DC Universe Online servers being merged

Sony Online Entertainment has revealed that it will merge servers for its super-powered MMO, DC Universe Online. A single server will remain for PC users in the U.S. and one for PS3 players. Europe will also see a merge.

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Sony Online Entertainment has announced that it will merge its DC Universe Online servers later this month, slimming its count crop to just four servers in total.

DCUO players on servers located in the United States will be merged into two separate servers, one each for the PC and PS3 versions of the game. Users connecting to European servers will see an identical shift to the two-server setup. In the announcement, SOE called the servers "super servers," pointing to the possibility of new accounts or a delicious play on words based on the server's contents.

Multiplatform play between the PC and PS3 versions of the game is still not planned.

Though DC Universe Online was quoted by John Smedley as being Sony Online Entertainment's "fastest selling game ever," the game has seen low server populations, which necessitated the merger.

"This will allow for more opportunities to queue and participate in other group-related game mechanics. We are hoping to get this on our PC Test Server to start testing, again, sometime in the next month and then will tune it up for the PS3 platform as well," SOE explained in an announcement spotted by MMORPG.com.

DC Universe Online launched for the PC and PS3 in January. More details on the merger are expected in the coming weeks on the game's official site; however, due to the PSN outages and SOE's own complications, the site is down.

SOE has also announced that, due to attacks, it has lost 12,700 non-US credit card numbers and have had approximately 24.6 million accounts compromised.

Sony has promised to "make good" with players of the game's PS3 version due to the PSN outage. Presumably, today's news of the entire SOE service being shut down means PC players will get similar reimbursement.

Xav de Matos was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    May 2, 2011 5:30 PM

    Xav de Matos posted a new article, DC Universe Online servers being merged.

    Sony Online Entertainment has revealed that it will merge servers for its super-powered MMO, DC Universe Online. A single server will remain for PC users in the U.S. and one for PS3 players. Europe will also see a merge.

    • reply
      May 2, 2011 5:32 PM

      Wow. Wow. 2 US servers. Cheeeeze-o-pizza

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      May 2, 2011 5:34 PM

      Well that didn't take long....

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      May 2, 2011 5:34 PM

      Looks like I'll have to retire my superavatar soon. The lag is so horrible, especially in large PvP events.

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      May 2, 2011 6:07 PM

      Isn't merging the beginning of the end for MMOs? They should have tried a different pricing structure. $15 a month doesn't seem like it would grab the console crowd. They should give a bit for free, then make expansion packs for pay and premium content. That would have more potential than trying to ape the WoW model.

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      May 2, 2011 6:09 PM

      Holy Crisis On Less Than Infinite Servers BatMatos!

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      May 2, 2011 6:26 PM

      For the 9 millionth time, it is shown that if you release an MMO before it's actually ready it will do poorly.

      I mean seriously, how many damn times does this have to happen? How stupid are publishers?

      "Our game isn't ready."
      "It's been 4 years and 10 million dollars! We need to release it!"
      "It isn't ready. Releasing it now will cause it to fail and you will have wasted 4 years and 10 million dollars. Wait another 6 months and it will be a hit."
      "Nope. Release it now."

      Stop doing this. Finish the damn games.

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        May 2, 2011 6:41 PM

        I've been playing the game lately and actually enjoy it, and I played WoW for over 6 years (played since closed beta up until recently, did a good amount of end game/raid content and PVP, more pvp tho). Tho it does have some bugs and I didn't play at release, I'm just I've enjoyed the game so far.

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          May 2, 2011 6:44 PM

          err I'm just saying I've enjoyed the game so far.

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        May 3, 2011 3:32 AM

        Who says it wasn't ready? DCUO had a great launch. The game was fun for three months. Only problem now is lack of content. I'll pick it up again when there's an expansion pack.

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          May 3, 2011 8:45 AM

          When you reply and say that a subscription based MMO was ready for launch and is great but you stopped playing it because there wasn't enough content that makes me think you don't really understand the parameters for success for subscription based games.

          The whole point of a subscription based MMO is to maintain subscriptions, that means not running out of content, especially not in less than the first two months. That means adding servers, not consolidating from ~20 to 1 in less than half a year. You're sitting here telling me you liked the game but aren't playing it. It's a pretty huge failure when people who like your game stop playing it.

          As for it having a great launch, I played all the way to the cap and halfway on a second character.

          It had some fun points and quests and the single player dungeons were brilliantly done and a great addition to the genre that I hope future games pick up on. By no means do I think this game was horrible, but it wasn't done and it wasn't ready for launch.

          The chat was so awkward and cumbersome that you couldn't even have a text conversation. I did god-only-knows how many scenarios without even speaking to anyone else (or with only a very few brief lines) because it was such a hassle to use their chat. Pretty huge flaw in an MMO.

          The voice chat was so buggy, laggy, broken and low quality at launch that it may as well have not even been included.

          The combat was fun in PvE but badly balanced with some characters being able to solo entire 4 man encounters and others barely able to defeat the single player missions.

