In late 2004, a game was released. It was an MMO, created by a company that had plenty of prior experience with large-scale networked games. Initial interest was high, and the game was plagued with frequent server crashes, long login queues, and massive lag spikes for weeks as the company scrambled to handle the capacity.
That game has become the most popular online game of all time. It was World of Warcraft, and it was created by Blizzard Entertainment.
Also in 2004, a Star Trek MMO was announced, to be created by a company called Perpetual Entertainment.
Four years later, CBS--the owners of the Star Trek IP--got tired of Perpetual's lack of any solid product. After four years of development, the company had almost nothing to show for themselves, and were teetering on bankruptcy. Fed up with the utter dearth of progress, CBS approached another company to handle Star Trek Online: Cryptic Studios.
Cryptic had already created a popular MMO, and could adapt one of their engines for a Star Trek game. With intense pressure from CBS, they got to work, hurriedly building a new game worthy of Star Trek.
A year and a half later, that game went into closed beta. Two years after the company got the Star Trek license, they were releasing the game. That game is Star Trek Online.
STO has had its share of server problems, login queues, minor bugs, and so on with the launch. A lot of people have been indignant, self-righteous, or downright mad about this, and have expressed so vocally on these forums. Many have come to prophecy doom for Cryptic, others have sought fit to criticize the development team, and others have made demands.
Would it surprise anyone to hear that the same happened with WoW?
I am just as frustrated as the next person at not being able to play when the server is down, or being stuck in a seemingly never-ending queue. Because of the nature of my life, I only get to play in hour- or two-hour-long bursts most of the time. One of the reasons I have picked up STO is that it fits that schedule rather well. And, if the server happens to be down during those two hours, I don't play (frustratingly so).
That said, I do feel like much of the complaining on here has been over-the-top, and unwarranted. Let me point out:
Nearly every game that launches with an online component has startup troubles. In fact, nearly every service that uses the Internet has startup troubles, beyond even those of MMOs. Mass Effect 2 took a few days for people to access the in-game DLC. The iPhone 3G's activation servers went down within an hour of the phone's release, and took a day to get back up. And so on.
Cryptic has a limited budget. Stated another way, they have a finite amount of money. Stated another way, they have to figure out how to balance their spent money for greatest effect. Development costs money. Paying server administrators costs money (especially when they work overtime). Buying servers costs money. Even if they could have predicted how many servers they needed, that doesn't mean they had the money offhand to go buy those servers--or if they had, it would have meant less time spent on development and bug fixes.
Cryptic was handed some concept drawings and pictures when they got the property in 2008 (that's all they got from Perpetual). A year and a half to go from drawing board to playable game is a tremendous effort, and an amazing achievement for the team at Cryptic. Believe it or not, games take a long time to be built, especially ones that are as vast as STO is. THe dev team has, I'm sure, worked many hours of overtime to get things to where they are now. Perfect? No. But out the door? Yes. And if you don't like that they were rushed, keep in mind that CBS was not happy with there being nothing out yet. If you have a problem with the aggressive timeline, take it up with them. Not Cryptic.
Things were going quite smoothly during release week, until things got slammed on Friday night. It's not that their servers are bad, but there are a lot of people who want to play this game. Maybe they underestimated the number of players, or they underestimated the hardware needs, or they just didn't have enough money. It's hard to predict the future, and things have gone smoothly during non-peek times (though I have to ask: do that many people have nothing better to do on a Friday night than play the latest MMO?)
I don't think the Cryptic dev and system support team appreciate the heavy implication many people have on this board that they're not trying. You don't think they want everything to work well? You don't think they want everything to be smooth and bug-free? I imagine their system support people are working tons of overtime to make sure everything stays up and stable. Getting called in the middle of the night because your server went down is not something any system administrator wants to have happen (speaking as someone whom this has happened to, significant others also tend to be upset)--getting on their backs doesn't improve their mood. I think it's fair to say that everyone at Cryptic wants the playerbase to have the best experience possible, and they are trying hard to give that to us. Implying otherwise is just insulting.
