This is an interesting find. For those of you who don't know, Cryptic Studios did not begin STO all on their own. It was a project original started by the now defunct Perpetual Entertainment. Unfortunately, it seems, all coding on the game was scrapped before it landed in Cryptic's hands. What's sad is PE was on the right track and Cryptic has simply gone...someplace else with it.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_Online_(Perpetual_Entertainment)
This labels sources and references to what would've been a truly epic game. Not everyone started off as their own captain, players could join other players' starships and there were even designs for ship interiors already completed. It turns out PE was slated to start Beta on the game back in 2006! With a tentative release in late '07. Why did no one fund 'this' Star Trek Online? Instead Atari buys it and hands it to Cryptic to COMPLETELY redo.
Here's Memory Alpha's listing for the Cryptic version of STO:
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_Online
Comments
I don't care for Cryptic, but I don't think that STO by Perpetual would really be that much better.
Why? Why start from Scratch? If they truly started from Scratch and didn't pick up the game until late 2008, then that's saying Cryptic only spent 1 year developing this game. 1 f*cking year in development. Board Games have been in development longer than that! Hell, I remember eagerly waiting almost 18 months for Electronic Battleship!
No wonder the game is so lop-sided and half-assed. 1 year... You have got to be kidding me. If I had all the disposable income in the world I don't think I could develop a decent MMO in a year.
OFT
......
OFT? ........
you are such a tard... Anyone that says ANYthing bad about STO and you jump down there throts.. And god forbid someone says the word EVE.... WELL
EVE
EVE
EVE
EVE
EVE
EVE
EVE
EVE
EVE!!!
Stands for quoted for truth.
Which reminds me; in the FAQ page in May 2009: "Q: Will there be a monthly fee? A: At this time we do not plan to have a monthly fee."
Also, at that time, there was no mention of ATARI being the Publisher.
That's mostly to blame on Publisher Atari. It's their decision when a game should be launched and developers take financial cuts in the way of a "fine" for not being ready on the deadline set by the publisher. It's a vicious corporate game and I can be 100% certain Cryptic is not to blame here. Though they did develop the game in it's current state, now that they've met deadline they can catch their breaths and release the additional content we were expecting.
Cryptic goes to Atari for money to build the game and 'we' pay Atari, not Cryptic.
People need to look at the true culprit and stop dissing Cryptic because what they've managed to pitch out in only 14 months of development time isn't all that bad. Imagine how poorly WOW would be received if they only had 1 year to develop something original from scratch. (Excerpt from Wikipedia: World of Warcraft was first announced by Blizzard at the ECTS trade show in September 2001.[44] Development of the game took roughly 45 years, and included extensive testing.
I agree though developers with a certain degree of reputation, such as Bioware, can negotiate more reasonable development times with their publishers/owners. Cryptic probably didn't have that much clout.
That's a good point. Atari dropped the ball on this one and the negative feedback of the game by the players is going to cause them to bail out.
That brings to mind; has anyone read the 'official' reviews on the game? They're so overwhelmingly positive I'm wondering if Atari has paid them off in lieu of the bad responses on the forums.
Links please... All the reviews I've seen so far from like IGN, 1up.com have been negative, giving it around a 6/10.
You may have just discovered this information, but actually many of us who have followed the game were already well aware of this bit of trivia. Like a lot of people, I had the original Perpetual web site bookmarked from the beginning. Perpetual had lots of ideas but they never had more than some concept art to show for it. They even cancelled a nearly-complete game, and the title now escapes me - Gods and Heroes maybe? The game was close to starting beta testing, then it was cancelled, and the company line was that it was cancelled so that the company could devote most of its resources to the Star Trek project. Shortly after that, Perpetual went bankrupt.
They definitely postulated a great game idea, but they never did anything with it. Cryptic on the other hand actually managed to build and ship a game, one that many of us happen to enjoy playing. You asked why no one funded PE's game. Maybe potential backers looked at the project and saw that PE had managed to produce almost nothing in 2 years. I wouldn't have funded them either. If you are going to compare Perpetual's theoretical STO to Cryptic's, well...sorry but I have to vote for Cryptic on that one.
First Preview I was able to see was in GameInformer Issue 203. There was no # rating but the author praised it and only made a small side note that the graphics could be better.
X-Play had given it a Thumbs-Up Preview and the Review was only a 3/5; better than I would've expected.
Same thing goes for Gamespot gave a happy-go-lucky preview (on-hands as well) and now review it with despair.
Eurogamer gave a positive Preview.
I could definitely go on.
It also stands for "Quite ****ing True" as in:
"At least the starship combat is fun in Star Trek Online!"
"That's quite ****ing true!"
It helps to read stuff before you comment on it.
PE 'had' plenty of coded material and was taking their time to do it 'right'; something any MMOer would respect and something that a Brandwashed Trekster wouldn't care to think about. I could print STAR TREK on a clock from the dollar store and sell it to people like you for 25x the price.
You enjoy STO while it lasts; the rest of us will be looking for a 'real' game. -.-
****er...
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=108456
I swear, every week there is some person who posts some pie-eyed idea of what STO would have been like, but has not actually looked at what Perpetual was going to produce.
Don't kid yourself, STO was ALWAYS going to be a more or less generic MMO.
TLDR of that link I placed: Not really any different than what we have now, and perhaps worse in several specific ways.
Comparing an actual game to concept art and what a defunct company's management had "planned for the game" is pointless.
Need I say more.
Without people like you the world would've ended long ago, I'm sure.
Thank you for your constant vigilance against our ignorance and stupidity, for we, the huddled masses, know not what we want nor what we need.
Continue to provide for us so that we may thrive as a society.
There's a reason sub-par developers get the canonized TRIBBLE and elitists like Blizzard and Square do better with their 'original' material.
They 'know' they won't make you f*ckers happy and therefor they're not even going to try. PE was only trying and Atari manipulating Cryptic is only a money-making wheel designed to spin for so long and fall off. I would rather have something that looks clumbsy but holds true to canon than something that's all glit and glamor with no substance that supports it's origin.
Want a comparison? Ever watch the Bourne movies? Play the Bourne game. It's not pretty, but they caught it's essence to a T.
Stop being so damn shallow and realize Cryptic was successful in making a "Stereotypical Blonde". Doable, yet, stupid-beyond-stupid.
Also while drooling at the screenshots, maybe keep in mind that Cryptic got *all* non-code assets from PE...
So.... that means Cryptic got PE's artwork.... So you're drooling over Cryptic's art now
(and it is nice looking)
The optimist: "That glass is half full!"
The pragmatist: *drinks the water* "who gives a TRIBBLE it's gone so lets just get past it..."