-standard 48 slotter that is now going to go to someone else. 

The new bag also doubles as an appearance item, a papoose with two "adorable" panda cubs peeping out. I don't really like those much. The pandas, that is. The bag itself is OK, especially the rolled-up umbrella down the side. It's a moot point anyway because you can either have your backpack showing or your back item, not both, and I vastly prefer those new wings to the pack. 

So much for the freebies that I wasn't going to describe in detail. At least that gave Lord of the Rings Online time to patch. 

The giveaway there is not all that interesting for casuals like me because the big ticket item is a new instance tuned for max level players. There's also a vanity pet and a "Portrait Frame", which is a thing I had no idea existed in LotRO. I associate those almost entirely with Eastern F2Ps. You need to use a code in game to claim all of these and the offer ends on 25 September.

Proving yet again that procrastination always pays off and a lot more interesting for occasional players is the news that the excellent mini-expansion from a while back, Before The Shadow, is now free to all. You don't have to do anything for that one. It's just there for everyone automatically. 

If you don't remember it, it's the one that added two large, new starter zones, which was why I bought it when it came out. I never even got to the end of the first zone so I could have waited until it went free, as it was always, inevitably, going to do. That'll teach me.

There is, however, a free mount to go with that offer. Two actually, one for freeloaders and a second for paying customers, although free players can take the VIP mount token and stash it for the day much wished for by Standing Stone when they decide to subscribe. 

Again, you have to apply a code in game for that one, something I am going to go and do right now... and it turns out the Azure Steed is the grown-up version of the Azure Pony I already have. Not sure if that's a hobbit thing. It's account-bound anyway so it can be handed on to someone who needs it.

Of course, what I really need in LotRO is that 66 slot bag...

The final update and login for me this morning was DCUO, where the freebie on offer was a crappy set of  dragon horns. Oh, sorry... "Archdragon Horns". That makes all the difference. I imagine someone is going to get all excited by the chance to have a couple of ugly protuberances grow out of their head but it won't be me. Still claimed them, though.

There are some much nicer cosmetics in the same free offer but for those you actually have to play the game a bit and I wasn't up for that today. I have parked in the relevant instance so the wings and baby dragon pets may one day be mine. The stupid horns are only available until 9 September but the good stuff stays on the instance vendor indefinitely, so no rush.

The giveaways in LotRO and DCUO are part of Daybreak's Year of the Dragon, a celebration of fifty years of Dungeons & Dragons, which does seem a tad random until you remember they also publish and, I think, own Dungeons & Dragons Online through SSG, who run both that and LotRO... or something. Who knows any more?

It seemed a bit odd I hadn't heard about similar giveaways in the EverQuest titles too but it turns out that's because I hadn't been paying close enough attention. I had to ask Gemini for the details, something I do quite often these days because it is quite often actually faster than just googling, believe it or not, and reasonably reliable so long as you check the sources. It seems I was only just in time.

The free gifts in both games are less than spectacular: a dragon statue for your house. They're available for no cost in the cash shop. You just have to log in and "buy" them but you'd better get on with it because both offers end tomorrow. If you don't have time for that, never fear! It seems there will be something else for free in both games for September. 

I logged back into EQII to pick up my dragon statue because I spend a lot of time in various houses there and I'm sure it will fit in somewhere. I long ago gave up trying to maintain my houses in EverQuest, though, and I don't propose to start again, so I passed on that one.

After all of that, I was pretty much done with logging into games to get free stuff. I'm sure there are lots more games on my hard drive that would like to shower me with gifts if I'd only log in but there's only so many hours in the day and I've used up all of those I'm willing to spend on it right now.

Tomorrow though...

So, When Is Superman Day, Exactly?

Did you know yesterday was Superman Day? I didn't and Bree at MassivelyOP didn't remember the date either. It turns out there's a good reason why we might have been confused. There's more than one Superman Day.

