Producer's Letter - December 2024

Greetings fellow Heroes and Villains!   

I wanted to take a moment and introduce myself.  My name is Andre Emerson, Executive Producer of DC Universe Online, and I have been developing games for the past 30 years.  You've not heard from me until now, but only because I've been immersed in DCUO for the past several months, logging countless hours across multiple characters. I'm sure some of us have grouped together!  As gamers, it’s been critically important for me and our other new(er) team members to experience the depth and breadth of the game as players before developers. 

Before we jump into what’s to come for DCUO, I’d like to take a moment to recap on the year’s events and some of the newer additions that have made it into the game. Outside of the annual events you may be accustomed to, we’ve had a blast exploring and introducing new elements to the game, starting with Year of the Dragon, all-new art direction in Harley Quinn vs. Apokolips, the availability of DCUO on next-gen consoles, and Outsiders Ops. Let’s not forget some of the many quality of life improvements that have made a big impact on our daily gaming experience – starting with a new Message of the Day feature, revamped login message banner, and yep, after years of only being able to flip forward through vendor lists, we finally got that ‘back’ button in! 2024 has been a year of exploration and the gratitude we have for this community’s support goes off the charts. 

AND NOW FOR WHAT’S TO COME… 

There are plenty of exciting updates to look forward to because we've been hard at work planning many changes and improvements to DCUO. For example, we're overhauling the Renown System to be far more inclusive.  Beginning with our next big story arc, all players will earn ‘Renown’ when defeating bosses in new instanced content.  The difficulty setting will determine the rate at which you earn.  This will allow aspiring players to gain access to Elite Gear as well as engagement in the Affinity Mods System.  Further, we’re thrilled to announce that our battled-tested players who defeat new Elite Bosses will now earn exclusive R&D Recipes which will allow the crafting of Elite Weapons, Neck, Ring and Utility Belt items. Creating these items will also have new Feats attached. 

We're also excited to be launching a brand-new Event System to centralize your gameplay experience.  This will improve Event communication and accessibility. You’ll be able to select content, view progress and examine rewards.  This Event System will also serve as a launch pad for a major new addition called ‘Campaign 2025’! This new annual Campaign will offer players the chance to complete multiple events throughout the year to earn mega prizes that we know you’ll love.  Stay tuned for more details. 

But we’re just getting started!  Other features that we're exploring include Account-wide Cash sharing, Heroes and Villains coming together in Cross-Faction Leagues, Private queues removing restrictions on group sizes, improvements to the Knockout/Revive gameplay and much, much more.  Also worth noting that we see deeper gameplay potential in DCUO’s summonable entities (Allies, Pets, Sidekicks, Henchmen, etc.) and we’ll be looking into their utility, progression and overall UX. 

FUTURE STORY ARCS 

Every new adventure starts with a Chapter 1. The era of Episodes has come to an end, but that doesn’t mean we’re erasing their existence. You’ll continue to find both Episodes and future Chapter releases co-existing in-game as ‘Story Arcs’.  

You may be asking why future storyline expansions won’t be called Episodes anymore, and that’s because we have big plans to release multi-part narratives, highly focused on delivering compelling and compassionate storytelling. These types of stories aren’t meant to be episodic and so the idea of Chapters making up each new Story Arc conceptualized. We're putting our foot forward to bolster our roots as to why we're fans of comic books.

Without going too much into detail, DCUO’s next Story Arc will be the darkest yet in a 4-PART mystery adventure starting with Chapter 1 in late January. Take a look at a couple of these sneak peeks from the art team: 

To support the weight of this new level of storytelling, we’re also excited to introduce a brand-new section on our website called ‘Story Blogs’. Story Blogs will be an extension to the stories untold in DCUO, whether it be a deep dive in lore, side stories, prequels or teasers, it’ll have it all. Keep an eye out for the first one as we get closer to the holidays! 

We’d like to thank you all again for an incredible year!  While the team has lots of new faces, we’ve also experienced countless learnings.  2025 is going to be a thrill-ride for DCUO and we’re grateful that you’re along for the rush. 

Andre Emerson
Executive Producer