A sense of scale #DCUO

Playing DCUO, our first and only foray into super hero MMORPG gaming, I’m struck by the sense of scale to the zones. Each character gets to choose a fast-movement ability (we both went with flying), and these allow your character to zoom around zones from the very start.

Since fast movement is freely available and is baked into the character creation system, it makes sense that zones have a grander scale than the fantasy MMO standard. It’s not just the size of the area though, the buildings have a real grandeur to them – downtown Metropolis and Gotham are tall.

This makes for a real contrast when inside the ‘end of mission chain’ instanced building interiors. They’re still relatively spacious as movement abilities work inside too, but compared to the openness of the cityscapes they still feel pretty closed-off.

There are even faster travel options – the ‘warp’ menu takes you to the Watchtower central hub with a couple of clicks. It’s possible from there to beam to any police station (i.e. mission hub) in either city, but I generally prefer to fly around if already in the right city. I’ve not played enough of the game yet to become blasé about flying through these grand cities.