Color me suprised.
Ok, maybe not.
Before I even got invited to Closed Beta, I had severe doubts and reservations about STO. Many of those doubts and reservations I voiced, loudly. Most of the time I was shouted down as a pessimist or a non-believer or whatever.
And yet, nearly every single thing I said, came true, in one form or another. I did an audio segment for Hailing Frequency about a year before launch, talking about the keys to a successful MMO, and learning from the mistakes of past MMOs such as Warhammer and AoC, while also talking about keeping the heart and soul of Trek intact for this game.
While I have no illusions that anyone at Cryptic even heard what I had to say, it is as if they listened to that audio segment, and did EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of everything that I said they shouldn't do. Not only did they do the opposite of what I said they shouldn't do, they have embraced it wholeheartedly and are dancing a jig to the funeral dirge on the decks of the ship as it goes down.
When I got my Closed Beta invite, I figured I'd give it a try. One last chance for Cryptic to prove me wrong.
For all intents and purposes, Closed Beta was the biggest disappointment I had ever experienced in gaming. Not because of technical issues, bugs, etc. Those things can be fixed, and worked past, and are expected in a Beta Test. My disappointment came from the souless entity that is STO, bearing the name of my favorite sci-fi franchise. Heck, even the legal issues and bankruptcy of Cheynenne Mountain (the former developers of Stargate Worlds) didn't compare. The game never made me feel "the Trekness". It didn't make any attempts to capture that which made Star Trek great. Instead, it took a flawed idea, that only combat sells, and wrapped Star Trek around it to try and sell it. But the Trek franchise was never at it's best when the focus was on war. War, combat and pew-pew did not endear the franchise to fans for over 40 years. Cryptic didn't seem to recognize that though. To top it off, they didn't use seasoned Trek writers, they didn't consult with Trek veterans that had been with the franchise. Instead they relied on novices that produced nothing but fan-fic level garbage and tried to pass it off as better than anything we ever saw in the series. Unfortunately for Cryptic, most fans were not fooled.
As Falin put it, the essence of Trek was not captured by this game. Sure, for those that care nothing for an RP experience, it might be a satisfactory game. But for your devout MMO players, especially those with a vested interest in the IP, your MMO has to have heart. You have to give your players an experience that immerses them into the very world the game is trying to portray, and STO utterly failed to do that, and never seemed to want to correct that either. The story was bad, the mechanics of your interaction with the world around you were bad, and the RP based game elements that contribute to immersiveness were non-existent. Cryptic seemed to gear the game towards the action pew-pew gamer, and they are reaping the result of that gearing as we speak. The action pew-pew gamer gets bored easily, and leaves just as quickly. Many people said this would happen, me included. Guess what gang? This is what it looks like. This is what it looks like to alienate fans, in favor of FotM (Flavor of the Month) gamers, only to have the FotM gamers get bored, and leave as quickly as the fans did.
STO is dead. Or at the very least, suffering a severe case of dying. Dying a very painful death, that could have been avoided.
I think the biggest suprise of all is not that STO is suffering, but that it hasn't suffered more. Frankly, 100k subscribers should be seen as a blessing by Cryptic, because it could have (and probably should have, or maybe even is) much, much worse. In all honesty, I figured that maybe at the most, STO would have 15,000 to 20,000 right now, including the lifers.
Oh and for those that are wondering, I never bought STO. I didn't play it at launch. Closed Beta told me everything I needed to know about the direction of the game, and it's fate after launch. I am very glad that I didn't buy it, or give Cryptic a single cent. Just my time as a tester, and my payment for my time, was fair warning to not take the cruise on the sinking ship.
RR
