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As we referenced in our post yesterday about DC Universe Online's concept art, the folks at SOE Austin are looking to change the playing field fairly substantially with their superhero MMO title. In fact, in a number of ways they're looking to re-examine a lot of the basic elements we think of as part and parcel with the MMO package. One great example is the concept of questing. Your average experience in a massively multiplayer game right now involves seeking out quests - essentially 'todo lists' - from characters a story-centric quest hub somewhere in the game world.

In DCUO, the goal is to let players do what they want to do with the time they have in-game. To that end, the designers are seeking to push content on players, rather than make players seek them out with their precious game time. Calling them 'encounters' rather than quests, these experiences are totally changeable based on developer intentions, and local conditions. DCUO offers traditional questing as well, with well-known quest givers and amazing quest content ... but they're definitely seeking something new in encounters.

We also chat with the developers about the ways in which their physics-based gameplay fits in, the game's death mechanic, and how the game 'feels' like a 3rd person action game more than an MMO. Read on for all the gameplay details!

Jens: Now, not only can I pick up physics objects in the environment, as you can see here, I can walk over and it tells me I need to use my – whoops, I got stunned when I picked that up. The cool thing here is I could have withdrawn if I wanted to, but if I also... We don't have a death mechanic, we have knock out. It's called a 'rally mechanic'. It allows me to get up on the spot if I feel the situation is going to be safe enough. I don't have to run away and spawn somewhere else all the time. I can if I want to, if I'm surrounded by five guys, but if my friends are still here fighting, I can clear the cobwebs and pop right back up again.

Chris: We can talk a bit about why we decided to have a timer mechanic instead of a death mechanic. Like how the death penalty isn't really necessary, with the timer mechanic?

The new Day Jobs feature coming with City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility has caught the imagination of many of the roleplaying crew, but some other players are unsure what to make of it. Designer Phil Zeleski has provided some insight into how the feature works and what sorts of rewards players can get from using it.

Put simply, the CoX Day Job system allows players to log out from a specific location (like a hospital or vault) and when they return to play, after an extended log out period, they will gain a temporary power or some other benefit. With the exception of badges and accolades, the benefits either last for a limited time or have a limited number of uses before they are used up. However, you can replenish the benefit by logging out in the same area. Most rewards need 10 days of logged out time to hit the maximum benefit.

Batman. Superman. Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter. Black Canary, Oracle, The Question. The world of DC Comics is populated with amazing characters and fantastic stories. The entire four-color experience is coming to fans of the MMO genre in the form of DC Universe Online, a title in Sony Online Entertainment's stable of next-gen MMOs. Alongside the FPS title The Agency and casual/kid friendly Free Realms, DCUO looks to reinvent the concept of massively multiplayer game for comic book fans. And Massively has had a lengthy first-hand look at this groundbreaking title.

We had extensive hands-on playtime with the game's combat and powers mechanics, and hours of face to face chat time with the developers at SOE Austin. Over the next week, Massively is going to fully explore this dyanmic in-development game. In the words of the developers we'll crack into the studio's philosophy of play and discover the value these developers place on your play time.

To kick things off we've got a fantastic gallery of concept art taken right from the walls of the SOE Austin studios. Explore the work of Jim Lee and the other DCUO artists, with commentary on what you're seeing and hints on what is coming in the next week. Plus! Read on below the cut for Studio Manager John Blakely's insights into 'future screenshots'!

City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility has now been patched to the Test Server, where a small but dedicated group of people will be testing the hell out of it for a while before the gate is unlocked and Open Beta begins.

Leaking stuff from a Closed Beta is of course a major no-no, and we would not condone this from anyone. There is, however, a limited amount of access that anyone can get, simply by going through character creation. Although it's not possible to enter the game fully unless you're in the Closed Beta, costume pieces and new powersets can be examined in their current state. These are in testing, so it would be unwise to fixate on anything for now.

So far we've had a look at the Shields powerset, which is extremely cool and contains many surprises, and Pain Domination, which picks up the buffity-healy hero set Empathy, runs with it, and smashes its face into the wall repeatedly while laughing like some ice-girdled steel-toothed agony maiden from Hell's own surgical wing.

As part of their ongoing Ask a Dev series, the folks at City of Heroes recently took questions from the community for new staff member Bruce Harlick. Bruce has a seriously prestigious pedigree in hero gaming, and has been there since the very early days, when pen-and-paper was king, we moved in hexes, and Champions had us rolling fistfuls of dice for our ranged killing attacks.

Bruce explains how the CoX mission team are going to keep the standard of missions high with custom art and scripts. There are hints of new mechanics coming that haven't yet been announced, and plans to explore the backstories of characters currently in the game.

But the comment that had us sitting up and taking notes was this one, after the cut:

Credibility is a precious resource; DJ Jester of w00tstudios.net is one of those people on the MMO circuit who has bags of it stashed under his mattress. His podcasts have always been right on the pulse, and he's had many worthy personages in the past as guests, from April 'CuppaJo' Burba to Matt 'Positron' Miller.

Now, Floyd 'Castle' Grubb, aka Castle the Powers Guy from City of Heroes, joins Jester and friends at the mike for a 41 minute megasesh in which the coming changes to powers in CoX are expertly dissected, laid out and examined for your delight and edification.

