I was playing Sins through Impluse and saw a video teaser for STO so I watched it and thought it looked fun went to the website and saw the Romulan FE and thought they'd added Romulans. Tried out the tutorial, had fun so bought a Lifetime Subscription, sadly no Rommies but still fun and worth it.
Like the Romulan Alliance System? Of course you do, it sounds fine to you because you aren't Romulans, you're FED or KDF who are going to make a Romulan alt, it makes a HUGE difference in perspective.
I have been playing space explorer/sims going back to Space Quest on DOS, and thought I'd check out STO. I kicked the tires for a couple of weeks last year, but did nto get into it. It's not really a space sim, but I am interested in some of the game mechanics, so that is what I'm looking at now.
I suspect this game would be one of the thousand dead F2P titles if it didnt say STAR TREK in the name.
I was walking home from school one day and this guy on the street corner behind the playground said "Hey, kid. Try this. It will make you feel good. First one is free." :eek:
Seriously, I knew about STO from the beginning, but the mediocre reviews and monthly subscription kept me away. One day around mid-season 6 I was bored and decided to see if it was still going. Noticed it was FTP. Downloaded it immediately.
<-- Lifelong Star Trek fan - just look at my avatar.
Heard about STO when it was new and joined the Open Beta. I pre-ordered the GameStop bundle to get the beautiful TOS Connie.
I was a Gold member (aka paid subscriber) until some time after F2P came out; I have the 700-day award. I considered the Lifetime sub but in the early days the prospects were iffy, so I held off.
Once I reached RA it became repetitive, so now I only play ever now and then. I came back for the 3rd Anniversary so a lot of the content and other changes are still "new" for me.
I was playing Champions Online and the game going F2P came up in zone. I joined when it did. I feel I should give them some money at some point since its been a pretty enjoyable year.
At the time I started playing, my old HP laptop (TRIBBLE HP, it's a TRIBBLE brand now) had just blown up, with the motherboard fried.
Before the laptop fried, I had a whole ton of mods attached to Star Trek: Bridge Commander - ie Excelsior bridges, playable Keldons, DS9FX Xtended, even my own mod "FastProbe", etc. Since the laptop blew up, I developed a craving for ship captaining again.
That's when I started playing STO. I heard the terrible reviews about the game years ago, but after searching again, the reviews seemed to be more positive since it went F2P. So, using a borrowed computer, I downloaded and played it. Never looked back since*, even when I bought my current laptop, I still play the game - and it's one year and counting.
*Although I have gone back and played ST:BC, but it is simply too old and crashes frequently.
stardestroyer001, Admiral, Explorers Fury PvE/PvP Fleet | Retired PvP Player
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9 My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
I generally dislike MMOs due to the absurd time commitments required and their pay structure that is totally out of touch with the rest of the video game world (I don't believe MMO is a sustainable format in general and I think 95% of them will be dead by the end of this decade), but I am a lifelong Star Trek fan and decided I was willing to swallow the giant time sink and give it a go. Without the Star Trek license, there's 0 chance I'd have ever played it. Signed up shortly before Season 7 launched.
Overall it's an alright game that could legitimately be great, but isn't yet. The most frustrating kind of game. I sincerely mean a lot of my critique on this forum as constructive criticism as I honestly believe there's something to this game, if they fill out the features they have well.
I hope that season 8 will be a good one. I'm sort of waiting to see what direction the game is going before deciding if I really want to commit to it long-term or not. It looks like the game is on the verge of big things happening in one direction or the other. If I think season 8 is good, cool. If not... well, I've had some fun and my fleetmates are good people.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
I have always been a Star Trek fan. Then I wandered in to my local video game retailer one day in the fall of '09. They told me if I pre-ordered now, I would get a key for the open beta. I threw down for the collector's edition, liked the beta and bought a lifetime subscription on launch day. More than three years later I can say it has been quite an enjoyable ride.
I had been interested in Star Trek Online ever since I heard it was coming. I had a couple of coworkers bugging me everyday to get the game and join them. I finally did. Now, I am the only one still playing. Mainly because I was able to get the LTS and they ended up having other RL issues to drive them away. One keeps telling me he is going to come back but he has been saying that for a year now. I will believe it when I see it.
