John Smedley,President of Sony Online Entertainment has been active on Twitter again, this time giving updates on how DC Universe Online has been doing since the transition to a free to play business model.
http://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley/status/138695209302237184
http://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley/status/138695372108333057
http://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley/status/138695511971598336
http://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley/status/138695659657244672
http://twitter.com/#!/j_smedley/status/138695809255481344
QFT – You never know when a tweet will face a delete:
Really happy with how DCUO is doing. Here are some interesting facts
DCUO’s playerbase is growing at 6% a day.. great to see all the new players!
700% increase in daily revenue (47% PC / 53% PS3)
More than 85% of daily log-ins are returning players.
Additional character slots and the Vanguard of the Heavens character skins are the two most popular marketplace items
The change in business model appeared to have lured blogger Green Armadillo of Player Versus Developer into the game, and he has been posting about it quite a bit.
Have you joined the rush into (or back into) DCUO since the business model change?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
I tried it out for the first time… and didn’t care much for it. It’s not a bad game, it’s just not one that I had much fun with. I spent too much time annoyed at the controls and pacing. I think it would have been better with a controller instead of a keyboard… but I don’t have one and I don’t want to spend the time retraining my muscle memory. That’s largely a failure on my part, though.
I think it’s a solid game, I’m just tired of the MMO formula and the quirks of the controls didn’t help.
It sure is pretty, though.
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Played it a lot in beta and for a while after it went Live. Would have played it for longer had it not clashed with Rift. Of course, since I have Station Access I didn’t need it to go F2P in order to go on playing it.
I keep meaning to play but I keep meaning to play a lot of MMOs and I don’t. I’m actually in the process of trying to work out why that is. I sit down most days intending to do all sorts of things and then I just end up logging into EQ2 again. And once the Age of Discord expansion appears that’s only going to be more so.
But I will keep dipping into DCUO. I think I might roll a new character and start over on the PvE side, in Gotham this time. I’ve barely touched that content.
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I, and my 11 and 9 year old kids, have been playing and we’re all enjoying it at some level. As a caveat, my kids and I have all played WoW, Champions and City of Heroes so that’s our basis for comparison.
Speaking for myself, I’m actually enjoying both the city design as I really do feel like they’ve done a phenomenal job bringing Metropolis and Gotham City to life. I’m also enjoying the stories which are fun, both from the hero and villain side and accurately capture the personalities of the DC characters.
That said, I miss the customization options available on Champions and CoH both in terms of power sets but more importantly the character appearance. This has yet to bother the kids. My 9 year old son tends to go with the inspired by option which he’s perfectly happy with and my daughter is currently playing a shapeshifter so she doesn’t seem to spend much time as “human.”
That said, as Tesh noted, the controls are a constant source of frustration and I’m constantly getting turned around and annoyed. It’s abundantly clear that the game was designed for the console and not the PC, though I can’t say for sure whether the controls would be better on the Ps3.
Still, for now I’m enjoying the exploration and will probably “buy” something at some point.
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I tried out DCUO over the weekend. I had issues with the control scheme, it took me a few hours to retrain my muscles: this is a console port. Be prepared to quickly hit shift to block/roll. Mash your mouse buttons for combos: click-click-click or click-hold-hold or etc. I can live with that, it’s a nice change from WOW.
And it is really pretty, and the voice acting is very good. For example, once you reach Metropolis or Gotham, find the Booster Gold exploration kiosks and do his exploration quests. He does a good job of voicing the self-promoting style of certain celebrities. (“If I, Booster Gold, ever get hit by a lucky shot from a fleeing villain, I assure you that Metropolis Hospital is where I will go for help.”)
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Best combat in an MMO I’ve seen, bar none. There are issues, but it’s just plain fun! And even with the griefers, PvP is a blast.
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One thing to remember. Growth doesn’t mean that the game is crushing it, it just means it’s doing so much better than it was. Which was dreadful.
I’m happy for the people who worked on it, but I can’t help but see the weasel in Smed’s words.
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I downloaded it and played through the tutorial. It’s a nice change from the standard MMO combat fare, but I did find it somewhat annoying that the cossie I spent about an hour playing around with in the character creator was almost completely replaced in about 15 minutes.
On the biright side, it did inspire me to finally install Arkham Asylum (yes, the first one), which has been sitting neglected in my Steam library for about a year. Sadly for DCUO, it turns out that AA is just so much more engaging – I haven’t touched it since.
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@ Varakkys
You can keep your character’s look even with the new gear attached – for the stats.
Go into the ‘Style’ menu and select None for all your gear slots so your original gear only shows and then click LOCK ALL on top. This allows your look to be locked even when you wear new gear as you progress the game.
in my opinion, this is the best feature in the game. All MMOs need this.
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