Star Trek Online: This Is Unacceptable Cryptic and Atari!

[Lotheron]

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.

And that's part of the reason it's so successful. I'm not necessarily a WoW fanboy (played before, haven't played in long time) but it's hard to ignore the elephant in the room.

 

[datalink7]

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.

LOTRO had a great launch and, overall, very little issues over its life.

 

[JoshGuru7]

I avoided STO due to a complete lack of confidence in Cryptic, but you can't really fault them for lowering prices. You thought it was worth $50 on launch day and you're not really a victim for paying that price willingly. You'll be even worse off if a lack of subscription restricts additional features or leads to an early termination.

This game is in trouble if they dropped prices that quickly. Probably didn't get anywhere close to the # of subs that they expected.

Maybe, maybe not. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence (such as steam sales) that PC games are overpriced in general and if you had to stick to a single price you'd pick something a lot lower than $50. Setting a high initial price to catch all of the initial purchasers and then moving off it very quickly makes a lot of sense for everything but the top couple of games each year.

More on price skimming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_skimming

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.

This is clearly a concern. One possible reason why you see more price skimming in gaming than you do in most other fields is because there are clear benefits to playing titles around the same time as most of your peers. Most of the singleplayer benefits are fairly minor; being able to discuss games at the time everybody else is playing them, not worrying about spoilers, etc. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/8/

Multiplayer benefits are a lot larger and MMO's have probably the strongest benefits for early adopter power gamers since it affords them more time to develop their characters.

As a sidenote, one of the most efficient ways of extracting consumer surplus for an MMO would be to hold a daily auction of 5000 subscriptions. This would have some nice side effects such as being able to ramp up the servers slowly, and the desire subscribers would have to wait and save money would be competing against the desire to start playing (look how much some of the SC2 beta spots sold for).

 

[SunnyD]

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.

Oh come on... it's not that bad. I mean, if it were a single player non-subscription fee game, it has about the same amount of content as most other games in the class. Worth $39.99, yeah. Worth $39.99 + $15/month? Hell no.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

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.

Wow, was a pretty good launch. The only exceptions being the couple of servers most beta people agreed to all create characters on (Archimonde, Illidan, etc). I started out on Archimonde and rerolled to azgalor when the massive queues hit and didn't have much issue at launch. It mostly suffered because it was just too successful; it appeared they put a lot of effort into making sure it could handle the load of launch, but instead of getting 100s of thousands they got millions. It was also one of the most polished MMOs I've seen at launch (haven't tried lotro).

 

[lupi]

All I know is my account history still shows days credited up to about 4 months post launch; much of which came before the first queue era. And let's not forget captain placeholder or Tauren mounts, the four dozen graveyards that didn't exist, loot dissaperaring before you could loot, wall climbing and related zone glitches based on terrain problems, the depth of alliance quest lines while the horde got the barrens to endlessly look for someones wife, lack of available dungeon variety in mid levels are among a few items at the top of the head.

 

[paperfist]

Eh not for nothing, but to get the 60 days you have to fork over $80.00 for the collectors edition which is roughly double what I paid for the 'basic' version of $40.00.

I don't see any version for $40 that comes with 60 days.

I'm more pissed off that they want to implement a death penalty in-game.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

All I know is my account history still shows days credited up to about 4 months post launch; much of which came before the first queue era. And let's not forget captain placeholder or Tauren mounts, the four dozen graveyards that didn't exist, loot dissaperaring before you could loot, wall climbing and related zone glitches based on terrain problems, the depth of alliance quest lines while the horde got the barrens to endlessly look for someones wife, lack of available dungeon variety in mid levels are among a few items at the top of the head.

Most of that wasn't really that big a deal, and horde generally have it way better leveling than alliance (just look at STV for the worst example). Queues where implemented on the first retail day. I leveled a character to 15 on archimonde got disconected, hit a massive queue, and switched servers that day.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Anyone investing in an MMO not named World of Warcraft should know they will probably get screwed.

 

[SunnyD]

Eh not for nothing, but to get the 60 days you have to fork over $80.00 for the collectors edition which is roughly double what I paid for the 'basic' version of $40.00.

I don't see any version for $40 that comes with 60 days.

I'm more pissed off that they want to implement a death penalty in-game.

Try clicking on links. It works, really.

Check out Star Trek Online Collector's Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition also available on atari.com.


Limited time double bonus! Buy Star Trek Online PC-DVD before 9pm PST on Wed March 3rd and get $10 off and extra 60 days free! Your code for additional 60 days will be included in your emailed transaction confirmation.

 

[Craig234]

Try clicking on links. It works, really.

I tried clicking on your links, and don't see the extra 60 days anywhere.

 

[fantolay]

There is always a risk with being an early adapter...