I was tracking it before Cryptic acquired it. I was so hyped that I started playing Pirates of the Burning Sea for the ship combat (strangely, the games were in fact similar). Besides SWG was coming to a close, TOR was a waaaaaaays off (and not as interesting now).
I beta tested STO and stuck around - will be here when they have to close the barn.
I had been following the game's development since the day Perpetual first announced they were doing a Star Trek MMO (even got registered for their closed beta phase - scheduled for late 2007 .)
When things at Perpetual started going south (and you could tell by the reports they honestly had nothing beyond really rough concepts after 3 years); I figured the game would just be vaporware. then came the announcement that Cryptic had acquired the rights from Perpetual (and approval from CBS) -- and I was still concerned because I didn't now if they could do a decent job on a big name IP -- as at the time, their history was CoX; the cancelled Marvel Universe Online, that became Champions Online - and at the time they announced STO; Champions Online was just getting into closed beta and some of the leaks weren't too favorable for that game at the time.
Still, I signed up, and kept up with Cryptic's development of both games, got into the CO beta (and as a person who was also a 4 color comic book fan from the Kirby era; was one of the first 300 to beta test CoH back in 2003 -- and then played the release version for 5 years, and who played the pencil and paper version of Champions from its first saddle-stitched release back in 1981) - I saw enough potential in CO to decide to get a LTS for it based on its own merits. The fact they promised that CO LTSers would be auto-invited to the STO closed beta was a WELCOME perk; but had I not liked the potential I saw in CO, I wouldn't have gotten the LTS for the STO beta alone.
then in October 2009 - I got the e-mail stating I was invited to the STO closed beta phase; and have been playing ever since (although the closed beta was itself NOWHERE NEAR a 24/7 beta. )
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..."
i left video games back in the early to mid 80's. back when you played in a place called an "arcade" and needed many quarters. finished college, did all the grown up stuff and never looked back.
one day, my wife gets an ipad2. we like it. just for fun i tried a game i had read an article about; how well it did financially, being an accountant and all. i bought the game, Infinity Blade 2. not bad.
so i'm checking my e-mail one day and i see this e-mail concerning STO. okay, i'm not a gamer, but have always loved Star Trek. i was raised on TOS. yes, saw it first run.
i decided to try the game. kind of cheesy at first, but soon i am addicted. that was almost exactly one year ago.
and best of all it is free to play. however, for a free to play game i have some how spent several hundred dollars. what went wrong?
STO is all i play now and yes the ipad is still cool, but you can't play STO on it. back to my laptop.
My brother got me into it b/c he thought playing klingon battle cruisers was baddass and after trying it out, I had to agree with him. What kept us playing until early 2011 was the hope that the KDF would be completed and that the Romulan faction would be released. Since then, my bro quit playing STO (thinks it's all just a bunch of fluff and lock boxes now-no substance) and I'm barely hanging on. I don't log-in nearly as much as I used to compared to when we played in seasons 2, 3, and 4. In fact, I log-in mostly nowadays to do resource grinding and rep tree completion. But the game has certainly lost the fun factor it once had when we knew a FE episode series was just around the corner. I had faith that Dan could turn the STO ship around when he came back to take the captain's chair but now, I'm beginning to think that faith was misplaced. Dan and company continue to make decisions that greatly anger the player base-season 7 STF reward and loot table changes, as well as the 2013 St. Valentine's Fleet Mark Massacre are just a few examples. Unless I see a legitimate and transparent solution to the fleet system disproportionately favoring larger fleets and more story content for the KDF, I don't see this game going very far in 2013. Even the teaser for the march beneath raptor's wings seems superficial as we still have no proof of a major expansion and what it entails for the KDF and Romulans. I'm very skeptical at this point, and I will remain so until the devs demonstrate that they can handle the star-trek franchise properly and fairly.
