Curse you Cryptic!

I am about to make it to Lt. Cmdr. When I do I am going to take a good look at the game and decide if I want to continue with this game. I have a strong feeling that I will not want to continue. There does not seem to be any depth to the game. But I will wait until I reach Lt. Cmdr and do a few quests with my new awesome ship before I decide for sure. I do have one big problem if I decide not to continue on with STO. What game should I play instead?

I am running through a few options.

GuildWars: This game is free, beautiful and fun. I played it a lot when it came out and after each expansion came out. It is a great game but I am not sure how much play time it has left for me. I could replay all of the campaigns with a new character or try out some of the new content that has been introduced. The biggest problem that I have with GW is the same problem I have with STO, it is very instanced. Now GWs does the instancing thing very well compared to STO but it is still a problem for me.

Age of Conan: I have retried this game 2 times since I have started this blog and every time it has ended in failure. The main reason I have for quitting is map layout it is horribly done and ruins the immersion of the game for me. But after playing STO and Champions Online I have come to realize it can be done worse and maybe it takes some time to get used to. The combat is fun the individual maps are very large and beautiful, the lore is nice, and probably most important it is the only game I can play that has really sexy women in it.

Warhammer Online: Good ole WAR! This is probably the least likely for me to try for awhile. They still need to do something about city sieges being too often and something about T2-3 having people to play with. The endless trial has had a good effect on the game I just think the devs need a little more time to get things really working for city sieges. But I do love the game and will probably return to it sometime this year and stay for a good long while.

World of Warcraft: It has been a long time since I have been to azeroth. It has a great immersion factor the world is alive and beautiful. Why not go back to WoW? Well for one I have played through most of the game and really do not have any urge to raid. Never have liked raiding and never will like it and from what I hear that is about all there is to do any more.

Taking a break: While this may be the hardest for me; it may also be the best for my feeling of been there done that. I have a large backlog of Xbox games I have not even played. I just got a new flat screen TV so that makes it look even better. The problem with this is it is winter, and winter in the Pacific Northwest is very very wet. So I could not supplement my non gaming time with activities outside.

Those are the options that are going through my head if I decide not to play STO. It is a lot to think about.

The queues in Star Trek online are unacceptable

I have tried to play STO about 3 times so far this weekend and two times the server has been down and the most recent time I got in, got disconnected, and put in a Queue that I have been in for 35mins so far.

I know that other games have had queues but those other games also had servers that did not require a queue and if I really wanted to play I could choose one of those and play. This game does not have another server I can choose from. Most of the launches I have been through in the last 3 years never really even effected my ability to play.

What is even worse is that they had this problem in open beta and did not do anything about it. The instancing they use is supposed to make queuing a thing of the past. They had the pre-order numbers they knew their servers could not handle the open beta numbers yet it still has not been fixed. They have taken millions of dollars from people that are stupid enough to pay for the life time subscription and they still cannot get severs quickly.

I am convinced the Cryptic has no idea what they are doing even after launching 3 titles. Their inability to learn from any of their past mistakes has me seriously wondering how they plan on running a game based on such a large IP.

I do not see me putting up with this for much longer. It took me about 20 mins to write this and I am still in the queue.

Hoopla over the C-Store

It seems a lot of people have a strong opinion over cryptic charging for different federation races at release. It has taken me awhile to decide what I think about this type practice. On one hand I don’t really want to play either race so it really does not bother me that much. On the other what happens when they do want to charge me for something I want?

I think the root of the problem that people are having with this is that cryptic is still charging a full subscription price for the game. I think if they lowered the price to $9.99 a month or offered you 500 cryptic points each month people would not be bothered by it. I would defiantly like the 9.99 per month subscription rate.

This is just the tip of the iceberg though. They will start to offer ships, weapons, uniforms, and various other items. When they start to do this people start to feel that they need to buy everything, instead of people just telling cryptic to take a flying leap they will actually buy it. That is why they do it; players purchase these items and still pay the monthly fee. The only repercussions that they get are some angry bloggers and forum posters.

My over all feelings for this is that I don’t really care. They can try what they want. I will not buy any of it until they lower the subscription costs.

Cryptic Listened to me

Right after I posted about posting patch notes Cryptic decided to listen to me and post some notes.

http://startrekonline.com/node/1027

Yay!

I love patch notes

Patching without patch notes is unacceptable in a released game!

Star Trek Online has patched 3 times since head start and I have not seen a single patch note. I know it is a lot to ask that they give us patch notes it is not like we pay the bills or anything……

You would think that Cryptic would have learned their lesson with the infamous Champions Online patch that was released the day before retail release with no patch notes. This is really unacceptable, I want to know what is being worked on what has been fixed and what exactly you are changing on my machine.

If I can’t see progress in the direction that I think the game should go I will be much more likely to quit, and I am not the only one that feels that way. The majority of the players will probably never look at the patch notes but the vocal bloggers and forum posters do and I think it would do a lot to calm them down. It also gives me something to write about.

I think this is going to be my busiest week yet for posting. Just so much good stuff going on.

Will Star Trek Online suffer the effects of the WoW Tourist?