 

[SunnyD]

I tried clicking on your links, and don't see the extra 60 days anywhere.

They finally took it down. Which is funny, since it was supposed to run through March 3rd.

 

[paperfist]

They finally took it down. Which is funny, since it was supposed to run through March 3rd.

Paperfist 1, SunnyD 0

 

[SunnyD]

Paperfist 1, SunnyD 0

On the contrary, it was still up when you posted. Otherwise the quoted text wouldn't have been in my post.

Anyway, this should give you an indication of how things are run at Cryptic. They halfass everything and then go back on what they said. They pulled the sale that was supposed to end on March 3rd on March 1st. Par for the course!

It's sad really, because STO could have been a truly great game.

 

[paperfist]

On the contrary, it was still up when you posted. Otherwise the quoted text wouldn't have been in my post.

Anyway, this should give you an indication of how things are run at Cryptic. They halfass everything and then go back on what they said. They pulled the sale that was supposed to end on March 3rd on March 1st. Par for the course!

It's sad really, because STO could have been a truly great game.

I was only poking fun at the situation

Actually, when I made my post I could not find any stores selling it for the lower price and 60 days so that's why I posted it. When I clicked your link it was the same, but I figured I was tired and would check it out again later.

To be honest this is my first Cryptic game and I'm hearing a lot of complaints about the game, but I'm not lying when I say I'm enjoying it. I've played half the MMOs out there and this one just feels like I can adventure on my own accord, like I can go down any path I want without being forced to do something first. I can team up with my buddies who are much higher then me or much lower and it doesn't feel wrong. I didn't get that feeling with EQ2 or WoW.

Granted I'm an LC2 so I haven't gotten that deep into the game. That said I don't know what Cryptic will end up doing with the IP, they could ruin it or make it better but for now I don't have any issues.

 

[child of wonder]

On the contrary, it was still up when you posted. Otherwise the quoted text wouldn't have been in my post.

Anyway, this should give you an indication of how things are run at Cryptic. They halfass everything and then go back on what they said. They pulled the sale that was supposed to end on March 3rd on March 1st. Par for the course!

It's sad really, because STO could have been a truly great game.

Pity they took it down. I probably would have purchased the game if it came with 3 months free instead of only 1.

While I haven't heard many good things about the game, being Star Trek, I'd be willing to shell out $40 to give it a try for 3 months.

 

[AlgaeEater]

Anyway, this should give you an indication of how things are run at Cryptic. They halfass everything and then go back on what they said. They pulled the sale that was supposed to end on March 3rd on March 1st. Par for the course!

As an ex Champions Online player, I have to say you hit the nail right on the head. I don't have animosity toward the company (it's just a game), but I do remember the developer blogs / posts on the forums that were completely changed on actual patch updates.

 

[SunnyD]

Pity they took it down. I probably would have purchased the game if it came with 3 months free instead of only 1.

While I haven't heard many good things about the game, being Star Trek, I'd be willing to shell out $40 to give it a try for 3 months.

I agree. I almost pulled the trigger yesterday. I probably would have today. As I said before, $40 and 3 months gives you more than ample time to "finish" the game, even as a casual player (I made commander in 5 days at about 3 hours a day, and I wasn't trying that hard).

As an ex Champions Online player, I have to say you hit the nail right on the head. I don't have animosity toward the company (it's just a game), but I do remember the developer blogs / posts on the forums that were completely changed on actual patch updates.

Bingo. It all started with the stealth launch day patch in CO. The lies started with the STO beta pre-order bonus for CO. Cryptic bends over more than a plumber for Atari.

 

[Jeffg010]

I bata tested WoW and the lag was pretty bad on some servers at launch. The auction house was lag city and so was the in mail system and boat dropping you in the water and killing you because you could not swim back fast enough. Anything to do with data bases in WoW was complete fail at launch. Still WoW was best design game at the time and that is what pull the people in but the lag was horrible. The best launch for a MMO was City of Heros to bad that game got repetitive and some classes such as controllers and tanks could not solo.

 

[aigomorla]

ahhhhhhhhh the 60 days is gone?

Bah.... im finally done with ME2 and was thinking of going back to STO.

But without the deal, forget it.. i guess im waiting for SupremeCommander 2.

 

[Crow550]

Enjoy.

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/03/03/game-review-star-trek-online/

 

[child of wonder]

"We have a holodeck on my Bird of Prey and we have to hose it out nightly!"

lol

 

[Slew Foot]

Really? Something is getting cheaper the older it gets? Whod of thunk it.

 

[Raduque]

Really? Something is getting cheaper the older it gets? Whod of thunk it.

Since when is it typical a game drops $10-20 less than a month after it comes out? STO came out on the 2nd of Febuary. The price drop was twenty-three days later.