Bree was reporting on what she'd read in a press release from Daybreak Games' subdivision Dimensional Ink, which confidently begins "April 18th marks the official celebration of Superman Day across the web, the world, and the DC Universe." And that's the truth. Or one of them.

The DC establishment backs April 18. James Gunn is Mr. DC for the moment and he certainly thinks April 18 is Superman Day. So does Elizabeth Tulloch aka Lois Lane from Superman and Lois, the show now set to mark the swansong in the long-running and fitfully fruitful relationship between the CW and DC Comics.  

April 18 has apparently been "Superman Day" in some realities since 2004. The date was chosen because it marks the anniversary of the first appearance of the Man of Steel in Action Comics #1 back in 1938. 

If you google "When is Superman Day?", though, Days of the Year, supported by many other calendar websites, offers June 12, citing an official announcement to that effect by DC Comics in 2013. There's clearly some confusion going on, which may or may not derive from the sheer number of possible anniversaries available: Superman's birthday, Clark Kent's birthday, the arrival of Kal El on Earth and the first appearance of a comic featuring the Man of Tomorrow.

According to one of the sources linked above, there's a lore explanation for choosing April 18: it's the date Superman gave as his birthday in an interview with Lois Lane and the date he uses for official purposes. Unfortunately, whoever made that claim neglected to provide details of where and when the interview took place and I haven't been able to verify it. (Okay, I haven't tried to verify it. I have other things to do, you know...)

The same source, which I am not convinced is reliable, asserts that in his alter ego of Clark Kent, Superman claims June 18 as his birthday. Most other sources suggest what I seem to remember from my own comics-reading days, when Superman's birthday was usually given as February 29. 

A possible clean-up for all this comes from the unlikely source of Sky History, whose This Day in History column explains - while citing June 17 as Clark Kent's birthday - that in the 1950s Superman cut his cake and blew out his candles (Carefully, one hopes...) in October, before shifting the celebrations to Leap Year Day in the 1960s, where it remained for a couple of decades before moving to June. Just to be awkward they also throw December into the mix with no supporting evidence at all.

At this point it has probably become clear to us all that no-one knows when Superman's birthday is, nor when or most likely even what "Superman Day" is supposed to be. This is why Dr. Egon Spengler was so insistent the streams should not be crossed.

What I do know is that DCUO is celebrating its own version of Superman Day from now until... actually, I'm not clear on when it stops but it carries on into next week at least, because that's when they're giving way some free posters. 

I'll be there for that. DCUO gives good poster. I'll have somewhere to put them, too, because thanks to the games obtuse and confusing UI and patent lack of clarity I now have two entire bases to decorate. Or, in one case, re-decorate.

How did that happen? Well, I'll tell you. Only I'm going to keep this extremely short for once. I feel I've written more than enough two-thousand word essays on my own incompetence for anyone to want to read another. I certainly don't want to write one.

The key points are these: I logged into the game to spend 2000 DBC on the new prestige lair, Superman's Fortress of Solitude, for some reason now renamed the Sunstone Fortress. I have cash shop money to burn so even though the real-world equivalent is allegedly $20, it cost me what I consider to be nothing.

I bought it with no problems and added it to my Base collection but then I spent the best part of an hour, including much googling and watching YouTube videos, trying to figure out how to set the damn thing as my second base. You can have up to eight of them, allegedly, but I just could not figure out how to get more than the one I already had.

In the process I managed to completely strip all the furnishings from my old base, move it across town and replace it with the Fortress and still end up with only the one lair. In the end I figured it out (You have to buy a Deed from the cash store AS WELL as the Fortress, which is technically just a visual skin, not an additional property. Also the Deed is really hard to spot due to the way the menus work and the dumb color scheme they've gone with. It took me three passes to find it and I only spotted it then after I'd watched someone do it in a video...)

After an hour and a half, during which I even got half-way through submitting a Customer Service ticket before I decided I was going to make myself look utterly ridiculous by doing it, I finally got everything sorted to the point where I now have two bases, one of which is my new Sunstone Fortress and the other my old Gothic Lair.

