From today, both PlayStation 3 and PC players will be able to download and play the game for free. Three tiered levels will act as the game's revenue source from there along with in-game microtransactions. Here's the official breakdown from SOE.

Free
New players will now have access to the current gameplay in DC Universe Online (including Gotham City, Metropolis, and all current raids and alerts), with the ability to create two characters, join a league and many other benefits. Free level players will be able to purchase downloadable game packs/updates, additional character slots, powers and more through microtransactions.

Premium
Any player who has spent at least $5 (including former paid subscribers and new players who have purchased $5 of in-game items) will qualify for the Premium access level. Premium level players will have more benefits available to them than the Free level player, including additional character slots, additional inventory slots, and higher cash limits. Downloadable adventure packs, additional character slots, and more can be purchased in-game.

Legendary
Maximum features and benefits are included at this level. Loaded with enhanced additional features, Legendary access will be available for a $14.99 monthly fee and includes all DLC packs at no cost, more than 15 character slots, more than 80 inventory slots, the ability to form unrestricted-sized leagues, and many other benefits.

So what do you think?  is this a good thing? will you be playing?  tell us in the comments below

Holy Shit…

Do Want!!!

According to the interview by "The escapist" (which has, btw., been removed from their page but mirrored by mmo-champion, probably because the information has been released too early), the Random Raid Finder will introduce a new difficulty-level of raids and also a different loot.

The next big thing that we'll be doing is the random raid finder. The idea behind this is that it is very similar to the dungeon finder we have now except that it is for raids. There are special rules associated with how that is going to work, the first one is that the raid finder is going to be for 25 person only, it's not a way for you to have 10 person raids, it's only for 25 person. It is cross server we will do some auto match making very similar to how it is looking for dungeon. Another piece is that there is going to be another difficulty level and this raid difficulty – the random raid finder difficulty level – we haven't figured out exactly what it's going to be called but there will be a difficulty level easier than normal mode. You'll end up having this raid finder mode then you'll have your normal mode and your heroic mode. The normal and heroic modes are exactly what they are today.

Random hc => Normal raid => Hero raid

Now we got another step in between:

Random hc (to get gear + VP) => Random raid => Normal raid => (probably never ^^) hero raid

The good thing about RRF is, that there are lots of players who are in social-only guilds for the sake of their friends, but they're not raiding because ppl have only a few hours of gametime each week and those aren't at steady times (most guilds have steady dates + times for their raids. organisation ftw!). Additionally, if you want to find a good STEADY raid group, you most probably would have to leave your guild (thx to the guild perks). So with RRF, you can stay in your social guild AND find Random-raids way easier than to spam trade channel for hours.

Additionally, there will be lots of ppl who are curious about how RRF works, so i guess we're gonna see a lot of demand for gems, enchants and belt buckles within the first few weeks. And even if epic gems will be released, they will (probably) be too expensive for most players, so they will use the current gems for their gear.

Anyway – i'm happy to read this about the RRF, and perhaps i'm gonna give it a try with one or two of my twinks too.

New infographic illustrates how many Android smartphones are released and left running outdated software.

Between Donut, Eclair, Froyo and Gingerbread, Google's Android mobile operating system has received a number of substantial upgrades over the years. Unfortunately, not all devices have been made to support these updates, leaving many users with one or several generations old software. Worse yet, many new devices aren't being released with the latest version of Android.

 

Naturally, many users are unhappy with the results, and Michael DeGusta has created and posted an infographic highlighting how much of an impact Android fragmentation has had over the years.

 

As you can see, the results are not pretty.

 

Credit: TheUnderstatement.com

The infographic was paired with extensive research conducted by DeGusta, which reveal some startling facts. Of the eighteen recent Android devices discussed, seven have never ran a current version of the OS, ten of the eighteen were at least two years behind the most recent OS within two years of being introduced, and sixteen of the eighteen are unlikely to ever be updated to use Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich, which releases next month. By comparison, Apple's iPhone series has remained consistently up-to-date with new software releases, up to three years after they were originally introduced.

 

On the bright side, it seems that flagship Google devices like the Nexus One fared quite nicely, so Nexus S and future Galaxy Nexus owners shouldn't feel the woes that others experience, but that's just one line of devices out of many.

 

For everyone else, Android fragmentation is a persistent problem.

 

To see more of DeGusta's findings, head over to TheUnderstatement.com.