This, a very unlikely yet grim situation, is what came to mind when I saw the 1000 day vets being slapped in the face.
PWE gives away all vet rewards to anyone who buys a lifetime subscription, getting a cash burst.
PWE has the vet rewards put in the c store.
PWE shuts down STO.
Yes, it is a doomsday scenario and a disturbing one at that, but this is what came to mind. And even more disturbingly it is given support by the fact that part one is coming true, and all the loyal members are getting dumped. I can imagine PWE standing behind a desk collecting $200 per person, handing out other people's hard earned rewards, and laughing at the 1000 day vets.
I would have gotten a refund if I hadn't had the misguided faith that Cryptic/PW would actually turn this game around, instead I am forced to watch as they continue to pile-drive and do unspeakable things to what was a promising and hopeful game and universe...
If anything PW have saught to eradicate us old timers and remove every benefit and shred of respect for those of us who've played since early beta. Hell, I'm apparently too young an account to make new posts on top of it all, and it's 2 months since I made it a PW connected account, and I've lost count how many years since I created it back at Cryptic.
Fair enough, COH is dead and SWG has gone open source with servers popping up as we speak running the pre-NGE software. TBH, my SWG disks have never been out of the cellophane as I don't do MMO's (until this one).
But 3 is all you got ? I didn't realize WoW was still around and Ultima has been thru so many revisions I hesitate to even call it the same game. I've only been here for a few months and I don't see 3 more years in STO, my congrads for your 'faith', but nothing for your risk.
I can imagine PWE standing behind a desk collecting $200 per person, handing out other people's hard earned rewards, and laughing at the 1000 day vets.
You forgot the part where she detaches her jaw and swallows a puppy whole, proving that PWE are actually shape-shifting space lizards.
How would you feel if all of sudden all of the high-end STF gear wound up in the C-Store where it could be bought with Zen instead of grinding out hundreds of STF runs?
Is this a trick question? Hundred runs taking about 2 weeks minimum or a few hours at work and then get to just enjoy the game.. hrm decisions!
"Since Star Trek Online launched in February 2010, we have thanked our loyal subscribers and lifetime members through the Veteran's Rewards program. We know you have many options in choosing where to spend your time, so it means so much to us that you choose to spend it here."
Yes Cryptic .... we can tell the true Vets mean "so much" to you .
Now if you don't mind I'll go and delete that interview with Kestrel ... .
I'm not in the mood to hear you people right now . Any of you .
Maybe it's just me but this completely invalidates Veteran's rewards for TRUE vets. Doesn't matter if this is only a temporary promotion since you can always bring back and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we didn't see a sale like this once a quarter for a quick money grab. And the ship, although very cool, was supposed to be for 1000 day vets, NOT EVERYONE who buys a life subscription. I'm at 983 days and this really sucks. So much time wasted...
The LTS perk should have been different than the 1000 day perk. As an LTS with much less than 1000 days I feel slightly cheated... I want something unique that says "YEAH I SPENT $300 ON AN LTS BABY!"
Maybe a Odyssey-X dreadnought that fires a WTF-CRITICAL LOLpedo or a +2 Atrox with four launch bays or something along those lines.
I will enjoy my LTS perks when they become active but believe me, Cryptic... it's not what I asked for, and you managed to enrage quite a few people for little gain.
So as a lifetime member, I get the 1000 veteran's ship when this goes live instead of waiting an additional ~395 days.
Cool. Thanks. I'll be sure to throw some money into the Zen Store.
What Cryptic/PWE is doing is just business product life cycle. As the product matures, a company provides additional value to its existing product to extend its life. Cryptic would like to bring in additional revenue, and its sitting on virtual items it has already made. Lifetime members are already getting the rewards, only the time frame has decreased.
In truth, the money you paid for your lifetime membership is most likely already spent.
I bought a new car in 2007 and latest 2012 version has an Aux port for an MP3 player, power windows/locks, and ABS standard. The price is relatively the same to what I paid in 2007. The newer version has additional value to maintain market share and to justify relative sales price. The car manufacturer needs to sell new cars.
Using the structure of this example, upcoming 1,000 day STO lifetime/Gold members paid cash for access to a game. It went from a sub access to an enhanced gold access relationship. Everyone spent from $199 to $299 to $494.67+ US currency depending on how they met their sub requirements. As the game has progressed, additional items were developed and are now going to be standard with lifetime membership.
