Star Trek Online: This Is Unacceptable Cryptic and Atari!

[The Happy Stromboli]

Tell Cryptic and Atari dropping the game price and adding 60 days of game play for new subs is not fair to the subs that just bought this game 3 weeks ago!! It's not okay to alienate the fan base that supported you from the beginning!

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/81508

 

[SunnyD]

BBBAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHA!!!

By the way - there's a thread for that.

 

[shortylickens]

I hate to tell you this buddy, but if more of you "fans" had bought the game at the original price they wouldnt have felt the need to offer discounts. Obviously they didnt get the membership they were looking for.

 

[The Happy Stromboli]

I hate to tell you this buddy, but if more of you "fans" had bought the game at the original price they wouldnt have felt the need to offer discounts. Obviously they didnt get the membership they were looking for.

Not my fault. They should have delivered a better, more complete product then.

 

[shortylickens]

Not my fault. They should have delivered a better, more complete product then.

Soooo, since the product is not better, not more complete, people didnt buy it.
Which means they had to lower the price.
So more people would buy it.

Do you see where I'm going with this?
I'm really sorry you feel like you got ripped off, but this is why I always wait to get into a new game. PC games, both single player and online subscription based, drop in price much faster than console titles. Often if you have a little patience you can get it for half price.
Steam has dozens of such games. I just picked up the relatively new Wings Of Prey for 25 bucks instead of 50.

 

[RoloMather]

Yawn. They didn't do anything wrong ethically.

 

[SunnyD]

Thing is lifetime subscribers... they don't care. LOL

 

[Crow550]

Wasn't this game in development for years? Like back in 03?

They should have had a public free beta where they took in fan requests.

If Trek online failed, it's because of the devs. I mean Angry Joe has some good thoughts: http://angryjoeshow.com/?p=6344#more-6344

Spoonys view: http://angryjoeshow.com/?p=6408#more-6408

 

[RoloMather]

This game is in trouble if they dropped prices that quickly.

Probably didn't get anywhere close to the # of subs that they expected.

Well, what did they expect when releasing a crappy MMO?

 

[jtisgeek]

well the severs couldn't even handle us that was there and they acted like it was because there were more than they expected lol.

I think there just trying to sell more games either way it's what they do. The game hasn't even been out a whole month so they have no idea on the number of people that may leave after there free month.

 

[Shortcut]

This game is in trouble if they dropped prices that quickly.

Probably didn't get anywhere close to the # of subs that they expected.

Well, what did they expect when releasing a crappy MMO?

Agreed. I was interested in this game, but many of the pro reviews and forum posts noted that this thing was "not finished". The perception of an incomplete game is a deal breaker, IMO.

I'll consider jumping in after Cryptic offers additional discounts.

 

[AlgaeEater]

I paid full price for 2 Champions Online at launch in September; one for me and one for my girlfriend.

2 Months later the game dropped to $29.99 in November

I believe during the x-mas sale on Steam, you could of gotten champions online for $9.99

My point in all of this is that the price of admission sucks. Making matters worse, we quit after a month. (But we both got to level 40 and level 32 on our alts) In the end though we had fun and that's all that matters.

 

[paperfist]

Soooo, since the product is not better, not more complete, people didnt buy it.
Which means they had to lower the price.
So more people would buy it.

Do you see where I'm going with this?
I'm really sorry you feel like you got ripped off, but this is why I always wait to get into a new game. PC games, both single player and online subscription based, drop in price much faster than console titles. Often if you have a little patience you can get it for half price.
Steam has dozens of such games. I just picked up the relatively new Wings Of Prey for 25 bucks instead of 50.

Even though I already paid $50 and got 30 days 'free' I don't feel bad that they drop the price and extended the trial.

That said if Walmart, Target, Sears sells something for X and Y days later it's on sale you get the difference back...

 

[Craig234]

There's an 'early adopter' penalty. I sympathize with the OP, but it's common for the people who get it day 1 to pay a premium to do so.

While it seems short sighted, punishing their loyal players, it seems marketing shows that's how to make the most money in a competitive industry.

Some games can not discount for along time, most do discount. It does seem to me they risk training their customers to hold off buying though, which is lose-lose.

Edit: this isn't as bad as it looks because it's the collector's edition, not the basic game, that has the bonus.

 

[aigomorla]

WOOT...

Which is why i waited... :T

Im actually tho waiting for them to drop the game down to 14.95.

I'll pay the monthly, but i kinda refuse to pay for both.

 

[Gothgar]

wow it is tanking that fast

 

[v8envy]

Makes sense from their standpoint. If it costs too much money to add content that'll keep players interested past their first month and you think you've already tapped the entire early adopter market the obvious money grab is to discount the game via offering free game time (which most players won't use) to get as many box sales as possible.

Oh, and many MMO players have already been conditioned to not jump in at launch no matter who is offering up the game.

I don't think the "shovel out a $50 box and hope enough people sign up to finish and launch the real game" MMO business model is long for this world.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

The problem with MMO's these days is that the second you launch something with big problems and lack of content/ blatantly unfinished product everyone just jumps ship back to WoW. They need to realize that how good their product is at launch and how fast they fix the inevitable early issues is what will make the difference between a dying game one year after launch and a game that picks up momentum going forward.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

how likely is a game "unfinished" at launch to ever be "finished"? IMO, not very.

 

[v8envy]

Depends on the game. A niche game like Eve is still "unfinished" 6 years after release or so but may eventually get all the grandiose content planned at launch in one form or another.

I guess that's the hope. Launch and pray you get a cult following.

 

[Magusigne]

Disclaimer: I wouldn't go near this game with a ten foot pole.

It sucks that as an early adopter you get the shaft but...you should hope cryptic can pull in new revinue by creating incentives for subscription.

More people subscribing=more money for improving and developing the game.

 

[smackababy]

The problem with MMO's these days is that the second you launch something with big problems and lack of content/ blatantly unfinished product everyone just jumps ship back to WoW. They need to realize that how good their product is at launch and how fast they fix the inevitable early issues is what will make the difference between a dying game one year after launch and a game that picks up momentum going forward.

The thing is though, all MMOs are released like that. WoW had a huge exception that it was actually almost completed upon launch. It was far better of an MMO launch than any game has or had seen prior.

 

[KaOTiK]

I'm glad I let the red shirts go in first on this one captain!

 

[Maximilian]

Not my fault. They should have delivered a better, more complete product then.

Its entirely your fault for buying a half baked product to begin with.

 

[lupi]

Some are having very short memories if you're thinking WoW had the best launch. Not only was its initial launch bad, it also suffered heavily at the launch of its first expansion. LOTRO was the smoothest by far I've seen done; which is somewhat surprising given how bad it seemed during much of their late beta testing. I guess when they went into stress testing though that they understood the data more than most to correct prior to actual launch.