Also, the demand for constant status reports is a bit odd. It's behavior I typically associate with executives that don't have a clue how to manage. It's a simple time thing: time spent writing and sending status reports is time not fixing the problem. Getting information about server downtime is nice (though you'll notice it doesn't make the server come up any faster), but if the options are getting constant detailed status about the server crashes, or the server coming up 30 minutes faster, which would you pick? (That number is an estimate based on my own experiences of how delaying giving status reports can be at my job)
People shouldn't be so committed to quitting when the game has barely been out for real a week. Do you firmly believe the game will stay the way it is now? Do you think there won't be any more patches, bug fixes, or features added? Are you used to reading the back of a book and deciding it needs to be thrown away? Give it time, and since some people might ask "how long", I will say: 1 month. Empirically, that's more than enough time for a company to figure out their load balancing, server structure, and to get pretty firmly on the path to incremental upgrades.
In other words, I don't think we need three million threads on this forum screeching about how horrible the game is. It doesn't make the game any better, it doesn't make Cryptic want to fix things any faster, and it certainly doesn't make you seem like a reasonable person.
That said, I would love for the servers to get more stable. They have been going down with a frustrating frequency, and I definitely prefer login queues to sudden server crashes. I've had to repeat one mission several times because of the constant crashes last night. Sudden lag spikes have caused me to die on occasion. I do feel as though the game is at an unacceptable level of stability, and there are a number of bugs or missing features that are detrimental to gameplay. The game definitely feels like it was rushed through, and still needs a fair amount of polishing. Don't get me wrong about those points.
But, I just think the employees of Cryptic are smart enough to realize this, and are working hard to fix these problems, both in terms of game stability, and in terms of playability. Give the guys a break, accept that "these things happen" (yeah, I know, wrong series), and go do something else for an evening. Especially if you got a lifetime subscription, you'll have plenty of time to play in the future.
Cryptic: thanks for all your hard work. I know we're demanding customers, and I, for one, appreciate the sacrifices you guys have made for us. Keep it up, and don't listen to those who hate for stupid reasons. There's a ton of us players who understand what you're going through, even if we're silent most of the time. Many kudos.
In this generation of entitlement, generation me, there needs to be more well reasoned individuals such as yourself. People can no longer think objectively, and they remember everything through rose colored nostalgia goggles. Game development is difficult, and many vocal idiots do not realize just how difficult it is.
You could just read the damn thing. Its a forum, we type words in it , and we read them. Prove the rest of the world wrong and show people our American education will allow us to read for crying out loud.
Can someone summarize that gigantic piece of **** text wall?
It's already well condensed and mostly fluff-free. Sometimes things are just longer than your attention span.
I do believe that Cryptic has done their best based upon the good and bad decisions that have led them to this point. But there's some pretty bad mistakes made long ago, that I think are lynch-pins to the current debacle.
One shard is one of those issues, for many, many reasons.
Can someone summarize that gigantic piece of **** text wall?
"Cryptic is trying their best. Nobody is perfect. Stop picking on them."
Of course, I don't really care if they're trying or not. I'm a consumer, not a kindergarten teacher. All I care about is getting my product. I'm not here to hold anyone's hand, comfort them, or otherwise give warm fuzzies.
You could just read the damn thing. Its a forum, we type words in it , and we read them. Prove the rest of the world wrong and show people our American education will allow us to read for crying out loud.
Of all the places to read a huge ****ing wall of ****ing text, the forums for an MMO is not one of them.
"Cryptic is trying their best. Nobody is perfect. Stop picking on them."
Of course, I don't really care if they're trying or not. I'm a consumer, not a kindergarten teacher. All I care about is getting my product. I'm not here to hold anyone's hand, comfort them, or otherwise give warm fuzzies.
The game it self is good for its presured time, And the servers well yea they die from time to time insteed of bashing without any ideas to give to the cryptic team, people should just try to help them with solutions. Same goes for the maintainance hours that currently are placed sour for the Ausies give them some solutions insteed of plain nerdrage. Specific US/EU/Asia/Ausie servers tend to be the more common solution to it thoe.
Only negativ thing so far iv seen that is outragious is that NAMCO and ATARI have let Cryptic down the drain by not having enough copys made for the pre-order costumers in some parts of the world. Wich forces cryptics hand to lock those players out cause of al the fanboys that got the headstart key and later cancelled theyr order. It have made cryptic unable to enlonger the headstart key's for those who got a the real problem with not getting theyr copy in time.
