I'm guessing they'll wrap up continued development after the 50th Anniversary... Better to end on a high note than slowly let it die like other MMOs... Nothing lasts forever and I don't see Cryptic taking STO into "World's longest running MMO" territory.
The 50th Anniversary is over a year away. A lot can happen in the game between now and then.
And I doubt that Cryptic has the luxury of going maintenance mode. The license is probably a fixed percentage of sales with a guaranteed minimum. They need to keep the C-Store items coming out to reach that guaranteed minimum each year, otherwise it is cash out of PW's pocket.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Another possibility no one's considered: Taking STO into Andromeda galaxy (where the Herald Sphere came from, along with a number of one-off Trek canon races), presumably via another gateway.
I was actually wondering this too myself I like that the iconians are going to finally be added to the game. In terms of the iconians I was actually pondering about something very interesting that has only been talked about and mentioned once in the star trek lore but never fully explained. I am hoping that cryptic in a future season if it ever comes to mind they would add a storyline involving the extinct tkon empire or similar to the iconians if the tkon didn't die out and if they simply survived and relocated somewhere else in the galaxy something cool like that would be interesting to add to the game. But also adding and expanding the gamma quadrant with new species and unexplored regions would be very cool too. Exploring the andromeda galaxy would pretty awesome as well..
Another possibility no one's considered: Taking STO into Andromeda galaxy (where the Herald Sphere came from, along with a number of one-off Trek canon races), presumably via another gateway.
Enterprise-j was intended by the designer to be an intergalactic ship. They floated the name "universe class" for it. Doesn't have to be a gate, and doesn't have to be far future tech. Who knows how far the kelvans have advanced in the past centuries and they already had ships capable of travel between Andromeda and the milky way.
Enterprise-j was intended by the designer to be an intergalactic ship. They floated the name "universe class" for it. Doesn't have to be a gate, and doesn't have to be far future tech. Who knows how far the kelvans have advanced in the past centuries and they already had ships capable of travel between Andromeda and the milky way.
If I remember correctly those were generational ships. Which would make them low tech in terms of the tech required to make the trip. Much like ships with stasis pods vs ships with warp.
If I remember correctly those were generational ships. Which would make them low tech in terms of the tech required to make the trip. Much like ships with stasis pods vs ships with warp.
They improved their tech level. They were able to modify the classic Enterprise so she could survive the galactic barrier that destroyed their multi generation ship and they modified the Enterprises engines so that the Enterprise could reach Andromeda in 300 years.
It's possible that the Kelvans further improved their technology, if they survived the Iconians that is. They could also be "the other" the Iconians refered to, when making notes about "the whole" and "being one", together with all their servitors.
There is also the possibility that they might found out that it's the Iconians influence that slowly floods their galaxy with lethal levels of radiation and they might fight back and might end up becoming our new allies over there.
And in general, many unexplored modern species aside, the Tkon empire might have more left behind than just Portal 63, then the D'Arsay civilisation... There are many more old empires and civilisations whose relics might resurface along the way... And we still have things from the future like the Tox Uthat... Star Trek is full of possibilities.
Personally I would like to see a new front. We haven't seen the Borg because their usual home of the delta quadrant has seen them defeated time and again , same for the alpha and beta quadrants. So the Borg needs somewhere different . A perfect example would be the gamma quadrant where though the dominion is strong it doesn't have the allies the federation has. Borg vs dominion would be an awesome expansion and an opportunity for a dominion faction.
Personally I would like to see a new front. We haven't seen the Borg because their usual home of the delta quadrant has seen them defeated time and again , same for the alpha and beta quadrants. So the Borg needs somewhere different . A perfect example would be the gamma quadrant where though the dominion is strong it doesn't have the allies the federation has. Borg vs dominion would be an awesome expansion and an opportunity for a dominion faction.
I might have to remind you, that the dominion has far more troops and ships than the Fed,KDF and Romulans together. During the dominion war they were able to push the alliance to the brink of destruction with just a couple of weeks of ship reinforcements plus the cardassian fleet (which was devasted after the Cardassian-Klingon-War) plus what they built afterwards. They had no trouble to bring 2500 ships from the gamma quadrant to the wormhole (though they couldnt pass through), which is roughly the equivalent of 6 (!) Federation fleets at that time.