Now should everything be included? Probably not, the special forum title with the 1,000 days should be withheld, as should the in game titles until the specific number of days are completed. Why not, its vanity and that has a certain value to people. It doesn't take away from anyone experience. You've been here a 1,000 days, let it show. The four sentences Cryptic has written about this is light on specific details.
Do you think the NPC Borg cubes, the endless Breen cruisers, and the Swordmasters I simulate killing can tell I'm in a new Chimera vs a RA Patrol Escort, or that my boff is an android and not a common Bolian engineer? The bulk of PVE is a solitary experience. Cryptic's publicly admitted that PVP involves a smaller portion of the STO population. There is a possible balance argument line here, but I don't have enough interest or information to make it.
Do we really have to treat this as a zero sum game? Does another player having something you have diminish your satisfaction with the STO experience? Lets concentrate on the real problems. The lack of content, lack of bug hunting/fixing, a development team that was smaller than a well staffed Starbucks. The solutions to the problems will require funding, and that is only coming from revenue. Revenue enough to cover operational cost, project development, and credit line repayment. If there is anything left over, that is profit. Profit or even expectation of future profit keeps the servers running.
I look forward to the 1,827 days title, that will be a good five year mission.
Perhaps we should look outward for validation. How is the Star Wars Galaxy community enjoying their game?
I really enjoyed the ST:G game right up until the end, and tbf for such an old game that saddly got cut down to make room for a far weaker worse and hollow game, which clearly grew from the same seeds as STO, it is and was still far preferable to this... Those developers certainly knew better than to steamroller it's player base (Ignoring NGE arguments here).
Perhaps we should look outward for validation. How is the Star Wars Galaxy community enjoying their game?
In response to your statement above let me just say I was enjoying SWG just fine (with a paid, monthly subscription to multiple SoE games) until they dropped the NGE and flatly stated they weren't gonna roll back.
SoE killed the existant player base in the hopes of attracting WoW-like numbers of players - they failed and killed SWG in the process.
Sometimes, if it's enough you just gotta be thankful for what you have.
Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Everquest... there are some pretty old games out there.
My blog! Zen|Dilithium tracking on Thursdays http://samonmaui.blogspot.com As a lifetime member of STO, I officially became a financial liability as of April 2012 when compared to a subscriber.
If you didn't enjoy the game, why did you play for 983 days?
I wouldn't have played if I didn't enjoy it. Since there is nothing really tangible in the game, one of the ways to gain satisfaction is through accomplishments. No different than in real life. You don't play football for the first time and all of sudden out of no where you become a starting "veteran" the same day. You can't equate "new" with "veteran". You have to earn the name veteran. Discount the life subscriptions and move on. I have no beef with that but giving ALL the vet rewards to new life subscribers is ridiculous. Now I realize that nothing in this game has to be earned. At some point in time they will offer everything for a price. So much for converting the game to F2P. Between this and stupid lockboxes the game is now nothing more than a con artist's shell game waiting for the next mark.
Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Everquest... there are some pretty old games out there.
Also Guildwars and EVE Online more than match the 6 year mark.
"I don't know about it, so it doesn't exist!"
I did like someone else's suggestion of putting STF Elite gear on the C-store though. Same concept. Quick cashgrab. Elite STFers shouldn't whine cause they don't actually lose their gear, do they? Just a sizable portion of their life spent doing STFs could've been replaced with putting in one hour of extra time at work.
Now I realize that nothing in this game has to be earned.
If by "earn" you mean "pay money and take up space on the server", then yeah. You didn't actually DO anything that new LTS people will not have done to get them, except enjoy the game for hundreds and hundreds of days.
I did like someone else's suggestion of putting STF Elite gear on the C-store though. Same concept. Quick cashgrab. Elite STFers shouldn't whine cause they don't actually lose their gear, do they? Just a sizable portion of their life spent doing STFs could've been replaced with putting in one hour of extra time at work.
Let's put aside the fact that spending an hour at work is actually doing something somewhat worthwhile or productive for someone and is thus automatically and objectively a superior accomplishment to ANY form of gaming.