Cryptic probably would have if they known that these 2 companys would TRIBBLE them over this royaly in alot of gamers eyes choosen diffrent once seeing that they already got theyr own problems to deal with without having to be let down by 2 of the biggest game distributors of the world, Especialy with a game concept so enormous as Star Trek.
"Cryptic is trying their best. Nobody is perfect. Stop picking on them."
Of course, I don't really care if they're trying or not. I'm a consumer, not a kindergarten teacher. All I care about is getting my product. I'm not here to hold anyone's hand, comfort them, or otherwise give warm fuzzies.
Which, as said, is counter-productive. You won't get what you want quickly if you continue to badger them. If you want your product then let them work.
Fortunately they know that which I'm sure is why we don't see more Cryptic people posting in these forums. Their engineers and developers are probably specifically told not to look at the forums, so not to be distracted.
I'm not going to lie, I only read the first part of that gigantic post but the part about Blizzard is a little off. They've had plenty of networking experience with battlenet but MMOs are completely different. They had 0 experience with MMOs and they did have some problems at launch but they pulled through by being honest with their community. Either way, WoW was Blizzard first MMO so any problems they have have had at launch are understandable.
This is Cryptic's third MMO. You'd think that they would learn by now.
Which, as said, is counter-productive. You won't get what you want quickly if you continue to badger them. If you want your product then let them work.
Fortunately they know that which I'm sure is why we don't see more Cryptic people posting in these forums. Their engineers and developers are probably specifically told not to look at the forums, so not to be distracted.
Engineers and developers should not be looking at the forums the majority of the time. That isn't their job. There is an entire segment of business dedicated to consumer relations who's job it is to handle those things.
The people who deal with "being badgered" are not the same people who actually implement the fixes, at least in a well run company.
This is Cryptic's third MMO. You'd think that they would learn by now.
I'm sorry but that argument holds very little water. Every MMO is different and while you can certainly learn some general lessons, every new piece of software is unique and will present new and unforeseen challenges. The most obvious of which is the fact that Cryptic has never dealt with a license like Star Trek's. Few companies have in the MMO environment.
This will be the first time they're simultaneously:
a) Pressured by a licensing company to meet deadlines,
b) Pressured by a licensing company to meet set standards, and
c) Dealing with the needs and wants of fans of that IP.
It's a lot easier to make a game for yourself than it is for another.
Any post that uses the word "screeching" has my vote.
So.. I am frustrated (with many of the previously stated problems).. and yes I understand they are- by and large- "launch issues" and in time these will be fixed.
However, even with a limited budget, Cryptic people are not amateurs. They are not naive to the demands placed on new/hot/exciting/titillating MMOs. They've been here before.
But.. ya.. less than a week from launch is a bit too early to say something is a failure.
I enjoy, nay.. I lurv... this game. It has elements I wanted in other "ship" games (/cough potbs) that just werent there.. perfect for casuals, engrossing story line.. voluptuous Vulcan vixens. err.. nvm that.. and quantum torps!!
So.. even being a bit frustrated, this game has everything going for it. They are literally sitting on a gold mine... once they get some of the kinks ironed out.
I'm sorry but that argument holds very little water. Every MMO is different and while you can certainly learn some general lessons, every new piece of software is unique and will present new and unforeseen challenges. The most obvious of which is the fact that Cryptic has never dealt with a license like Star Trek's. Few companies have in the MMO environment.
This will be the first time they're simultaneously:
a) Pressured by a licensing company to meet deadlines,
b) Pressured by a licensing company to meet set standards, and
c) Dealing with the needs and wants of fans of that IP.
It's a lot easier to make a game for yourself than it is for another.
This MMO is very similar to Champions Online, which was released about 6 months ago. As someone who has alpha and beta tested CO, I see a lot of similarities. As a matter of fact, Cryptic has been using the same engine since City of Heroes, which was their first MMO and all of their MMOs, especially CO and STo follow a very similar server structure. CO and STO are both one server with multiple instances of the same zone.