Couple that with their attitude towards selfsacrifice and thus the Gamma quadrant would be a very, very unsafe heaven for the borg.
I'm wondering if this thing is going to be stretched out indefinitely (as it has been) or if there's a plan to start onto a new path eventually?
There's lots more canon stuff they could be revisiting... I'm just not looking forward to fighting the Protoss, err... I mean the Heralds... who don't inspire any 'Trek' feel whatsoever. I'd much rather be seeing what the Dominion is up to... maybe expanding on what little we know of the Sheliak... encountering new species who's reputation precedes them, such as the Fen Domar...
There's lots we could be doing that doesn't involve World of Blizzcraft enemies. I'd just like to see this Iconian arc done with already.
The plan is to come out with yet another tier of ships, and then making it impossible to chat without first having a legendary level communications doff that you can only get by buying an RNG box from the store, which will then be followed by another nerf to dilithium and XP so that it's impossible to level from 40 - 50 without years of work because "that's how normal mmo's work you see"
I'm curious just how long the Iconian war will last. I figure they could probably drag it out for a year or two(in game time). :P
you say that as though like one day you will run the game and there will be no iconian war and all the current iconian content will be removed.
iconian content will be there to battle most likey for the rest of the games life, just look at the voth dyson content, if you pay a visit to the sphere you will see the battle for control of the sphere is still going strong.
there may be some new content to play with new enemy and stories but the iconian content will be here still.
they need to keep new players that might come along in mind and old players that might want to play the missions, how would the new players fill their iconian reputation if the content is removed?.
of course they could add more iconian content but I don't think they will drag it out too much, I suspect we will see a new menace to fight come along very soon.
Neither war was neglected, or given any disdain by Cryptic.
The Borg Invasion simply ended
-We kicked their TRIBBLE out of Defera.
-We drove them out of Starbase 82.
-We found the cure for the Borg nanovirus.
-We prevented the Borg from altering the timeline.
-We went into the hive and killed the Borg Queen.
-We prevented the new Borg Queen from re-assimilating the Cooperative ships she needed to rebuild the Borg's decimated armies.
On top of all that, the Undine destroyed the Borg Unicomplex in fluidic space, and its highly likely that the Voth and Undine forces blew up the OTHER Unicomplex featured in "Borg Disconnected".
The Borg Invasion probably has more content for it then any other arc, and it was resolved.
Even Delta Rising showed the Borg getting DECIMATED by the Vaadwuar. They aren't a threat to anyone anymore.
We won, end of story.
case in point, in your mind this all may be over but the content is still out there to play if you want to so these things are never really over.
just pay a visit to defera invasion zone if you think I`m wrong.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
you say that as though like one day you will run the game and there will be no iconian war and all the current iconian content will be removed.
Apparently you forget the mountain of content they have removed. Exploration, the Q mission, the old Borg STFs, the undine arc, several STFs, not counting the reworked Borg STFs, but given the story of those, it really does count as removed content too.
A lot of things have been reworked too, making them unrecognizable, like the Borg/undine arc, what wasn't removed is completely different. There is no guarantee they won't dump or completely change things when they feel like it.
Will they remove the Iconian arc? It is certainly unlikely for the near future, but they may very well retcon it into a different state and chop various missions.
There is still plots and unanswered questions from the stories. To fill out some more action. Plus with the new Sector space showing more homeworlds. There is stories to be told there, where there wasn't those worlds.
I think this Iconian skirmish will last til about winter. Since its not a war, to me its a skirmish.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I think theres definitely room for something post-Iconian War. But that all depends on two factors.
1.) The Limit of the Game Engine. At some point it might become too much trouble to add new things to the game. And at that point it might be more cost effective to end the game and move on to a new project. Maybe one that will bring in more revenue per quarter.
