Following the recent DC Universe Online press event, Andersen shares his thoughts on the game's delay, the planned update schedule, the status of secret identities and more!

ZAM: You're in closed beta right now and getting a lot of feedback. What type of reaction are you seeing from players? Are they coming up with anything that surprised you?

Andersen: We're getting tremendous feedback, actually. When I say tremendous, I mean very positive impressions from people and they're really having fun with the game. We're also getting really valuable feedback in areas where we have problems. Have there been any surprises? Maybe a few, but we have a very seasoned and eclectic team. We have a lot of experts and experienced people from action console games and we have a lot of veterans from MMO games that have been working at SOE for awhile. There are a lot of competent people steering the ship. Of course, players are going to find thing on the micro level that are broken or bugged, which is expected.

We've only had one or two major “gotchas,” but they weren't earth-shattering. They involved us just setting up the data differently. We had a concept and it didn't work, so we shifted it back to something more traditional. We've made adjustments like that. For the most part, we haven't had that many huge surprises. It hasn't happened because we did our due diligence early by releasing this out the public in a limited way. Also, we've been live in the company for a long time and constantly have focus groups coming in from the local area. That prevented us from getting into trouble by painting us into a corner. We're already aware of some of the issues we're getting back from testers. They're issues because they're not in the game yet, and once they're in place the issues will be solved.

ZAM: Speaking of things that aren't in DC Universe Online yet, will there be an auction house in the game at launch? Also, are there any other things you want in at launch that haven't been implemented yet?

Andersen: Going on the second part of your question, I could give you a huge list of things I want in at launch that won't make it. But the good thing is this is a live service and launch isn't the end, it's the beginning. I just want the launch title to be as solid and cohesive as possible.

We will have a broker in the game. It will definitely be in the game. We have an economy planned. We want people to be able to sell their items.

ZAM: So the economy will be mainly item-based. There's no crafting planned, correct?

Andersen: We don't have any crafting in there right now and I'm really not going to comment on where we're going with that in the future. Our fundamental decision was that superheroes don't sew. We really wanted to make sure the combat and content was as solid as it could be. Crafting is important to some people. I don't know if it's important to the action gamer, and we slant toward action. It didn't initially have a place on the long list of things we wanted to do with the game. Crafting was more on the list of “you must have it because it's an MMO feature.” We didn't want that to govern our decisions. There's a list of things on the action and superhero fronts I would want to put in the game before I put a crafting system in it. I get that you can be a reporter and photographer in DC Comics. It's very Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen. I understand it. We had initially talked about secret identities, which was going to be our hook into that, but we've needed to put it on hold for now in lieu of other things we're trying to do with the game. We want to get back to that because we do have ideas for it. I'm not saying we won't do a traditional crafting system, but I guarantee you, knowing this team and the creativity that's on it, that we're going to look at what would be perfect for DC Universe Online, not what has worked in MMOs in the past. We're not ignoring that, we're just not letting it rule us.

ZAM: You actually jumped right into my next question about secret identities. Is it still something players can expect at some point? Could you give us any details on the form it may take in the game?

Andersen: Secret identities will not be in at launch. It's on the back burner now. Secret identities are such an important part of the DC Universe, and it was originally an important part of our design. We were thinking of an offline component for it, believe it or not. Kind of a “you are the secret identity” thing. We all liked and gravitated toward it, but when push comes to shove we realized we needed to focus on the game itself. As for what form it will take in the future, I don't want to speculate at this time. It's too soon.