The game is fun, but I can't recommend it to everyone for no other reason that the MTX setup is extremely predatory. Stuff is WAY overpriced. Even if you pay $15 a month ($180 a year) or $120 for a yearly membership, it's still not going to be worth it. The game is almost as grindy as a KRPG.
It's got a good enough concept and system to be fun, but I think it tried to capitalize on the superhero hype that Marvel was creating at the time. The thing is, the DCU is garbage when it comes to almost every live action movie they've made. The DC Animated movies are pretty solid, but the DCU? Hard pass.
The game went F2P in less than a year. I remember that turned me off because my friends and I bought copies, paid for the sub, and really got nothing in return. SWTOR came out shortly before DCUO went F2P. Chances are that DB was expecting their to be a dip in numbers when it came out, but the dip was probably bigger than expected. They went F2P out of fear nobody would come back. Well, I'm sure my friends and I weren't the only ones who didn't.
I did try to come back 5 years ago, but I probably uninstalled when I saw how ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the pricing was. The inventory space is small. Bank space is small. You only get 2 character slots as a F2P account. If you spend $5 to get 500 Daybreak Cash (they still missed out on calling it Daybreak Bucks), and then spend all 500 Daybreak Cash on DCUO, you will get upgraded to a premium account. Slightly more bag space. Slightly more bank space, 6 characters instead of 2, you can put up to 5 items on the Broker (auction house for the WoW players, Market Board for the FFXIV players), and you can trade items. Not in game currency, though. that's too much.
Keep in mind, that's all you get. Seems like a deal right? I could easily argue that the game is worth 5 bucks. Then you start to look at what little 500 Daybreak Cash gets you, and that's when you realize how terrible the monetization is. Let's say you wanted an extra character slot. Who doesn't love extra character slots? An extra character slot will run you exactly 500 Daybreak Cash. You might think, "well, that's great. I'll just buy an extra character slot. That way I'll be able to have 7 characters total. I love alts!" Well slow down there, Skippy. There are only 6 powers for you to choose at this point. "Wait, how many powers are in the game? It's 15 years old!" 15. There are 15 powers. You don't even get access to half of the available powers. "How much are the additional powers? They can't be that expensive..... right?" Each power, bought separately, is 600 daybreak cash. That is $54 dollars to unlock just the powers if you bought them separately, but GOOD NEWS! They sell a powers bundle for $34.99! That saves you $19.01! Helluva savings, but even if you spent your DB Cash on an extra character slot, you're still short 8 slots if you wanted a character for each power. You'd still need to spend an additional $40 on DB Cash in order to be able to create 1 character per power. You're now sitting at $79.99 just to create one character of each power.
It
gets
worse.
Now that you have 16 characters, it's time to level and gear them. Easy peasy, right? Wrong. You have your basic rpg gear, 5 trinket slots, 5 Artifact slots, 2 Adaptive Augment slots, 4 Origin Augment Slots, and 4 Power Array Augment slots. "Well, that sounds like a lot of stuff I get to farm and enjoy!" You can't farm that much, and it's a LOT of grinding to get your artifacts up. They don't really start to matter until at least level 80. Before that, they're just stat sticks. They're a slow grind, an you have 5 of them to level. That's a total of 75 artifacts you need to level if you're going to have one character for each power. "I don't want to have to grind out that much every time. Is there an easier way? I'll pay!" Good news! You can buy a token to turn an artifact into a special fortified artifact where all your other characters can get a lvl 200 version of it without needing to grind! 'Holy poop knife, Batman! That sounds amazing! How much does it cost?" $100 real money, or 1,000 Daybreak Cash for one "wolfpack token." Even then, you have to have a lvl 200 artifact already before you can buy it, and then you have to still lvl each artifact to lvl 200 in order to make it an account wide artifact (you get the ability to redeem said artifact on other characters. You don't need to pass the thing around when you want to use it, thankfully). Even on sale, which it is right now as of writing this, it's still $50 real money to buy it.
It gets worse, but this review is already longer than it needs to be, and I still haven't hit on other reasons why you shouldn't play it.
With all that said, I'm still going to play it. I'm having enough fun with it to justify playing it right now. I bought the power pack because I make poor financial choices. I don't think I'm ever going to get the membership, though. I can't justify the price for what little it gives.