2.) The playerbase. Every game is on the slow march to death. Some faster then others, some almost immediately. At some point the game will have such a low population that Cryptic and PWE will look at it as no longer worth the investment. Theres no telling when and where that will be. And only PWE and Crytpic know for sure how many play and how many they would have to lose for them to flip the switch. But current development indicates that Cryptic is full speed ahead in regards to new content for the game.
The first one, the game engine issues will more than likely not cause the death of the game. Simply Cryptic putting it into maintenance mode. Atleast until the second issue arises. But the second issue could arise long before the first. Not that it will. The playerbase, our interest in the game and seeing new content, and coming back to take part in that content.. And enough players sticking around in between said content. Is what will drive Cryptic to provide us with more content. Atleast until they hit the hard limits of the engine.
As Branflakes said way back when, the license for STO from CBS is 2015+1 (they get a one year option which will obviously be flexed here in Sept (because I believe it was in Sept in origin but I could be wrong on the month)
So what really needs to be seen is the population come end of next summer. And not just the population but how much revenue is that population generating. If it's not enough, obviously PWE isn't going to pay whatever CBS wants to renew. Then there is always the option that CBS gets into financials and sees whatever the numbers are that PWE is generating and wants more of the pie, and PWE opts out of that...that's all contract negotiating, that's what that is all about.
As for content, it's been leaked around that the Iconian War (which is really abysmal and disappointing as wars go) is gonna wrap around the end of 2015 and Season 12 will be something else. And that something else will need to generate revenue and get/keep players here because by the launch of Season 12, they'll probably be at least beginning (if not waste deep) in negotiations. All I hope is that if, for whatever reason, they are gonna shut this down in 2016, they have enough time to write out a couple more FE's to send it off appropriately. Or better put, have enough firesight to write out a couple of FE's as a contingency plan incase they gotta shut it down.
(Side note. Yes the contract is with CBS. Paramount has never really been a stickler about their stuff being borrowed in games. As long as it's not only Paramounts stuff being used, so like in this case, they just leave it up to CBS since the majority of the lore and canon and guts of the franchise is from the series' and television works which CBS holds the rights to when CBS and Paramount split apart. So while Paramount isn't really involved and isn't creating waves for CBS or PWE for using things like the Scimitar or Sovereign class starship, they wouldn't be allowed to leave STO up using only Paramount owned material unless a separate contract was reached with Paramount. However, I don't think STO would be very interesting if we can only have the stuff we saw in the movies. In fact, while I don't work for either studio, I did work for Paramount briefly during the height of the recession and ST was discussed and I believe in a case like this, Paramount would completely defer to CBS and if CBS doesn't reach an agreement with PWE, Paramount would follow CBS out.)
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And I doubt that Cryptic has the luxury of going maintenance mode. The license is probably a fixed percentage of sales with a guaranteed minimum. They need to keep the C-Store items coming out to reach that guaranteed minimum each year, otherwise it is cash out of PW's pocket.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
Face palming the enemy one at a time.
Enterprise-j was intended by the designer to be an intergalactic ship. They floated the name "universe class" for it. Doesn't have to be a gate, and doesn't have to be far future tech. Who knows how far the kelvans have advanced in the past centuries and they already had ships capable of travel between Andromeda and the milky way.
If I remember correctly those were generational ships. Which would make them low tech in terms of the tech required to make the trip. Much like ships with stasis pods vs ships with warp.
They improved their tech level. They were able to modify the classic Enterprise so she could survive the galactic barrier that destroyed their multi generation ship and they modified the Enterprises engines so that the Enterprise could reach Andromeda in 300 years.
It's possible that the Kelvans further improved their technology, if they survived the Iconians that is. They could also be "the other" the Iconians refered to, when making notes about "the whole" and "being one", together with all their servitors.
There is also the possibility that they might found out that it's the Iconians influence that slowly floods their galaxy with lethal levels of radiation and they might fight back and might end up becoming our new allies over there.
And in general, many unexplored modern species aside, the Tkon empire might have more left behind than just Portal 63, then the D'Arsay civilisation... There are many more old empires and civilisations whose relics might resurface along the way... And we still have things from the future like the Tox Uthat... Star Trek is full of possibilities.