          In PvP it was completely broken, animation clipping to make unbreakable chains made it unplayable, whoever got the first hit won. Just for shits and giggles I used my G15 keyboard to make two unbreakable animation clipping macros and went undefeated for an hour until I felt guilty and stopped.

          These aren't the days of Everquest and WoW where you can release a half finished game and patch it up and expect it to be successful on the scale this game was budgeted for. You have established competitors with stable products, even if your premise is good you have to be able to keep your players. This is the, what 5th? Multi-million dollar MMO release that had an amazing launch, tons of servers, and hundreds of thousands of people willing to pay for it and then lost them all. Time to change the way publishers launch these games and if you don't agree, well enjoy playing with 1 servers worth of people still playing DCUO. If you ever resubscribe.

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            May 3, 2011 10:01 AM

            You pretty much nailed everything on the head Serrin.

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            May 3, 2011 10:32 AM

            That's different from not being ready at launch. What you're talking about are fundamental problems with the game. "Not being ready at launch" means the servers were unstable or quests were broken, and the game generally being unpolished. Not having enough content is a totally different issue. You may have an issue with the amount of content, or what was actually there. That's fine. That just means you didn't like the game they released. That doesn't mean it was a rough launch by any means.

            I am not an MMO player. For me, playing a game for as long as I played DCUO means it was successful.

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      May 2, 2011 6:31 PM

      City of Heroes still has 11 U.S. and two Euro! SUCK IT DC BITCHES!

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        May 3, 2011 10:03 AM

        Wow that's surprising. Still the best superhero MMO in my opinion, and the oldest!

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          May 3, 2011 10:07 AM

          I bought City of Villians after it came out. I was pumped because the idea of the game seemed so cool. I think I lasted a week before I was bored out of my mind and stopped. I'm not sure if I was missing something or what but it was really, really, really boring.

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            May 3, 2011 10:36 AM

            Nah, it's pretty repetitive and the entire world seems unimportant.

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              May 3, 2011 10:38 AM

              Most MMOs have trouble developing a compelling story. ToR looks like it is giving the best shot at this.

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            May 3, 2011 11:08 AM

            One of the significant problems for people who want to get into the storyline is that unless you're solo or a team lead, you miss out on 90% of the contact talk. Quest-givers, in-mission, talk-tos... you can get an overview by clicking your way into the mission details, but by that time the mish is lit up and most people are on their way in. And task forces are horribad about this, too.

            The last couple years they've added cut-scenes, but they're kind of retarded as there's no voice-over (just chat bubbles) and they have *the worst* animations ever. To top it off, they always seem to put them in the most popular task forces, so they get old *really* fast.

            The two new incarnate trials have these and they're supremely annoying.

            But there is a HUGE amount of backstory for the game. And a lot of it is really cool. My buddy likes reading it. We'll do a L40+ mission or something and he'll laugh and ask, "you remember those mishes we did back in Faultline when we were L12? We gotta rescue that chick instead of her dad now."

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        May 3, 2011 12:04 PM

        Anyone play Champions Online?

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          May 3, 2011 2:10 PM

          I was in the beta. It was pretty, but it ran like crap on my old machine and I didn't care much for the gameplay

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        May 3, 2011 1:59 PM

        Actually it's 11 US and 4 European. And they are making it so that all 15 servers will be open to all users no matter what region they live in.

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          May 3, 2011 2:15 PM

          Yeah. I actually kind of think that's a precursor to server merges, but who knows. It'll be fun to try out the euro ones.

          On the European servers, do they still fly the American flag on top of City Hall in Atlas Park?

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            May 3, 2011 2:47 PM

            I don't know personally, but I believe it should seeing as the City of Heroes' location is firmly set in the state of Rhode Island, which is a part of the United States.

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      May 2, 2011 6:43 PM

      I've enjoyed the time I put into DCUO. I'll probably keep playing here & there.

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      May 2, 2011 7:34 PM

      Down to 1 server already? I wonder what the player count is.

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      May 2, 2011 9:27 PM

      City of Heroes is for the win! Expect for the Marvel Universe MMO! =p

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      May 3, 2011 4:56 AM

      Love this game. I've enjoyed it so much so that I bought it for both platforms. Made the move to PS3 version for a few reasons. It has the best combat of any MMO, ever. SOE had finally gotten most of their shit straight, bugs, sploits, and balance issues had finally started disappearing. Now this. PS3 Populations were pretty decent. It'll be interesting to see if that remains the case once everything is up and running.

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        May 3, 2011 5:33 AM

        The combat seemed like button mashing to me.

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          May 3, 2011 5:46 AM

          Sure you can button mash in PVE. You can even complete raids without learning the nuances to the combat. But until you learn the weapon sets, counter system, and rock/paper/scissor aspects, you'll be unable to really enjoy the best aspect of the game, PVP.

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          May 3, 2011 10:02 AM

          You're supposed to block and do combos. haha

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      May 3, 2011 5:30 AM

      too bad they can't keep your secret identity safe!

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