They are both completely empty, of course. All my furniture - and I have a lot, almost all freebies - is in storage. It's going to take me several solid sessions to get both lairs as I want them but if I'm honest, the first one was a mess. It really needed a makeover and now it's going to get one.

Decorating in DCUO is fun so it's more of a treat than a trial. And Krypto's going to love his new home, I'm sure. 

When I'm all settled in I'll probably do another post about that but for now, enjoy the sense of space in all those outdoor shots. That view is what I really bought the place for...

Games For Sale

I logged into EverQuest II for the first time in... well, I can't exactly remember how long. Before I started playing Palworld, that's for sure, so about a month? It wasn't that I even wanted to play the game today, not especially, although I'm pretty much always up for an EQII session. It was more that I felt that, since I paid for an annual subscription last September and the recent expansion two months later, I probably ought at least to make an effort to get some of my money's worth.

And that, right there, is the problem with traditional subscription and buy-to-play payment models. I can't help thinking the best reason I could have for wanting to log in to a game would be a strong desire to play it right now, not because I'm worrying about money I spent on it months ago.

The conter-argument would be that I'd paid for everything up-front so I could enjoy the game and the expansion at my leisure. And anyway, I'd made the decision to spend some time with the game today and I was expecting to enjoy myself. Only I didn't even manage to clock up five minutes in Norrath before I found myself back here, writing about it instead. 

To some degree, that's reflective of where the pendulum is on my gaming arc. I tend to vary between wanting to play games more than write about them and the reverse. Currently I'm in an authorial phase. The pendulum will swing back. It always does.

Mostly, though, my failure to stick with what I'd planned for more than five minutes comes down to what I saw in the launcher as the game was updating, plus some things I've read about EG7 in recent days. Straws are flying in the wind and they're getting hard to ignore.

Wilhelm posted a thoughtful examination of the prospects for the company, under pressure from investors to maximize the profit potential of a portfolio that includes not just the two EverQuest titles but DCUO and - at a slight and somewhat nebulous remove - Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online and Magic: the Gathering - as well as the ever-promising but rarely delivering H1Z1 and the largely ignored and forgotten Planetside 2. 

Except, on that last one... does the EG7 portfolio still include PS2?

It seems not. Not any more. Word is that Planetside 2 has been sold to... someone. To whom is less clear.

The Enad Global 7 Q4 Interim Report published this week simply states "Daybreak successfully closed on the sale of a non-core IP for USD 5.9 million." As far as I can tell, neither EG7 nor Rogue Planet Studios (The game's nominal developer.) nor DBG has made any public statement about who the new owner might be but it seems certain the title to all Planetside properties has been transferred to a shell company going by the name of Bay Tree Tower Ltd, about whom absolutely nothing of substance is known.

This, naturally, has lead to all kinds of speculation, from the game being shut down as a tax write-off at one extreme to the new owner being Amazon Games who, under John Smedley's auspices, will go on to make Planetside 3 at the other. Someone on Reddit even claims to have found proof on the dark web that the real owners of Bay Tree Tower are Tencent. Feel free to go look that one up for yourselves.

I have no interest in Planetside 2. I'm always a little surprised it's still going, let alone that it seems to be quite popular in certain circles. I have played it and while it seemed fine, it really wasn't my kind of thing. Seeing a whole game removed from the DBG roster and handed off to person or persons unknown, however, is a little... disturbing.

If I was going to speculate, which clearly I am or I wouldn't have started this paragraph by suggesting it, I'd guess PS2 won't resurface as part of the portfolio of another games aggregator like Gamigo or Valofe, for the simple reason that companies like that are usually all too happy to let everyone know when they grab a new moneymaker. 