As the wait intensifies for City of Heroes Issue 13: Power and Responsibility to go into closed Beta, powers guy Floyd 'Castle' Grubb has provided a breakdown of some of the main PvE powers changes. None of the Villain Patron Powers or Hero Ancillary Powers are mentioned yet: the powers changed are meat-and-potatoes stuff, which will affect low-level characters as they work their way up.

The most striking change is half way down. Non-hostile player toggles, such as the Kheldians' shapeshifting powers, will no longer drop when a player is held, slept or stunned. This is such a big deal that it demands a visual analogy. Imagine being a floating, tentacled weapons platform capable of delivering a payload of purple death to whole crowds of bad guys. Now, imagine suddenly plummeting out of the sky, transformed to a little slumbering human, complete with 'zzz' emerging from your head. That is what being mezzed does to a Warshade in squid form.

We're not sure yet whether this change is PvE only or also applies to PvP: frankly, the PvP consequences of toggles no longer dropping when a player is mezzed are too radical to contemplate in just one article.

City of Heroes is deservedly famous for its costume creator, which allows for a phenomenal amount of variety in character appearance. Champions Online may take that a step further, with multiple textures available for the same item. Obviously, being able to make your character just the way you want them is a very big deal in hero games. But what about the most mysterious of the superhero MMOs, DC Universe Online?

Art director Jared Carr has posted some early details to his blog. Jared explains that 'you can choose from a variety of body sizes, silhouettes and hairstyles', which isn't much of a surprise; however, DCUO will feature something neither CoX nor CO have, which is costume pieces limited by origin. 'If you are a tech-based character (like Cyborg) you will have different costume options than a magic based character (like Dr. Fate).' Jared also mentions that costumes can be altered over time if you wish, a feature CoH didn't have at launch and rapidly adopted.

DC Universe Online Creative Director Chris Cao told MTV's Multiplayer blog that SOE hopes to support cross-platform play between PlayStation 3 and PC DCUO players, but isn't ready to commit to it just yet.

Cao said that cross-platform play is still high on the priority list, but no definite promise has been made because delivering game updates to PS3 users is a very different process than delivering them to PC users. SOE is still trying to figure out how to do simultaneous updates on both platforms.

We've heard about this problem before, of course. Funcom is facing something similar as it works to port Age of Conan to the Xbox 360. SOE is in a good position to deal with it though, since it is actually a part of the company that's responsible for the PlayStation Network authentication process. "I think if anybody is going to do it and make it simultaneously seamless for people it's going to be us," said Cao. "It's just that we haven't done it yet, so we don't like to promise what we haven't delivered yet."

When the announcement broke that the Mission Architect feature for City of Heroes was being moved to Issue 14, some additional features were listed for Issue 13, including revamps to some of the powers. We got to quiz Matt Miller and Brian Clayton extensively about the PvP related changes coming to CoX, but some other overhauls have come to light since. From what powers specialist Floyd 'Castle' Grubb has told players on the forums, the Villain Patron Powers and the Hero Ancillary Power Pools are going to get a serious rework.

Both these power pool types affect only characters at level 40 and above. Players have been protesting the lack of equivalence between them ever since the City of Villains Patron Powers went live in Issue 7: Destiny Manifest. The obvious place where the disparity between the two counts is in PvP. The heroes get uber powers like Focused Accuracy; the villains don't. The heroes get Power Boost as an ancillary power; the villains don't. But now, although he can't talk specifics yet, Castle has promised 'widespread' changes to the PPs and APPs.

In a recent interview with Ten Ton Hammer, Champions Online's lead designer Randy Mosiondz divulged some of the first specs of information about the game's previously mentioned Omega System. Apparently the end-game system is being designed with the goal of offering content for solo, small groups and large groups alike. According to Mosiondz one of the ultimate goals for players participating in end-game will be to become an "Omega", which are some of the most powerful super-powered beings within the game's universe. Do we get a silver surf board too, or how about a gold one?

It all sounds pretty exciting, if a little bit vague. We can't wait to hear some more news about the system as time marches onwards. Springs isn't getting any further away so we suppose it won't kill us to be patient. Well, it could.

Massively recently had the chance to talk with City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and Lead Designer Matt Miller about a multitude of CoX topics. One of the points we covered was the downloadable optional content, such as the recent Cyborg Pack.

Massively: The recent changes in the studio, the additional bandwidth you were talking about: would you connect those to the changes you've made in pricing, with the additional purchaseable content? Or is that more a direct result of NC NorCal coming into its own?

Brian Clayton: It's a little bit of both, to be perfectly honest. We certainly have huge plans, plans that go over the next five to ten years, for the City of Heroes franchise. So we certainly need to ramp up for that. But we also feel that by providing the Super Booster packs and things like that, it's a win-win in that it helps grow the studio internally to provide more things for our community, but it also helps us to justify those costs and build for the future. I think that's certainly a part of it, but there are larger initiatives again that we can't fully go into detail about, for the future of the franchise.

Massively recently had the chance to talk with City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and Lead Designer Matt Miller about a multitude of CoX topics. It was clear to us that some major PvP changes were afoot, so we picked up the topic and ran with it.

Massively: So the 'multi build' feature sounds incredible for PvP, and it sounds like you're going to be doing some PvP rebalancing, which I know can get into fiddly details, but can you talk generally about what sort of rebalancing you guys are doing for PvP combat?

Matt Miller: We're basically trying to balance it out and make it a lot more fun, not make it so one-sided where certain archetypes and certain powersets completely dominate the PvP game.