Most importantly, Cryptic has this "rapid development" approach to MMOs. They are trying to market themselves as a company which can make a profitable MMO in 2 years or less. While there may have been some pressure by CBS and Atari, most of the pressure comes from the fact that creating a game of this scope requires more than 2 years.
I'm sorry but that argument holds very little water. Every MMO is different and while you can certainly learn some general lessons, every new piece of software is unique and will present new and unforeseen challenges. The most obvious of which is the fact that Cryptic has never dealt with a license like Star Trek's. Few companies have in the MMO environment.
This will be the first time they're simultaneously:
a) Pressured by a licensing company to meet deadlines,
b) Pressured by a licensing company to meet set standards, and
c) Dealing with the needs and wants of fans of that IP.
It's a lot easier to make a game for yourself than it is for another.
Maybe even rewrite that into NO ONE have ever gone through what cryptic goes through at the moment, Star Trek a winner of the awards that no one could belived, A series destined to die at first but yet pulled through and became the best of al Sci Fi.
I meen gee, look at the original series and look around you, Cellphones / Comunicators etc etc. Heck even Hawkins was inspired by Star Trek.
I bet ill be bashed by Star Wars fanboys for this, but face it Star Trek existed before Star Wars and made way for al of the modern Sci Fi.
Kinda fun thoe, people are prophecing the death of STO like people of TV-stations prophecied the death of Star Trek when it first came.... Who knows this might become the longest lived MMORPG in the end
I'm sorry but that argument holds very little water. Every MMO is different and while you can certainly learn some general lessons, every new piece of software is unique and will present new and unforeseen challenges. The most obvious of which is the fact that Cryptic has never dealt with a license like Star Trek's. Few companies have in the MMO environment.
This will be the first time they're simultaneously:
a) Pressured by a licensing company to meet deadlines,
b) Pressured by a licensing company to meet set standards, and
c) Dealing with the needs and wants of fans of that IP.
It's a lot easier to make a game for yourself than it is for another.
I'm just curious why you think the company's sob story about "it's hard" would even matter to consumers? Until they start giving breaks on payments because of customers' rough circumstances, I have no intention of giving them slack on product because of theirs.
I feel this is yet another case of "lets heavily promote an online game for a year before it comes out, so we can get everyone and his brother want to play it. Then when everyone trys to play and can't because of the server load, we will say that we had no idea the demand would be so high." :rolleyes:
Give me a break, they can tell how heavy from people playing the beta and pre sale numbers. But Cryptic choose not to get more servers because that would cu t into profits.
I am sick and tired of game companies pulling this TRIBBLE. Its time for them to man up and makes sure they are able to provide the servce that some many people are paying money for without disruption.
Comments
Umm.. yeah. :eek: I can't believe you actually said that.
Clearly this topic should thus be locked as there's no room on these forums for thought and intelligence.
GOOD DAY, SIR.
I shield bash you with a "Wall of Text +4" which crits for 500-eleventy damage. What're you gonna do about it?
Cryptic good, complaining bad.
Thank you for typing this.
Shoo, troll.
"Walls of text" by definition lack proper grammar and/or use of sentence structure and paragraphs.
It's not a wall of text just because you're too lazy to read it.
It's already well condensed and mostly fluff-free. Sometimes things are just longer than your attention span.
I do believe that Cryptic has done their best based upon the good and bad decisions that have led them to this point. But there's some pretty bad mistakes made long ago, that I think are lynch-pins to the current debacle.
One shard is one of those issues, for many, many reasons.
"Cryptic is trying their best. Nobody is perfect. Stop picking on them."
Of course, I don't really care if they're trying or not. I'm a consumer, not a kindergarten teacher. All I care about is getting my product. I'm not here to hold anyone's hand, comfort them, or otherwise give warm fuzzies.
Of all the places to read a huge ****ing wall of ****ing text, the forums for an MMO is not one of them.
You shouldn't have to. You're a paying customer.
Only negativ thing so far iv seen that is outragious is that NAMCO and ATARI have let Cryptic down the drain by not having enough copys made for the pre-order costumers in some parts of the world. Wich forces cryptics hand to lock those players out cause of al the fanboys that got the headstart key and later cancelled theyr order. It have made cryptic unable to enlonger the headstart key's for those who got a the real problem with not getting theyr copy in time.
