I've beta tested DCUO and have played it since March of 2011, if I would have known how much of a complete rip off it was I would have never spent the money and would have saved myself many hours of aggravation. DCUO stands for DC Universe Online and its published by SOE Sony Online Entertainment the same maker of Everquest I and II. I didn't have anyone explain to me in detail why any money spent on this game was money wasted, so for those who haven't had that misfortune yet I'll do you the favor of explaining why you should never spend any money on this game.
The biggest problem in this game is the non-stop cheating mostly in pvp but also in pve. There are a couple of hacks created by users Umbop and TagYourIt namely the no delay hack and DCUO MultiHack V 1 and 2 as well as just generic speed hacking done with a program called Cheat Engine. The hacks done by Umbop and TagYourIt are just ways of implementing the same hacks that can be done with Cheat Engine as well, by re-writing some data at particular memory addresses as the game runs. What this does is make it so characters don't have to be slowed down during combat as they fight or be hampered with the delay of weapon attacks or power casting as they fight. These nerfs are a part of the game design; so for example a particular power does a lot of damage, so they balance that with giving that power a long casting time and also a long cool down time. These hacks re-write that code, which is client-side in the game, so that a character using them would not have that long wait time to cast or wait to use that power again.
What this translates to is a fight where one legit player is getting hit multiple times by a cheating player as their power and weapon attacks are doing their animations and cool downs. The cheating player doesn't have to wait for that. So in a case like this, one character is being hit say 3 or 4 times in the same amount of time they can hit their opponent once. As the math would indicate the cheater wins that match every time.
There are also macros which are programs that automatically hit the button combos to trigger weapon hits and power casts but do so with one button press. So a weapon and power combo that would normally need 5 button presses can be macro-ed into one button press. On top of this, sub-second delays can be included in those macros so that the simulated button presses can be done at say 3 tenths of a second. So a 3 button weapon combo that does medium damage can be done in 0.9 seconds with one button press, for example, with just macros. Now macros and Cheat Engine hacks can be combined so that you have what is typically the case in DCUO characters doing many attacks and power casts such as heals and debuffs in just a second or two all done with one button press. Now imagine that against legit players who are having to press multiple buttons on either the keyboard and mouse or a gamepad type controller and have to wait for animations and cooldowns just like the game was designed to be played. Its small wonder why the social circle of cheaters in DCUO think they are so awesome knowing they can't lose versus legit players.
But all that is just the mechanics, the real asinine part of it is how SOE just lets it go on their paying customers and their approach is to never mention it or seriously clean it up. This is why DCUO is such a rip off and SOE such a crooked company; SOE knows full well that legit players cannot play this game because of all the cheating that goes on and they simply decide never to say anything about it hoping that people remain ignorant of the cheating and give away their money thinking they'll get a fun, fair game in exchange. By the time paying customers of DCUO finally come to the conclusion that they've been ripped off, SOE would have pocketed months of money already and at least they got something by keeping mum on all the cheating.
That's the secondary aspect of the cheating, all the excuses for why the cheating isn't really cheating that the cheaters are allowed to make. For people who don't know the game mechanics and the timing of how attacks go in pvp, its easy to bombard them with falsehoods about gear or this or that buff or whatever; and its all lies. SOE and the cheaters work together in this way. SOE protects the cheaters by only giving them temporary suspensions and also not keeping a public record of who the cheaters are, their account and user names, their toon names and history, and league names; this way cheaters have perfect anonymity to cheat and continue to cheat over a long time and always claim that they are not cheating. They can also create multiple accounts and switch to them when one account gets suspended. Probably the most asinine thing is that they get to keep all their progress and gear from their cheating when they come back from their suspensions.
What this creates is a community of cheating, where cheating is the norm and is protected by those in the community. In this kind of environment the legit players are the pariahs and if you like fair legit play you will be scoffed at and harassed non-stop by those around you for calling out the hacks and told every lie possible by cheaters as to why you weren't cheated on after you were. Here's the biggest thing, SOE fosters this environment and harassment. The longer people go on blaming themselves, their skill level, their lack of gear, and so on and keep denying that they are being cheated on and keep paying money to SOE to keep playing the game to get skill points, gear, and so on the better it is for SOE. The reality is that they are being cheated on and SOE fosters the kind of environment where the cheaters can roam around freely and anonymously harassing people who call attention to the cheating, so that the lie that there is no cheating going on can be continued. SOE wants this to go on so people will continue to pay for the game thinking that the cheating isn't there, they even protect the cheaters by placing legitimate players on suspensions for responding to the harassment from cheaters but not the cheaters themselves.
SOE is as unethical a game company as there can possibly be, they'd rather cover up their cheating problem with silence about it rather than clean it up. They continue a false impression that their DCUO game isn't so cheater ridden that it is unplayable as to have people continue paying them money under that false impression that SOE knows full well is false.
As far as the cheaters are concerned they are the typical low life scum you meet on the Internet, the people who troll message boards, look online for child porn, and do everything they are not suppose to do because they like to do what they aren't suppose to do. The kind of losers who are shunned by people in real life, have no achievements to speak of, who are so invested in a fake world in a computer game to give them self-esteem that's who makes up the cesspool of a community in DCUO. That's the big after effect of all the cheating, only cheaters like this kind of environment so the majority of the people you find in DCUO are low life cheats that will mouth off in raids and alerts and can't do anything without a bunch of hacks to do it for them. They are no skill players who go around with big heads and mouths because they have a bunch of gear and game accolades thanks to hacks. You can read the chat window of any public shout, say, chat channel and see the typical banter of low life Internet trolls that think cheating at a video game makes them a big deal. Descent people don't want anything to do with people like this and that's why I'm telling people this so you don't have to waste your money and time finding out.
P.S. As I wrote this today, SOE did a big hacker sweep AFTER 3 MONTHS of the worse hacking that's been in the game to date. The hackers have all started free accounts and are back on now as well as the not so outlandish hackers who didn't get a suspension in the first place, so the hacking is mild compared to what it was at the moment but still there. And this is after SOE's big clean up AFTER 3 MONTHS of outrageous hacking. So you consider whether a gaming company that does a big cheater clean up ONCE EVERY 3 MONTHS is worth paying.
