Maybe I liked DCUO more than a few people because I wasn’t going for a superhero MMO, but a regular MMO that had more action in the combat and just happened to have a superhero theme. And for as much as I did enjoy a fair chunk of what I played; I have to say DCUO’s cardinal sin way not going far enough.
It got rid of crap that was just tedious instead of challenging like backtracking for quest rewards, an auto loot button so you don’t have to click every single corpse for your loot (cough cough every single RPG ever), each weapon can do melee or ranged DPS and has a lunge so all players can close in easily on enemies, and has each class a DPS mode and one of the 3 support classes (tank, healer and controller) so that both matching making and solo play are simpler affairs and combat was made to be more focused on the Melee/Block/Ranged type of rock paper scissors game, keeping your combo meter going, punishing those who spam the same attacks and only occasionally using spells instead of having your eyes firmed glued to your global cooldown.
But at the end of the day it was still a “grind through the super easy solo quests and rush to the endgame to raid with your guild for the next epic purple drop in the loot threadmill as you’re stuck to doing the basic role this class does”. I mean, it is fun to raid with people if you can find a guild of tight knit and nice people like I did, and I really did enjoy the challenge in the Fortress of Solitude raid series and made memories that were worth the time and cash I put. But it had way too much obvious padding quests that didn’t do anything new, and was just there to keep you from doing everything too fast, gear was still too important to winning (and also require alot of grinding) and raiding still felt like you were restricted to doing just this one role and nothing else.
Basically the game could have gone further to change more systems that didn’t necessarily have quick fixes like an auto loot button, but could have been overhauled or replaced to remove plenty of what made MMOs held back despite having genuinely fun elements to them.

For me, it’s a combination of the pros and cons you mentioned. I’m not a DC fan and so know next to nothing about them that I haven’t learned from Linkara. Add this to the “City of Sidekicks” part and that’s basically the entirety of the game’s presentation out the window. With not enough customization, what is there left of the game but the pure gameplay?

I liked this game but I can’t seem to play it for to long. This is sort of a more resent complaint but I played the area 51 mission twice after making a new hero and people sort of gave up half way. Like they get bored and quit. I can normally finish this mission in a short amount of time but people seem to enjoy watching me do it on my own as of late.

I REALLY enjoy this game, pushing almost 70 hours. I like the action based combat (I use mouse and keyboard, but I change my primary attacks to keyboard keys), the customization is nice, but what makes it for me is that it’s an established world and lore. I always feel mmo games that already have established lore seem to be better received than ones that make their own up, unless they last long and can create their own lore…

Even though you are more of a solider than a general
(sidekick than a superhero), I still felt pretty heroic in this game. Ignore the story and play it as if you were a hero in the DC Universe, you’ll have more fun…

I laughed when you showed the final message in the credits…
I guess this game is mostly controller-friendly then…

Great review. I for one really enjoy this game. I would love to see you possibly revisit this down the line after experiencing more of the higher end game content.