DC Universe Online is a free-to-play superhero / supervillian MMORPG that lets players create their own unique tights-wearing hero or villain and roam the streets of places like Gotham City and Metropolis fighting or creating crime. Players fight alongside such iconic DC Comics characters as Superman and Batman, Lex Luthor and The Joker, and many others. Excellent physics help bring comic book action and combat to life, all under the creative direction of noted comic book artist Jim Lee.

Set in the sprawling fictional universe of DC Comics, the player creates an original hero or villain who stands alongside its most iconic characters. The story opens in a war-torn future where a final, catastrophic battle between Earth's greatest heroes and villains has left the planet in ruins. That conflict, it turns out, was engineered by the alien intelligence Brainiac, who siphoned the powers of the fallen to build an army of his own and conquer the world. As the war's sole survivor, a future Lex Luthor steals the pirated power in the form of exobytes, nanoscale devices that grant ordinary people superpowers, and travels back to the present day. He releases the exobytes into the atmosphere, creating thousands of new metahumans, and urges Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman to find and train them before Brainiac's invasion arrives. Guided by figures like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Joker, and Luthor, the newly empowered player joins the fight for Earth's future.