Would I support putting the STF gear in the C-Store? No. Because you don't directly purchase the gear in-game. It's a reward for an actual gameplay task, albeit a particularly pointless and tedious one, if you aren't into that sort of thing.
The vet rewards are not. You purchase the vet rewards. Directly. They are not an accomplishment at all. They are something you buy, and then sit around and wait for delivery. They are removing the delivery time for players that buy them all at once. This is good.
I don't know of ANY MMO thats been around for 6 years, and if this offer never happened I KNOW I would never see this ship in my hands.
Sorry, I don't have faith in this games longevity, and now have no faith or compassion for it's subscribers.
There are plenty of MMOs past bthe 6 year mark:
Ultima Online (15 years)
EverQuest (13 years)
Dark Age of Camelot (11 years)
EVE Online (9 years)
City Of Heroes (closing on 11/30/12 - but had an 8 year run - efforts to save it continuing)
World of ******** (8 years)
So, yeah, MMOs can go on WAY past 6 years. It's not that uncommon. As for STO - as long as the JJ Abrams Star Trek film series is chugging along, I don't see CBS pulling the plug on STO as it affords them both a revenue stream and built in advertising that they can cross bill with Paramount (they had a cross promotion with the first film when it released.) The cast signed a 3 film deal, and unless the second film really tanks, I think we'll see a third, meaning this game probably has a minimum of 5 years remaining from today, if not more.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
If by "earn" you mean "pay money and take up space on the server", then yeah. You didn't actually DO anything that new LTS people will not have done to get them, except enjoy the game for hundreds and hundreds of days.
Vet rewards had to be earned hence the name Vet Rewards and I have been a lifer since day one of this game. Now you just buy Vet rewards. Stupid me for not seeing this coming.
I wouldn't have played if I didn't enjoy it. Since there is nothing really tangible in the game, one of the ways to gain satisfaction is through accomplishments. No different than in real life. You don't play football for the first time and all of sudden out of no where you become a starting "veteran" the same day. You can't equate "new" with "veteran". You have to earn the name veteran. Discount the life subscriptions and move on. I have no beef with that but giving ALL the vet rewards to new life subscribers is ridiculous..
Can I give this a plus 10,000?
It completely negates veteran status when a new player can just shell out and gain it automatically.
And no offense to those life time subs who will no doubt enjoy the new perks they gain but I and others have been subscribed for 1000 or nearly 1000 days as gold members. Along with veterans we have gained perks for our time spent playing.
That life time subs would eventually get these rewards is besides the point. They have not put in the time to gain them. In 21 days I gain my 1000 day status. Tomorrow the poster earlier that has been around for 300 days gains the status I will not see for another 20 days.
Its absurd and frankly insulting. Others should not have to suffer diminished value just so another group can get a new benefit.
Vet rewards had to be earned hence the name Vet Rewards and I have been a lifer since day one of this game. Now you just buy Vet rewards. Stupid me for not seeing this coming.
The only thing you did to "earn" them was give Cryptic your money.
Now is the perfect time to pick up a Lifetime Subscription to STO so you can play forever as a Gold Member and never pay a monthly subscription fee again!
...but, this is a 'Free to Play' (Pay to Win) game.
There will never-ever be monthly subscription fees. Ever.
If you guys just so happen to change that formula, I can always head over to your direct competitor. "Star Wars: The Old Republic" will become a 'Free to Play' game within the next few months.
Seriously what was the downside for this from a company perspective? They sell a lot of new LTS and those that had a bit of the rug pulled out from under them - what are you going to do - cancel that LTS you paid for? No you just have to sit back(or bend over) and accept it.
Comments
PWE gives away all vet rewards to anyone who buys a lifetime subscription, getting a cash burst.
PWE has the vet rewards put in the c store.
PWE shuts down STO.
Yes, it is a doomsday scenario and a disturbing one at that, but this is what came to mind. And even more disturbingly it is given support by the fact that part one is coming true, and all the loyal members are getting dumped. I can imagine PWE standing behind a desk collecting $200 per person, handing out other people's hard earned rewards, and laughing at the 1000 day vets.
If anything PW have saught to eradicate us old timers and remove every benefit and shred of respect for those of us who've played since early beta. Hell, I'm apparently too young an account to make new posts on top of it all, and it's 2 months since I made it a PW connected account, and I've lost count how many years since I created it back at Cryptic.