First let’s define “WoW Tourism” I believe that this term was first used by SynCaine I cannot find the exact post but he is the first one I remember using the term. WoW tourism is the phenomenon that occurs when a new MMO has massive initial sells then after the first month looses a large percentage of its subscribers back to WoW. Now I am not sure that this is exactly what happens but that is how it is going to be defined.

The first time that this phenomenon was really observed in the wild is the release of Age of Conan, it initially sold over a million copies of the game now it is sitting well under 500k subscribers. Shortly after that Warhammer online released to critical acclaim and sold over a million boxes now it sits at 4 servers and some claim it is on life support. Then Aion sold millions of copies and lost a lot of its subscribers. I think it is holding onto more than the others though.

Normally I would say that Star Trek Online would be a niche title like EVE or Darkfall due to its sci-fi setting. But with it being one of the most popular IPs ever and it having a huge non gamer following that goes way back before video games even existed I think it has potential.

Initially the game will pull in some huge numbers and pull them from the same places that WAR and AoC pulled them from. The MMO player that is looking for a new home the “WoW Tourist”, they will announce over a million copies sold and promptly loose 3/4 of those subscribers. Then something strange will happen, they will start to gain subscribers again and these will all be new people to the Genre they will be the people that see it on the shelf and think “HOLY CRAP A NEW STAR TREK GAME” they will then quickly purchase it and not even realize that it is an mmo may not even know what an MMO is. A few hundred thousand people will purchase the game this way and a large percentage of the people will stay with it for a long time.

My final prediction for the game after one year will be around 300k subscribers. So to answer the initial question, yes it will suffer the “WoW tourist” effect but it will recover from non-wow players.

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Star Trek Online Instruction Manual

UPDATE: I am getting a lot of Google hits on this page and I don’t think it is what you are looking for. If you want a great beginners guide go here. It is by far the best guide out there. You can also get the official instruction manual here.

I think I am going to break a record today. This is my third post today.

Well during my lunch break I went to the local Bestbuy and picked up my copy of STO and quickly tore it open. I don’t really know why I do this because I will not be able to play until I get home and I don’t even need to install it because I have been playing the head start. Anyway that is not my point. So I rip it open and take out the manual and low and behold it is only 15 pages long 4 of those are installation instruction and contact information. While this is better than the Champions Online one, it is still complete crap. Developers please start putting the time in for a decent manual and maybe a map. I would pay $10 extra for a good manual and map.

The disk looks cool though!

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WAR Patch 1.3.4: I disagree

There seems to be a lot of negativity
surrounding the new patch that mythic has released and I completely disagree with these people. Something needed to be done about scenarios never popping it is crazy to go through 2 tiers of the game and not be able to play in scenarios because none of them are popping.

Will this fix that problem? I am guessing it will help a lot. You now have the same amount of people queuing for fewer scenarios. As these bloggers have pointed out scenarios are one of WAR’s best features but they are not great if no one can play them. I find that in real world playing really only one scenario map is played per tier any way. I personally think they should add cross server queues and leave all of the scenarios in.

WAR has got to do something to get players to stay in the game. I have said ever since release that the game spread its players out to thin and they needed to funnel them better for PVP. They are doing it and I think it is for the better. Now if they would just make T4 RVR more about fighting and less about avoiding fights.

The best Star Trek Online beginners guide EVER!

BigBadB over at his new blog The  Engines Cannae Take It! has posted a most excellent character guide. Go take a look!

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Star Trek Online: A few suggestions!

Star Trek Online has been my main form of entertainment since head start began. There are a few things that are really ruining the immersion of the Star Trek world for me. These have been brought up before by other people but I have some simple solutions that I believe would work very well. I am still not ready to give it a review but these things are bugging me and I need to complain

• Zoning and sector space: There is a lot of zoning and it is very distracting, and sector space could use some work. I propose that you are able to bring up the galaxy map at any time and set a course for anywhere all zoning is done automatically. When you zone a warp like video is shown instead of the screen shots and the transition is somehow smoothed out so it looks like you are entering warp not zoning. Sector space should have the grid removed and less people per zone maybe 2 or 3. If this is not possible they could remove the squares around the people in sector space so they are not so obvious. These steps would be easy to implement and I believe would add a large amount of polish to the title.
• Feel of progression: I have played a little over 10 hours and I am only level 6. I do not feel I have gained much power in that time and it is beginning to wear on me. They should add an option to get a new ship at level 5 that is a slight upgrade to your starter one. They should also make kills worth about 5 times the skill points they currently are. I can spend 25 minutes fighting ships and only make like 5 skill points this is entirely unacceptable and makes you find ways to avoid fighting because it takes so long. I don’t want the fights shortened they are nice this way but I want something for my time.
• Chat format and bag space: These are very minor but the chat format is extremely annoying. I do not need to know the zone people are in and I don’t need their full name. Half of the first line of chat is useless info. Make an option to turn off zone info and an option to only show account name. There are too many different types of crafting materials make a separate bag for it.

I am enjoying the game a lot and these should not been seen as me hating the game.

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