The use of a shell company suggests something someone doesn't want anyone to know about, which given Daybreak's record, would be business as usual. They seem to specialize in obfuscatory smokescreens, frequently for reasons that never do come fully to light, suggesting they not only do it, they're quite good at doing it. It wouldn't even surprise me if turns out they've sold the game to themselves, somehow, especially since it appears that although the IP rights have moved, publishing remains with DBG. Again, it probably wouldn't be the first time...

In other words, whoever owns PS2, it'll be business as normal for players until further notice, which I guess is something. Meanwhile, the other stand-out item in that quarterly statement was this: 

EG7 has initiated several new growth Initiatives, including... EG7’s own release of a new H1Z1 game.... Currently in concept exploration phase with pre-production phase coming up next.

Daybreak is aiming to enter the production phase for the title on the second half of 2024.

It's ironic that H1Z1 features zombies. It's the franchise that just won't die. I did kinda-sorta know there was some idea of a new take on H1Z1 but I figured it would be another revamp of the existing property or a rerun of one of the old versions. I hadn't realized it was going to be a whole new game...

I'm not going to run through the full report. I'll leave that to Wilhelm, who I'm sure will do a far better job of it than I would. I'll just mention that overall, EG7 seems to be doing about as well as can be expected in what has been a brutal period for game development. The biggest hit to profitabilty seems to have been the inevitable bursting of the My Singing Monsters bubble; that and not managing to get DCUO onto the latest console generation in time for Christmas.

The latter is due to be corrected in the first quarter of this year although there has to be some concern over the letting-go of a number of people from Dimensional Ink, the subdivision responsible for DCUO. You might think they'd need everyone if the game is going to move forward this year.

All of that stands as background to what I saw when I logged in to EQII this morning, which was something much more immediately relevant to playing the game itself. As of now, if you'd like a leg-up doing that, Darkpaw would be more than happy to oblige.

To that end, they've added a couple of packs to the Cash Shop: the Darkpaw Hero Bundle and the Darkpaw Heroic Boost Bundle. The only difference between the two is that one comes with a boost to Level 125 and the other doesn't. Well, that and 3,500  DBC. 

Both versions contain a whole load of currencies and tokens intended both to let you skip a large amount of grind and instantly acquire very powerful spells and abilities. Level boosts are no longer controversial. The rest of it could be.

Since there's no limit on how many of these packs you can buy, there's also no real counter to the accusation that this is pay-to-win, pure and simple (Other than to point out that the very concept of "Pay to Win" in a game that, by definition, cannot be won, having no win condition, is meaningless, of course.) In theory, since each pack comes with your choice of a Grandmaster spell, you could potentially grandmaster all your spells for a thousand dollars or so. And who's to say someone hasn't already?

At the very least it represents a way of spending money to skip content and thereby progress much faster than those who choose not to purchase the packs or just can't afford them. And they aren't cheap. DBG conveniently sell their funny money at a thousand DBC for ten dollars, making conversion easy, although inevitably there are value deals for higher amounts to confuse things. For all intents and purposes, though, it's $40 for the Hero Bundle and $75 for the one with the boost.

And that might not be so bad if it was the end of the story but of course many, probably most, EQII players have multiple max-level characters. Even though some of the items in the pack are Heirloom and therefore tradeable within the purchasing account, a determined (Or should that be demented?) player might feel they needed dozens of these packs to get all their characters up to their full potential.

Instead of logging in, I clicked through the link in the launcher to read the forum thread on the announcement. It's three pages long and surprisingly evenly balanced between those who approve of the new bundles and those who object to them. 

Even then, the disapproval seems muted compared to what I would have expected a while back. Granted,  the rather good, newish Senior Community Manager, Angeliana, moderates the thread fairly strictly but I don't see much evidence of multiple posts being suppressed. Just the odd hothead, who can't tell the difference between forceful criticism and personal abuse.

There is an inevitable appearance of the old "I know five people who cancelled their subscriptions because of this" anecdote, of course. I think the first time I saw that on the forums must have been sometime in 2005 and it's been a constant, comforting presence ever since. 