I originally heard about STO from one of the people in my star trek roleplaying club when it was first being designed. I didn't actually start taking interest in the game until it was announced that the game was going free to play, and that's when I signed up to play. after going through the game for a year, I can say that I'm happy to have a game that has as much freedom as this one allows.
City of Heroes closed and I can only play one MMO at a time. As a long-time Star Trek fan I gave it a shot even though most of my CoX group moved to Champions Online (superheroes and all).
Why i came to Star Trek Online and still playing it...
As a Star Trek Fan i had to test it in Mai 2010 and liked it enough to get some month later a Lifetime ...
And i dont like EVE-Online so mutch because if your not so cheap ship gets blowed to peaces you have to buy a new one again and this could maybe even more expensive because prices changed and i have to pay there every month... so because i dont like other MMO or they are not made yet ... they wanted to do a Stargate Online Game but never did so i still play STO even if i dont like the free to play so mutch... and changing it to Free to Play dont helped get much new Content fast into the game so i dont see why free to play at all, then for players its only worser now ...
18 Cpt on the way to 60: 14 of them are already 50 or over 50, one is 60 and 3 almost 43
Subscribed For: 4 years 5 months 20 days at 26.10.2014
Saw the beta many moons ago and absolutely hated it. The fact that it was pay to play also turned me off so I didn't touch it. Two years later a friend of mine told me it was going Free to Play so I decided to give it a run the day it went F2P.
Im a huge sci fi fan and have loved both star trek and star wars for many years.
When STO came out i didn't have the dough to buy it at the time and once i did i decided to download the demo/trail they used to have but my pc wouldn't install it (to be fair my old pc sucked) so i left it in the wind.
I eventually herd of The old Republic was was overjoyed of a new SW MMO (i had played Galaxies before the NGe and loved it) but after getting 6 characters to max lvl Biowares lack of any endgame content and no side missions to do (for those lazy days) took their tool, when it went FTP i was shocked at the severe limitations it had and the locks for thing that just seemed crazy ment i just couldn't pay or play it anymore for free.
Then i was looking around got Guild wars 2 (its ok but i love sci-fi more) and decided "meh sto is free if i hate it i dont care i haven't payed for it".
After only 2 days i decided to sub i cant believe i had waited so long to sign up, this game isn't just a star trek fans dream its moo heaven, my biggest joy is the foundry and i think its a fab idea this way there's never a long gap of new stuff to do while devs build things u always have new adventures everyday.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
Like the title says, I'm wondering how people got into playing STO. Do people play because they enjoy sci-fi mmorpgs, are huge fans of star trek, or just stumbled upon this game and decided to try it out.
I have always been a sci fi fan, born in the early 70's i got to experience alot of original t.v. sci-fi, through the years i had always enjoyed star trek immensely, from the original series to the movies, to the next generation and beyond, i have a huge collection of star trek games in amongst my many other games and had always used Gamespot.com as a way to track what games i had, early in 2011 i was browsing the slist of available star trek games when i noticed a game in that list i hadnt seen before, STAR TREK ONLINE. at first i was like oh wow, then realised i had to pay monthly to play it was a concept that i was not used to, i had never played an mmo before and saw this as a strange way to own the game and still shell out money on a monthly basis. so i put it on the backburner for a while till about a month or 2 later when i saw that i could download the demo version,so i downloaded it, patched her up and sat down the next morning to try this game out. I was truly blown away, sure i could only do the 2 beginning missions at that time which was all the demo would allow , i was in awe of the space surrounding me, fellow players flying around me, and the groundwork of vulcan at that time, (vulcan has changed alot since they did the re-mastered missions).
once i had created my guy and done the first couple parts, i then lusted for more.
here was a game that i had found incorporated nearly every element of the previous star trek games i had ever played, from space combat to ground combat, but then allowing us to dock at starbases and interact with other players from all around the world. i was in awe of everything that surrounded me, during that week i went shopping with the wife and happened to pop into a j.b. hi-fi store, there in the cheap bin, was a copy of star trek online collectors edition for $20 dollars, i grabbed that sucker and held it close, no one was getting this baby off me, so home we went, i re-installed the game from the disk
added in my code and then looked at the options of subscription for i wanted a part of this world, i subscribed for 4 months before i took the plunge and truly committed with a lifetime subscription, i now approach my 2nd anniversary of S.T.O. on the 21st of march.
sure there have been many changes good and bad along the way, but im still here with no regrets, i have met many people and made many friends from around the world.
and for that i am truly thankful to the world of star trek online being here and continuing on for many more years to come..
