DCU Online (And I feel guilty about milk)

The two thoughts circling around my head right now are "damn cows!" and "Poor DCUO".

I've had the game for the grand total of two days and whilst I like the fresh look, freedom of movement, and generally all the little touches (Being mentored by the likes of Superman, Batman, The Joker and Lex Luthor is something you just don't get in World of Warcraft or RIFT), there are two major issues that make me turn the game off about half an hour after logging on.

Issue number one!

The controls are horribly console-friendly. Now, I'm a PC gamer with ownership of a PS3 and a 360, and I love those consoles, but the MMO is not something intended for a PS3 interface. Playing on a PC with controls designed for a console controller is frustrating, and thus DCU feels more like a button mashing action game than anything else. It also means that tiny little things like movement and aiming are just a little bit more imprecise. Movement feels delayed and clunky.

Issue number two! (And it's a doozy)
There is nothing more awkward than logging onto an MMO, looking at the server list in that gentle, virginal moment where you're picking a place to host your first tender foray into a new world, and every server listed is marked as "low".

There are limitless analogies to describe that feeling. It's like being inches away from losing your virginity, and the significant other decides to go do something else (Probably WoW). Sony Online Entertainment must feel like the richest, hottest kids in town who have thrown a giant party with lots of beer, marijuana and strippers while their incredibly rich parents are away in France trying to cover up the tragic farce their marriage has become - only to find out that everyone else would rather be at home drinking tea, eating crisps, and, you guessed it, playing World of Warcraft.

In my humble opinion, the launch was most unfortunate. I didn't join the game at launch as I did with Rift, but the launcher experienced a load of Flash and Java related issues that stopped people from playing the game entirely, not to mention an incorrect configuration file which tried to access the wrong links for news in the launcher wrapper. Even as I played the other day, months after release, I still had to go and copy - paste the right links in the config file to play. It sounds like a minor complaint, but several months after release, this really should have been patched out for good. Not long after DCUO's launch, Rift hit, which had already garnered itself quite a player base through an intense beta testing programme and those gorgeous HD visuals. Rift is technically the superior game, both to WoW and DCUO, however, it does not have the establishment of either. WoW has been going forever, and has hundreds upon hundreds of hours of content for those with the time to take that life consuming walk through Azeroth.

Not only that, but content updates are frequent and decent thanks to Blizzard's pile of cash that they all make their homes in. DCUO has characters and locales established through decades of comic books, movies, and videogames, which is the only reason it has players, in my opinion. You do not play DC Online unless you like DC characters, whereas you get all kinds of gamers playing WoW without a second thought for the lore or main storylines just for the sweet joy of ganking some Night Elf or doing the most DPS on a stupid recount scale. Rift has the worst lore of all, it's messy and the characters look kind of lame, but it offers a comprehensive MMO experience which is extremely rewarding with patience. It's reminiscent of WoW in the early days when you couldn't get to level 80 playing casually in a week.

With all that said, I feel guilty about milk... that is all.