DCUO: A Tight Squeeze

Four heroes came together to rid Metropolis and Gotham City of the worst of the worst, taking on the jobs that the more noteworthy heroes of the DC Universe could not, or would not, deal with. Because, and I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but wasn’t Batman kinda dealing with Scarecrow? And now he’s decided to let the “B” team have a shot to cover his evident failure?
Well, he didn’t get the “B” team. He got Team Spode.
Starting from the RIGHT, the demonic Stingite, and my character, Teal Lantern, in the unfortunate top. And from the LEFT, Lord Spode, the leader of our intrepid band.
And then… Kaptain KY. Yes, he’s a slippery guy. He’ll get you out of a tight situation — or into one. *Cough*.
I’d like to be able to say we weren’t all making Kaptain KY jokes all night, but that wouldn’t really be true….
ANYWAY. So if you’re going to make a super group in DC Universe Online, aside from all choosing the same side, hero or villain, it’s important that you all start with the same starting city. Now, that was something none of us really knew, and as it happened, two of us started in Metropolis and two in Gotham City. AND it turns out that you can’t share Gotham quests with someone from Metropolis and vice versa. We had to decide whose quests to do first, and we decided to start with the Gotham quest line first.
We figured out we could meet in the Watchtower, an orbital facility for the care and storage of people with weird costumes and weirder names. We figured out how to find each other, and then all crowded into a teleport tube for the trip to Gotham City.
We could never have all fit, if it hadn’t been for the help of Kaptain KY.
ANYWAY. Gotta thank Calrain for turning this blog NSFW.
The missions were an escalating fight against the forces of the Scarecrow and his hallucinogenic gas that even had we heroes sometimes attacking crims (that’s hero-speak for criminals, just FYI (that’s hero-speak for “For Your Information”. There’s a lot of information you have to bone up on when you don a cape. Helpful kiosks have all the lingo info you need in your local cop shop (that’s hero-speak for a police station))).
Scarecrow had some foggers spewing noxious gas into the Gotham City streets, and where was the bat man? The Bat Signal lit up the cloudy skies (and gave us all cheevs (hero-speak, natch)), but where was the Bat Man? Nowhere to be found, maybe laying a rose at the foot of the Wayne Memorial in Crime Alley and…
Okay, Batman is some sort of millionaire, right? Billionaire? And he can’t raze the slum around the site of his parents’ murder and build a proper memorial? Anyway, the Scarecrow and his minions were running free, Batwoman was doing what she could but she’d been captured and so it was left to us, Team Spode.
We met at the narrow manhole that opened into the Gotham City sewer system, now the lair of the Scarecrow. Who would go first? “We shall all enter together,” commanded Kaptain KY, and it was done.
After dealing with some gassy barrels, Team Spode went in to defeat Scarecrow and save Batwoman. STINGITE went in to defeat Scarecrow and save Batwoman. Which he did, so yay Sting.
The rest of us were sidelined by a steel grate that slammed down and prevented us from following. So what was all that about? We used what ranged attacks we could, but basically Stingite ran the whole script on his own. That was kind of a downer to the night.
So, first night review. A little confusing, we’re still figuring out the controls and stuff, and when we grow into our roles when we get the ability to take on our group roles.
Not happy that we couldn’t all work together as a group on the same quests — next week, we’ll run the quest line in Metropolis. Not happy that we were inexplicably shut out of the Scarecrow fight. Modern MMOs change the color of the name of people in your party but not here. We started a league (guild), but the league management tools seem a little sparse. I logged in this morning but couldn’t figure out how to even get a list of people in the league.
On the better side, we had a bit of fun, and it’s always a good time flying around and beating up the bad guys. The boss fight vs the Scarecrow seemed like fun from what we saw of it.
It was an okay start. I think DCUO has a lot of potential, and I am hoping at some point our quest lines will converge and we’ll all be able to work on the same quests together as a group, because I gotta say that it’s really important we can all work together on the same tasks, regardless of to which city we were assigned, or which mentor we chose.
I guess half of us could restart and make sure we were all in one city, but we’re not going to do that. This is on DCUO to fix. We’re in this game through the free content; whether or not we go to the DLC depends entirely on how the group content shapes up. I know there’s special 4 person things we could do and will do. If that’s good and fun once we’re eligible for it, fantastic.