On the whole, though, people seem either glumly resigned to yet another development confirming their bleak view that EQII now exists only as a miserable means of extracting money from fools and cheats or that being able to pay money to progress in a video game is a human right to be celebrated and anyone who says otherwise is just, like, so out of touch. 

I suspect that anyone who's genuinely unwilling to accept offers like these in the Cash Shop gave up playing the game long ago. Probably every game, since all of them do it. Anyone who's still here either does it themselves or has to play with those who do so it's pretty much a given of the game by now.

The more interesting question for me is whether something like this really works as a money-generating technique. It's really hard to tell from my perspective. As I've often said, most years I can barely get through the basic content included in the annual expansion before the next one arrives. The idea of paying to progress faster seems irrational. 

I kind of hope it does work. As someone on the thread points out, they need to monetize the game somehow. And it's not like they don't also sell a ton of cosmetic items that no-one could claim were Pay to Win. I'm fairly sure if those were doing the job we wouldn't be in this situation.

I have to assume DBG know their customers, who are almost all veterans of many years. Equally, those players must know what the game is, now. The entire end-game has been slowly shifted to an endless, incremental grind for various currencies and tokens, while the vast, submerged, iceberg-like bulk of everything else that's been added to the game over the preceding twenty years drifts along beneath, free and fair for anyone who cares to enjoy it. Not that many do.

As with every aging MMORPG, it's current content or bust. And that applies just as much to "Classsic" or "Progression" servers as it does to the "Live" game. Even the old has to be endlessly new or at least sold as such. It's a false dichotomy to pretend, as some do, that the TLE servers, with their throwback gameplay, are in some way more authentic than the rest. They demand their share of anything new that can be shoe-horned in to their rulesets just as vehemently as anyone on Live.

That, or some of it, is what I found myself thinking about when I went to log in this morning, with the result that instead of playing through the next instance in the Ballads of Zimara Signature Questline, I logged straight out again and came here to write this post. Maybe that's what I pay my subscription for - content for the blog.

Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess. I mean, I have literally scores of games installed I could be playing for free. Sometimes I wonder why I still subscribe. Sometimes I wonder why anyone pays for anything. 

I guess it's just as well someone does or this whole house of cards would come tumbling down. 

And then we'd all be sorry. 

Wouldn't we?

We Want You For A New Recruit

When I saw last week that Digital Ink had revamped character creation and the tutorial for DCUO, I was torn. Half of me wanted to ask "Why now?" while the other half was yelling "About time!" 

DCUO has been around for well over a decade now. If I remember correctly, there's been more than one overhaul of each of these systems in the past. When you hear a company has spent time and resources on revamping the very beginning of a twelve-year old MMORPG, you have to wonder why they've bothered.

It has to be remembered that the considerations involved in changing the tutorial and the character creation suite in an ageing game are completely different. After a dozen years in service few, if any, MMORPGs are enjoying any kind of continued growth. Most of the people playing have been playing for a while and newcomers, if any, are most likely to be formers players coming back after a layoff.

Not many of those players are going to be interested in the tutorial, especially when the game allows them to skip it entirely as DCUO does, either going straight to the starting zone or, by way of a level boost, directly to endgame. I'm not sure why a company of DI's size, with limited resources that need careful management, would decide, out of the blue, to revisit the one part of the game you can almost guarantee most of your customers don't care a whit about. Then again, as it turns out, I do have an idea about that...

The finished article. Hmm. That's a name for another character...

Character creation, on the other hand, is a perennial and it's even more important in a super-hero game, where what how you design your character is considered crucial. DCUO is also reasonably alt-friendly, with a decent number of character slots, two major factions, multiple starting zones and mentors, and an extensive backdrop of customization options, including costumes and housing. It's more than likely that seasoned players will be revisiting character creation repeatedly throughout their time with the game.

