DCUO: Auction Houses and chat improvements to be addressed soon, says SOE

DC Universe Online's game director, Chris Cao, has promised that the "first update" released for the game will include Auction Houses.

Speaking with Massively, Cao said Auctions didn't make it into the game at launch due to the UI and fonts.

"We're actually working on it right now," he said. "We had some issues in beta with making sure that fonts were readable and the UI was working well. We've worked hard to fix those things, and [it is] basically the very next thing on the docket to get out to all of you.

"You have stuff in your bags, and you need a way to trade it -- we understand that."

Cao also said the next update should help improve the "chat and social interactions" and that more polish is planned for "some usability issues for chat and social things".

"Things like making sure you can set your default chat channel instead of having /g to talk to group, being able to more easily control which channels you're in, improving push-to-talk on the controller," he said. "Basically there are some little things that we need to do to make it easier for you, in that sense of things. Audience-wise it's interesting because there's actually quite a bit of shout-casting going on for the PS3 right now, as MMO players who have been on the PC come over and teach social conventions to the PS3 guys.

"They need to know that since they're not used to [a game in which] everyone in a city can actually hear, they can shout out and hopefully get some people to help, or ask a question. I think half of that is not just the UI, but also people getting accommodated to this kind of game."

DC Universe Online launched in the US on Tuesday, and yesterday in Europe. SOE has added two more servers to the EU to meet "overwhelming demand" being placed on the current servers. It did the same with PvP servers in the US.