Comments
I suspect this game would be one of the thousand dead F2P titles if it didnt say STAR TREK in the name.
Seriously, I knew about STO from the beginning, but the mediocre reviews and monthly subscription kept me away. One day around mid-season 6 I was bored and decided to see if it was still going. Noticed it was FTP. Downloaded it immediately.
Heard about STO when it was new and joined the Open Beta. I pre-ordered the GameStop bundle to get the beautiful TOS Connie.
I was a Gold member (aka paid subscriber) until some time after F2P came out; I have the 700-day award. I considered the Lifetime sub but in the early days the prospects were iffy, so I held off.
Once I reached RA it became repetitive, so now I only play ever now and then. I came back for the 3rd Anniversary so a lot of the content and other changes are still "new" for me.
I have been loving the game ever since even during launch when your end-game content was B-tran cluster.
At the time I started playing, my old HP laptop (TRIBBLE HP, it's a TRIBBLE brand now) had just blown up, with the motherboard fried.
Before the laptop fried, I had a whole ton of mods attached to Star Trek: Bridge Commander - ie Excelsior bridges, playable Keldons, DS9FX Xtended, even my own mod "FastProbe", etc. Since the laptop blew up, I developed a craving for ship captaining again.
That's when I started playing STO. I heard the terrible reviews about the game years ago, but after searching again, the reviews seemed to be more positive since it went F2P. So, using a borrowed computer, I downloaded and played it. Never looked back since*, even when I bought my current laptop, I still play the game - and it's one year and counting.
*Although I have gone back and played ST:BC, but it is simply too old and crashes frequently.
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Overall it's an alright game that could legitimately be great, but isn't yet. The most frustrating kind of game. I sincerely mean a lot of my critique on this forum as constructive criticism as I honestly believe there's something to this game, if they fill out the features they have well.
I hope that season 8 will be a good one. I'm sort of waiting to see what direction the game is going before deciding if I really want to commit to it long-term or not. It looks like the game is on the verge of big things happening in one direction or the other. If I think season 8 is good, cool. If not... well, I've had some fun and my fleetmates are good people.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
I beta tested STO and stuck around - will be here when they have to close the barn.
Been here ever since.
R.I.P
When things at Perpetual started going south (and you could tell by the reports they honestly had nothing beyond really rough concepts after 3 years); I figured the game would just be vaporware. then came the announcement that Cryptic had acquired the rights from Perpetual (and approval from CBS) -- and I was still concerned because I didn't now if they could do a decent job on a big name IP -- as at the time, their history was CoX; the cancelled Marvel Universe Online, that became Champions Online - and at the time they announced STO; Champions Online was just getting into closed beta and some of the leaks weren't too favorable for that game at the time.
Still, I signed up, and kept up with Cryptic's development of both games, got into the CO beta (and as a person who was also a 4 color comic book fan from the Kirby era; was one of the first 300 to beta test CoH back in 2003 -- and then played the release version for 5 years, and who played the pencil and paper version of Champions from its first saddle-stitched release back in 1981) - I saw enough potential in CO to decide to get a LTS for it based on its own merits. The fact they promised that CO LTSers would be auto-invited to the STO closed beta was a WELCOME perk; but had I not liked the potential I saw in CO, I wouldn't have gotten the LTS for the STO beta alone.
then in October 2009 - I got the e-mail stating I was invited to the STO closed beta phase; and have been playing ever since (although the closed beta was itself NOWHERE NEAR a 24/7 beta.