Fair enough, COH is dead and SWG has gone open source with servers popping up as we speak running the pre-NGE software. TBH, my SWG disks have never been out of the cellophane as I don't do MMO's (until this one).
But 3 is all you got ? I didn't realize WoW was still around and Ultima has been thru so many revisions I hesitate to even call it the same game. I've only been here for a few months and I don't see 3 more years in STO, my congrads for your 'faith', but nothing for your risk.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
You forgot the part where she detaches her jaw and swallows a puppy whole, proving that PWE are actually shape-shifting space lizards.
Is this a trick question? Hundred runs taking about 2 weeks minimum or a few hours at work and then get to just enjoy the game.. hrm decisions!
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
Oh yes, I forgot about that part.
EXACTLY !
I'm looking forward to Cryptic selling Tier 5 Starbases too .
What's that ?
It will never happen ?
Heh . :cool:
Yes Cryptic .... we can tell the true Vets mean "so much" to you .
Now if you don't mind I'll go and delete that interview with Kestrel ... .
I'm not in the mood to hear you people right now . Any of you .
If you didn't enjoy the game, why did you play for 983 days?
"Last Engage! Magical Girl Origami-san" is in print! Now with three times more rainbows.
Support the "Armored Unicorn" vehicle initiative today!
Thanks for Harajuku. Now let's get a real "Magical Girl" costume!
Fleet Tactical Escort Retrofit (my ship):
10 consoles
And how many does the Chimera have? 9. Balance is a word that does not exist in STO.
Maybe a Odyssey-X dreadnought that fires a WTF-CRITICAL LOLpedo or a +2 Atrox with four launch bays or something along those lines.
I will enjoy my LTS perks when they become active but believe me, Cryptic... it's not what I asked for, and you managed to enrage quite a few people for little gain.
Cool. Thanks. I'll be sure to throw some money into the Zen Store.
What Cryptic/PWE is doing is just business product life cycle. As the product matures, a company provides additional value to its existing product to extend its life. Cryptic would like to bring in additional revenue, and its sitting on virtual items it has already made. Lifetime members are already getting the rewards, only the time frame has decreased.
In truth, the money you paid for your lifetime membership is most likely already spent.
I bought a new car in 2007 and latest 2012 version has an Aux port for an MP3 player, power windows/locks, and ABS standard. The price is relatively the same to what I paid in 2007. The newer version has additional value to maintain market share and to justify relative sales price. The car manufacturer needs to sell new cars.
Using the structure of this example, upcoming 1,000 day STO lifetime/Gold members paid cash for access to a game. It went from a sub access to an enhanced gold access relationship. Everyone spent from $199 to $299 to $494.67+ US currency depending on how they met their sub requirements. As the game has progressed, additional items were developed and are now going to be standard with lifetime membership.
Now should everything be included? Probably not, the special forum title with the 1,000 days should be withheld, as should the in game titles until the specific number of days are completed. Why not, its vanity and that has a certain value to people. It doesn't take away from anyone experience. You've been here a 1,000 days, let it show. The four sentences Cryptic has written about this is light on specific details.
Do you think the NPC Borg cubes, the endless Breen cruisers, and the Swordmasters I simulate killing can tell I'm in a new Chimera vs a RA Patrol Escort, or that my boff is an android and not a common Bolian engineer? The bulk of PVE is a solitary experience. Cryptic's publicly admitted that PVP involves a smaller portion of the STO population. There is a possible balance argument line here, but I don't have enough interest or information to make it.
Do we really have to treat this as a zero sum game? Does another player having something you have diminish your satisfaction with the STO experience? Lets concentrate on the real problems. The lack of content, lack of bug hunting/fixing, a development team that was smaller than a well staffed Starbucks. The solutions to the problems will require funding, and that is only coming from revenue. Revenue enough to cover operational cost, project development, and credit line repayment. If there is anything left over, that is profit. Profit or even expectation of future profit keeps the servers running.
I look forward to the 1,827 days title, that will be a good five year mission.
Perhaps we should look outward for validation. How is the Star Wars Galaxy community enjoying their game?