I might have to remind you, that the dominion has far more troops and ships than the Fed,KDF and Romulans together. During the dominion war they were able to push the alliance to the brink of destruction with just a couple of weeks of ship reinforcements plus the cardassian fleet (which was devasted after the Cardassian-Klingon-War) plus what they built afterwards. They had no trouble to bring 2500 ships from the gamma quadrant to the wormhole (though they couldnt pass through), which is roughly the equivalent of 6 (!) Federation fleets at that time.
Couple that with their attitude towards selfsacrifice and thus the Gamma quadrant would be a very, very unsafe heaven for the borg.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
The plan is to come out with yet another tier of ships, and then making it impossible to chat without first having a legendary level communications doff that you can only get by buying an RNG box from the store, which will then be followed by another nerf to dilithium and XP so that it's impossible to level from 40 - 50 without years of work because "that's how normal mmo's work you see"
you say that as though like one day you will run the game and there will be no iconian war and all the current iconian content will be removed.
iconian content will be there to battle most likey for the rest of the games life, just look at the voth dyson content, if you pay a visit to the sphere you will see the battle for control of the sphere is still going strong.
there may be some new content to play with new enemy and stories but the iconian content will be here still.
they need to keep new players that might come along in mind and old players that might want to play the missions, how would the new players fill their iconian reputation if the content is removed?.
of course they could add more iconian content but I don't think they will drag it out too much, I suspect we will see a new menace to fight come along very soon.
case in point, in your mind this all may be over but the content is still out there to play if you want to so these things are never really over.
just pay a visit to defera invasion zone if you think I`m wrong.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Apparently you forget the mountain of content they have removed. Exploration, the Q mission, the old Borg STFs, the undine arc, several STFs, not counting the reworked Borg STFs, but given the story of those, it really does count as removed content too.
A lot of things have been reworked too, making them unrecognizable, like the Borg/undine arc, what wasn't removed is completely different. There is no guarantee they won't dump or completely change things when they feel like it.
Will they remove the Iconian arc? It is certainly unlikely for the near future, but they may very well retcon it into a different state and chop various missions.
I think this Iconian skirmish will last til about winter. Since its not a war, to me its a skirmish.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
You're reading it wrong.
As Branflakes said way back when, the license for STO from CBS is 2015+1 (they get a one year option which will obviously be flexed here in Sept (because I believe it was in Sept in origin but I could be wrong on the month)
So what really needs to be seen is the population come end of next summer. And not just the population but how much revenue is that population generating. If it's not enough, obviously PWE isn't going to pay whatever CBS wants to renew. Then there is always the option that CBS gets into financials and sees whatever the numbers are that PWE is generating and wants more of the pie, and PWE opts out of that...that's all contract negotiating, that's what that is all about.
As for content, it's been leaked around that the Iconian War (which is really abysmal and disappointing as wars go) is gonna wrap around the end of 2015 and Season 12 will be something else. And that something else will need to generate revenue and get/keep players here because by the launch of Season 12, they'll probably be at least beginning (if not waste deep) in negotiations. All I hope is that if, for whatever reason, they are gonna shut this down in 2016, they have enough time to write out a couple more FE's to send it off appropriately. Or better put, have enough firesight to write out a couple of FE's as a contingency plan incase they gotta shut it down.
(Side note. Yes the contract is with CBS. Paramount has never really been a stickler about their stuff being borrowed in games. As long as it's not only Paramounts stuff being used, so like in this case, they just leave it up to CBS since the majority of the lore and canon and guts of the franchise is from the series' and television works which CBS holds the rights to when CBS and Paramount split apart. So while Paramount isn't really involved and isn't creating waves for CBS or PWE for using things like the Scimitar or Sovereign class starship, they wouldn't be allowed to leave STO up using only Paramount owned material unless a separate contract was reached with Paramount. However, I don't think STO would be very interesting if we can only have the stuff we saw in the movies. In fact, while I don't work for either studio, I did work for Paramount briefly during the height of the recession and ST was discussed and I believe in a case like this, Paramount would completely defer to CBS and if CBS doesn't reach an agreement with PWE, Paramount would follow CBS out.)