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..."
i left video games back in the early to mid 80's. back when you played in a place called an "arcade" and needed many quarters. finished college, did all the grown up stuff and never looked back.
one day, my wife gets an ipad2. we like it. just for fun i tried a game i had read an article about; how well it did financially, being an accountant and all. i bought the game, Infinity Blade 2. not bad.
so i'm checking my e-mail one day and i see this e-mail concerning STO. okay, i'm not a gamer, but have always loved Star Trek. i was raised on TOS. yes, saw it first run.
i decided to try the game. kind of cheesy at first, but soon i am addicted. that was almost exactly one year ago.
and best of all it is free to play. however, for a free to play game i have some how spent several hundred dollars. what went wrong?
STO is all i play now and yes the ipad is still cool, but you can't play STO on it. back to my laptop.
The rest is history
As a Star Trek Fan i had to test it in Mai 2010 and liked it enough to get some month later a Lifetime ...
And i dont like EVE-Online so mutch because if your not so cheap ship gets blowed to peaces you have to buy a new one again and this could maybe even more expensive because prices changed and i have to pay there every month... so because i dont like other MMO or they are not made yet ... they wanted to do a Stargate Online Game but never did so i still play STO even if i dont like the free to play so mutch... and changing it to Free to Play dont helped get much new Content fast into the game so i dont see why free to play at all, then for players its only worser now ...
Subscribed For: 4 years 5 months 20 days at 26.10.2014
And here I am.
When STO came out i didn't have the dough to buy it at the time and once i did i decided to download the demo/trail they used to have but my pc wouldn't install it (to be fair my old pc sucked) so i left it in the wind.
I eventually herd of The old Republic was was overjoyed of a new SW MMO (i had played Galaxies before the NGe and loved it) but after getting 6 characters to max lvl Biowares lack of any endgame content and no side missions to do (for those lazy days) took their tool, when it went FTP i was shocked at the severe limitations it had and the locks for thing that just seemed crazy ment i just couldn't pay or play it anymore for free.
Then i was looking around got Guild wars 2 (its ok but i love sci-fi more) and decided "meh sto is free if i hate it i dont care i haven't payed for it".
After only 2 days i decided to sub i cant believe i had waited so long to sign up, this game isn't just a star trek fans dream its moo heaven, my biggest joy is the foundry and i think its a fab idea this way there's never a long gap of new stuff to do while devs build things u always have new adventures everyday.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
I have always been a sci fi fan, born in the early 70's i got to experience alot of original t.v. sci-fi, through the years i had always enjoyed star trek immensely, from the original series to the movies, to the next generation and beyond, i have a huge collection of star trek games in amongst my many other games and had always used Gamespot.com as a way to track what games i had, early in 2011 i was browsing the slist of available star trek games when i noticed a game in that list i hadnt seen before, STAR TREK ONLINE. at first i was like oh wow, then realised i had to pay monthly to play it was a concept that i was not used to, i had never played an mmo before and saw this as a strange way to own the game and still shell out money on a monthly basis. so i put it on the backburner for a while till about a month or 2 later when i saw that i could download the demo version,so i downloaded it, patched her up and sat down the next morning to try this game out. I was truly blown away, sure i could only do the 2 beginning missions at that time which was all the demo would allow , i was in awe of the space surrounding me, fellow players flying around me, and the groundwork of vulcan at that time, (vulcan has changed alot since they did the re-mastered missions).
once i had created my guy and done the first couple parts, i then lusted for more.
here was a game that i had found incorporated nearly every element of the previous star trek games i had ever played, from space combat to ground combat, but then allowing us to dock at starbases and interact with other players from all around the world. i was in awe of everything that surrounded me, during that week i went shopping with the wife and happened to pop into a j.b. hi-fi store, there in the cheap bin, was a copy of star trek online collectors edition for $20 dollars, i grabbed that sucker and held it close, no one was getting this baby off me, so home we went, i re-installed the game from the disk
added in my code and then looked at the options of subscription for i wanted a part of this world, i subscribed for 4 months before i took the plunge and truly committed with a lifetime subscription, i now approach my 2nd anniversary of S.T.O. on the 21st of march.
sure there have been many changes good and bad along the way, but im still here with no regrets, i have met many people and made many friends from around the world.
and for that i am truly thankful to the world of star trek online being here and continuing on for many more years to come..