Cryptic probably would have if they known that these 2 companys would TRIBBLE them over this royaly in alot of gamers eyes choosen diffrent once seeing that they already got theyr own problems to deal with without having to be let down by 2 of the biggest game distributors of the world, Especialy with a game concept so enormous as Star Trek.
Which, as said, is counter-productive. You won't get what you want quickly if you continue to badger them. If you want your product then let them work.
Fortunately they know that which I'm sure is why we don't see more Cryptic people posting in these forums. Their engineers and developers are probably specifically told not to look at the forums, so not to be distracted.
Just kidding...
A good post.
This is Cryptic's third MMO. You'd think that they would learn by now.
I cannot speak for others but, for my part, I apologize for not being able to lower myself to your standards.
Engineers and developers should not be looking at the forums the majority of the time. That isn't their job. There is an entire segment of business dedicated to consumer relations who's job it is to handle those things.
The people who deal with "being badgered" are not the same people who actually implement the fixes, at least in a well run company.
I'm sorry but that argument holds very little water. Every MMO is different and while you can certainly learn some general lessons, every new piece of software is unique and will present new and unforeseen challenges. The most obvious of which is the fact that Cryptic has never dealt with a license like Star Trek's. Few companies have in the MMO environment.
This will be the first time they're simultaneously:
a) Pressured by a licensing company to meet deadlines,
b) Pressured by a licensing company to meet set standards, and
c) Dealing with the needs and wants of fans of that IP.
It's a lot easier to make a game for yourself than it is for another.
So.. I am frustrated (with many of the previously stated problems).. and yes I understand they are- by and large- "launch issues" and in time these will be fixed.
However, even with a limited budget, Cryptic people are not amateurs. They are not naive to the demands placed on new/hot/exciting/titillating MMOs. They've been here before.
But.. ya.. less than a week from launch is a bit too early to say something is a failure.
I enjoy, nay.. I lurv... this game. It has elements I wanted in other "ship" games (/cough potbs) that just werent there.. perfect for casuals, engrossing story line.. voluptuous Vulcan vixens. err.. nvm that.. and quantum torps!!
So.. even being a bit frustrated, this game has everything going for it. They are literally sitting on a gold mine... once they get some of the kinks ironed out.
__
yes. Lemmings love this game. The rest of us think paying to spend time in queues is a rip off and there is no defense for these morons.
When i read posts like this i thank Cryptic for report button.
This MMO is very similar to Champions Online, which was released about 6 months ago. As someone who has alpha and beta tested CO, I see a lot of similarities. As a matter of fact, Cryptic has been using the same engine since City of Heroes, which was their first MMO and all of their MMOs, especially CO and STo follow a very similar server structure. CO and STO are both one server with multiple instances of the same zone.
Most importantly, Cryptic has this "rapid development" approach to MMOs. They are trying to market themselves as a company which can make a profitable MMO in 2 years or less. While there may have been some pressure by CBS and Atari, most of the pressure comes from the fact that creating a game of this scope requires more than 2 years.
Maybe even rewrite that into NO ONE have ever gone through what cryptic goes through at the moment, Star Trek a winner of the awards that no one could belived, A series destined to die at first but yet pulled through and became the best of al Sci Fi.
I meen gee, look at the original series and look around you, Cellphones / Comunicators etc etc. Heck even Hawkins was inspired by Star Trek.
I bet ill be bashed by Star Wars fanboys for this, but face it Star Trek existed before Star Wars and made way for al of the modern Sci Fi.
Kinda fun thoe, people are prophecing the death of STO like people of TV-stations prophecied the death of Star Trek when it first came.... Who knows this might become the longest lived MMORPG in the end
I'm just curious why you think the company's sob story about "it's hard" would even matter to consumers? Until they start giving breaks on payments because of customers' rough circumstances, I have no intention of giving them slack on product because of theirs.
Give me a break, they can tell how heavy from people playing the beta and pre sale numbers. But Cryptic choose not to get more servers because that would cu t into profits.
I am sick and tired of game companies pulling this TRIBBLE. Its time for them to man up and makes sure they are able to provide the servce that some many people are paying money for without disruption.
I'll get you a cookie