In response to your statement above let me just say I was enjoying SWG just fine (with a paid, monthly subscription to multiple SoE games) until they dropped the NGE and flatly stated they weren't gonna roll back.
SoE killed the existant player base in the hopes of attracting WoW-like numbers of players - they failed and killed SWG in the process.
Sometimes, if it's enough you just gotta be thankful for what you have.
Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Everquest... there are some pretty old games out there.
My blog! Zen|Dilithium tracking on Thursdays
http://samonmaui.blogspot.com
As a lifetime member of STO, I officially became a financial liability as of April 2012 when compared to a subscriber.
I wouldn't have played if I didn't enjoy it. Since there is nothing really tangible in the game, one of the ways to gain satisfaction is through accomplishments. No different than in real life. You don't play football for the first time and all of sudden out of no where you become a starting "veteran" the same day. You can't equate "new" with "veteran". You have to earn the name veteran. Discount the life subscriptions and move on. I have no beef with that but giving ALL the vet rewards to new life subscribers is ridiculous. Now I realize that nothing in this game has to be earned. At some point in time they will offer everything for a price. So much for converting the game to F2P. Between this and stupid lockboxes the game is now nothing more than a con artist's shell game waiting for the next mark.
Also Guildwars and EVE Online more than match the 6 year mark.
"I don't know about it, so it doesn't exist!"
I did like someone else's suggestion of putting STF Elite gear on the C-store though. Same concept. Quick cashgrab. Elite STFers shouldn't whine cause they don't actually lose their gear, do they? Just a sizable portion of their life spent doing STFs could've been replaced with putting in one hour of extra time at work.
If by "earn" you mean "pay money and take up space on the server", then yeah. You didn't actually DO anything that new LTS people will not have done to get them, except enjoy the game for hundreds and hundreds of days.
Let's put aside the fact that spending an hour at work is actually doing something somewhat worthwhile or productive for someone and is thus automatically and objectively a superior accomplishment to ANY form of gaming.
Would I support putting the STF gear in the C-Store? No. Because you don't directly purchase the gear in-game. It's a reward for an actual gameplay task, albeit a particularly pointless and tedious one, if you aren't into that sort of thing.
The vet rewards are not. You purchase the vet rewards. Directly. They are not an accomplishment at all. They are something you buy, and then sit around and wait for delivery. They are removing the delivery time for players that buy them all at once. This is good.
There are plenty of MMOs past bthe 6 year mark:
Ultima Online (15 years)
EverQuest (13 years)
Dark Age of Camelot (11 years)
EVE Online (9 years)
City Of Heroes (closing on 11/30/12 - but had an 8 year run - efforts to save it continuing)
World of ******** (8 years)
So, yeah, MMOs can go on WAY past 6 years. It's not that uncommon. As for STO - as long as the JJ Abrams Star Trek film series is chugging along, I don't see CBS pulling the plug on STO as it affords them both a revenue stream and built in advertising that they can cross bill with Paramount (they had a cross promotion with the first film when it released.) The cast signed a 3 film deal, and unless the second film really tanks, I think we'll see a third, meaning this game probably has a minimum of 5 years remaining from today, if not more.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Vet rewards had to be earned hence the name Vet Rewards and I have been a lifer since day one of this game. Now you just buy Vet rewards. Stupid me for not seeing this coming.
Ha Ha that's cute - but untrue - I think they stand to make money on this.
Can I give this a plus 10,000?
It completely negates veteran status when a new player can just shell out and gain it automatically.
And no offense to those life time subs who will no doubt enjoy the new perks they gain but I and others have been subscribed for 1000 or nearly 1000 days as gold members. Along with veterans we have gained perks for our time spent playing.
That life time subs would eventually get these rewards is besides the point. They have not put in the time to gain them. In 21 days I gain my 1000 day status. Tomorrow the poster earlier that has been around for 300 days gains the status I will not see for another 20 days.
Its absurd and frankly insulting. Others should not have to suffer diminished value just so another group can get a new benefit.
The only thing you did to "earn" them was give Cryptic your money.
There will never-ever be monthly subscription fees. Ever.
If you guys just so happen to change that formula, I can always head over to your direct competitor. "Star Wars: The Old Republic" will become a 'Free to Play' game within the next few months.
SWTOR announced F2P on its way.