As I say, super-hero games do rely more than most on having a lot of options at character creation. The demographic that's drawn to the sub-genre tends to enjoy spending hours designing both costumes and power sets, not to mention trying to re-create their favorite branded heroes and villains with as much verisimilitude as possible. 

DCUO's character creation has always felt cluttered and confusing to me. I've been through it many times and the expreience has rarely felt great. I often couldn't find what I'm looking for in the overcomplicated menu system and when I did, it frequently didn't look like I hoped it would or even like the description suggested it should.

Back when the game began, it used to be even worse, although I can only vaguely remember why. The original version was even more clunky, that much I do remember, but it was a long time ago and it's all a bit of a blur. The version we've had for a while wasn't as bad but the new one is a lot better again.

All the relevant information, tidily presented.

Gone are all those confusing, nested menus with their arcane subroutines and overdramatic aesthetics. Instead, there's a brief list of top-line categories at the head of the screen and a neat, simple menu of major options on the left. 

When clicked, those in turn reveal another very straightforward set of more detailed choices for each subcategory. No more of the old version's spinning wheels and swooping arcs and good riddance to them all. The revamp may not be as flashy or futuristic but it's a heck of a lot easier to navigate and easier on the eye, too.

Visually it's a clear win. Functionally, my impression is that it's a great improvement too but I'm a very occasional and casual player. The feedback thread on the forums from when the update was on the Test server (There's absolutely no indication on the regular forums that anyone else has even noticed the changes.) points out a number of drawbacks I didn't notice. Some are nitpicks but others seem quite significant, like many of the Style options not becoming available until you get into the game itself and there being no option to change the colors of your outfit, something that seems like a rather surprising omission. 

The testers also know far more than I do about the costume changes and additions, most of which I wouldn't have been able to pick out of a line-up. I did notice a generally improved level of detail, though, and some of the really awful clothing choices seemed to have been consigned to the recycling bins, thank god. I wouldn't say I was overwhelmed by the choices on offer but consider me decently whelmed, at least.

When you select a power, there's a visual demonstration. (Where appropriate.)

I went through the full customization but you can skip the fine tuning if you just want to get on with the game. The new character creation suite includes a number of templates based on iconic characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman or Lex Luthor. You can just pick one of those, maybe make a few, quick cosmetic changes and you're done.

There are also now some indications of "difficulty" although as some commenters in the thread point out, it's not really clear what makes one archetype, power set or weapon choice more or less difficult than another. Then again, I guess blasting enemies with fire, ice or electricity is always going to be pretty straightforward compared to fiddling around with gadgets or learning to perform a martial art to such perfection it counts as a super-power.

All things considered, I'd definitely call the Character Creation revamp a success. What's more, I can easily see the reason for it. The tutorial, which I played through immediately afterwards, I would also classify as a considerable improvement but the reason for doing it is less readily apparent.

It's not like there wasn't a viable tutorial already in place. DCUO has always had one although it has changed several times over the years. I've played through different versions but I don't have a clear memory of any specific iteration. They all merge into one. As far as I can remember, the gist of the thing has always been the same: Escape From Brainiac's Ship.

That looks hugely more impressive than what I remember of Brainiac's old ship.

You log in to the game for the first time in the ship as it hangs above Metropolis. You fight your way through waves of drones, bots and minions, encouraged by Oracle over a comms link, until you draw the attention of Brainiac himself.

 Superman is there to assist you although, somewhat unconvincingly, he expects you to do most of the work. Eventually, after a lot of fighting and a stream of typical tutorial instructions on how to do some very basic things, you either either defeat Brainiac/blow up the ship/escape or something of that kind. As I say, despite having done it a bunch of times, I forget the exact details and anyway I think they've changed more than once.

The new tutorial is basically that but faster, tighter, slicker and a lot more fun. I remember the earliest version being a slog and later ones still taking a while. This one zips along. The fights are easy, there are a lot of bots but they die fast, there are some nice set pieces and the final battle with Brainiac is quick and satisfying.

