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DC Universe Online screenshot

VideoGamer.com: In traditional MMOs you have guilds, groups, instances and boss fights. How does that translate to DC Universe Online?

CC: Basically, anything that is long-term is MMO in our game. So you have loot. That loot changes your appearance and adds power to your character. You have levels. High level people are more powerful than lower level people. You have long-term stories, things where instances carry you along. The difference is that player skill matters a lot. A good example is super speed. With super speed in our game you can run on any surface, and I mean that literally. I have this little fat dude that I like to run around with, sort of a Penguin-esque body type. I run on walls, I run on ceilings, I run on the underside of bridges, wherever I want. But it took a bit of skill to gain mastery so I could use that correctly. However we give you all of that at once. We say, just like a super hero, you can super speed. It's up to you to go "OK, I'm more comfortable with it. Now I've gained some ability to use it." That's the really big difference. We don't give you five per cent faster like an MMO would. We give you all that power up front and then it's up to you to master it with your skills.

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VideoGamer.com: Can you tell me about grouping. What kind of group size are you going to have?

CC: We have both what we call soft grouping and hard grouping. Hard grouping is traditional MMO. I send an invite. It'd be kind of weird if you came across an armoured car robbery and the guy was like, "Don't touch my armoured car, don't help me, don't stop". Heroes help each other out. "Hey, throw me a group invite so I can beat up this thug." It feels kind of weird right. So because of that, anybody can help anybody else out on the same side. Heroes can always help out heroes, villains can always help out villains, and if you like that person you can then invite them and group. Right now we're testing out groups of four, and we're testing out raids of about 16. Those numbers are fluid because we're still early in development. So we just want to play with those and see what they play like. The reason for those numbers is our characters take up a lot more space than is typical (for an MMO). When you're throwing cars around, you're not standing there trying to avoid an AOE (area of effect). It's a huge scale, so that means you can't have as many people doing something in one place.

VideoGamer.com: What can you tell me about the game world itself and how much space players are going to have to explore?

CC: Our story starts on Earth, because Earth is sort of a nexus of events within the DC Universe and it's very important. That's where the story of why all these heroes and villains have shown up, and that's what players will be embroiled in. Any place you'd expect to be public in the universe is public. Metropolis, huge, several square kilometres, thousands of blocks. Gotham, the same thing, other areas around the world. Then we have more select area, like maybe North Africa - we spin that up every once in a while. It's not necessarily a place you'd want to hang out because it's the desert, but maybe a satellite crashes there from time to time or some dissident army spins up. Then of course you have places like the Watchtower or the Hall of Doom which are public to each of us. So if you think about, if I was actually there, what would be public? That is what's public. Then instance adventure areas and all that in addition to that world.

VideoGamer.com: When lots of people think of MMOs they see a game that will consume all their time. The Agency (another SOE game) is trying to give you things that happen while you're not playing so you still feel like you're taking part in the game. What's your angle?

CC: We have a whole separate section of the game that we haven't announced yet that ties into that sort of playing the game without being there all the time, but what we're really focussing on now is exciting Super Hero action and getting rid of grind by making it fun. The grind comes when you do the same thing, in the same place over and over again. What we're saying is, physics plus action plus dynamic stories means that is' going to keep changing. So it's going to be fun. If you want to play it all week, great, but you don't have to.

VideoGamer.com: Are you really going to be able to group up with fellow villains and kill Superman?

CC: We actually didn't put death in there because death in the comics is very serious. Death of Superman, the Killing Joke. These are times at which significant storylines alter, so instead we have knock-out. When you knock someone out the story can keep going. If I kill you, OK that's over. If I knock you out I can hold you hostage, I can throw you in the river or I can use you for bowling - whatever I want to do. So knocking out is what we principally use and it just opens up a lot more possibilities.

VideoGamer.com: Thanks very much for your time.

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