Of course, that's my impression as a casual. Almost everyone in the Test feedback thread disagrees. Some of the detailed criticisms are very valid, like there not being time to study the tooltips before the fighting starts or things being mentioned that are then not explained. The bulk of the complaints, however, seem overly concerned with the tutorial's ineffectiveness at preparing new players for DCUO's admitedly challenging endgame.

Good to be able to see out the windows at last. And to have windows.

This I find bizarre. Who expects a tutorial for brand new players to teach endgame tactics and gameplay? Why should it? This is the same tutorial that begins by telling players how to use WASD to move! Having bounced hard off even some of DCUOs simpler group content, I completely get the need for some kind of introduction to its quirks and complexities, but a New Player Tutorial is not the place for any of that. 

Call me old-fashioned (Actually, I'd rather you didn't. Seriously.) but isn't that what those first thirty levels are for? And, yes, I know the game positively encourages you to skip the levelling process with a Level Boost these days but that just suggests there should be a separate, high-end tutorial that comes with the Boost, not that you should scare the capes off the genuine newbies by throwing a a whole load of endgame detail at them on their first day.

What almost everyone does seem to agree on, and you can count me among the crowd, is that the new tutorial is a huge graphical improvement. Everything in it looks way better than it used to. The surfaces and textures all look sharper, the ship's rooms and corridors look more luxurious and most impressively of all, you can see outside!

Brainiac's ship has always been a looming presence in the game itself, hanging threateningly in the sky above Metropolis. Now you can look out of the portholes to see the great city laid out beneath you as you speed through the corridors, seeking your escape. It makes the whole thing feel more immersive and makes your predicament that much clearer.

Like the revamped character creation tools, the new tutorial isn't flawless but it's certainly an improvement. Unlike character creation, however, it's a lot less easy to see why it was deemed necessary. 

I'm no engineer but should it be sparking like that? And on fire?

As those testers say, it does nothing for anyone seeking to learn how to play the game beyond a basic, introductory level, so it's not going to be much use to current players looking to refine or improve their skills. It has to be meant solely for new or returning players and frankly I can't imagine many returnees bothering to go through it when there's a Skip Tutorial button right in front of them.

That really just leaves brand new players. Are we to imagine Digital Ink thinks there's a sufficient number of people who've never played the game before to justify this use of resources? I suppose we must. They've just done it, after all.

Thinking it through, there is one reason that makes sense: it has to be aimed at a hoped-for influx of new blood from the upcoming launch of the game on the newest generation of consoles, PlayStation 5 and XBox Series X. According to the Development Update issued in August, that's happening "this Holiday Season", by which I think they mean next month.

DCUO has famously done very well for DBG on consoles and those consoles have themselves been selling like crazy, at least when would-be players could get hold of them. It looks as though the developers have decided to do their damnedest to make a good first impression with all those juicy first-timers that might roll in when the game appears on the new tech.

I always take a selfie in front of Bibbo's billboard.

And that seems like a sensible use of resources. If a lot of people get shiny new consoles under the tree, perhaps at least some of them will give the old game a try. There's more competition on consoles for MMORPGs than there used to be but DCUO does at least have the advantage of a major IP that almost everyone likely to get a games console for Christmas is likely to recognize - and it's free!

I'm not getting a PS5 but I might play, too, at least for a while. Inevitably, in making what was supposed to be a throwaway character just to see what had changed, I've ended up with one for whom I already feel a mild affinity. I mean, just look at the name I came up with - The Foxecutioner! With a name like that, I pretty much have to play her, at least for a while.

I might even try to play her properly; figure out what all these "Rock, paper, scissors" references are all about; see if frying baddies with electricity is more fun than setting them on fire...

At the very least, I need to get her to Level 9 so she can have her base. Shouldn't be hard. She's Level 5 just from doing the tutorial.

And that's how they get you.