Cryptic's predictions crushed by Star Trek Online numbers

Well, the game is off to a GREAT start.

I am in the beta and it definitely is suffering from some serious lag and server stability issues. That aside the gameplay isn't that great either. The space battles are very well executed, but everything else about it just doesn't feel that great.

What really bothers me about it is how it somehow has managed to make space feel very claustraphobic. I remember when I used to play EVE one of the great things about it was how space felt so massive and vast, you felt like you could never really explore everything. I really dislike how they have use the CO system of "instance everything". Loading into systems which are just a small individual instance with a planet or two in them really breaks any immersion I otherwise had in the world. It's a shame too because I absolutely adore Star Trek.

The beta is actually making me think twice about getting the game, when I had originally planned on buying it regardless.

Played the beta myself for a couple hours, I was really hot for this one now I'm sure I'm not even going to pick it up.

Now, if memory serves me right, isn't that the same excuse Cryptic used for the Champion's Online open beta fuck up?\

"OH SORRY, DIDN'T KNOW IT WOULD BE POPULAR LOL"

I have played the closed beta and open beta and can say they are making huge improvements with most content still locked. I am really enjoying it especially space combat with ground combat in need of some tweaking but remember it took awhile before WoW got to where it is today with alot of issues in the beginning. I have signed up for a lifetime subscription because I can see playing this for a longtime.

Why do we see this every time a new MMO is in open beta? Joystiq has most likely got a template for it by now:

"New MMO X's open beta event Y is unplayable due to lag! Developer Z is downright shocked by the demand!"

When will these companies learn that people are dying for a game to compete with WoW. The problem is, no game has come out with half the polish and therefore they all fail. The ridiculous open beta and launch numbers of every MMO released in the last 3-4 years is pretty compelling evidence that the people want a new MMO.

All that said, this game is not it. Space combat is great, but the rest of the game is laughably bad. Guess we wait for next spring... anyone care to wager against BioWare being shocked by the demand?

I had no interest in the game, but after playing the beta, I gotta say I like it. Stayed up last night playing it and can't complain too much. Yeah there's lag, but that'll be ironed out. I love the space battles, but I agree with Huey2k2, the 'zone' sizes need to be bigger, especially considering each system is just an icon until you enter it.

All in all, fun to play, not sure if it's a buy.

took me a couple days to download the damn 7.5 GB file.....but I'm still pleased with whats there.....I dunno if I can justify that monthly fee tho....but I might try it out for a few months....

I think they could have hit a home run if they made the game more like SWG was back in the day, but with space exploration added right away (aka jump to light speed).

Instead they used the CO engine and everything about STO has Champions written all over it. Star Trek even has the outfiter that you can go to like CO did.

To Huey2k2

It feels claustrophobic because you hit a lot of invisible walls very fast. That's because the areas are made for 1-5 players and the trade areas are made for 50 just like champions. That's no MMORPG, that is a single player game with forced multiplayer.

Cryptic should experience with MMO launches and this is pathetic.. when you can actually connect the lag was awful. I am a Star Trek fan and I cannot say I will be taking this voyage. Too many issues and it is not entertaining. The space combat is good but not great, the rest of the game is boring. Final nail in the coffin is the other players that do not respect the property.. Some of the names, ship names, and "creative" races really put it over the top for me. This is fail from the start.

The more I play, the more I'm getting into it. The game suffers from not really bringing you into the game, but I'm really liking it now. I've been able to play during the day too so I think that helps...

Whoever came up with the numbers they did should be fired. I mean who didn't think that the numbers were going to be crazy. Imagine all those Trekkers that have dreamed for years about being part of the Star Trek Universe. This is the best change they are going to get outside the invention of a holodeck and a monkey could have told them it was going to be huge.

The fact that the franchise has been reborn successfully and cast members (old and new) are involved in the MMO will bring long time fans in. I actually know Trekkers that don't play games that have bought computers or are researching what computers are best to buy for this game.

I think that if this game is as good as it sounds once the connection issues are fixed that it could be then one game that eventually has a chance to be bigger than Warcraft.

I've played the beta for several hours, and i'm really enjoying it, personally...although I have to say I vastly prefer the space combat to ground missions atm. Maybe it's because I never played Champions Online, I dunno.

I think i've had maybe 3 random disconnects so far, and very little lag...I can see myself playing it for a few months at the very least.

wow thought i was the only one not able to get the client to work downloaded it 6 times and came up with nothing so i gave up.

All these unexpected issues with lots of players playing this beta, and yet the game will still go to launch on the same date they had set down before beta started. This is why you need to do a beta with no solid release date. Beta testing is for testing, so you can iron out all the bugs for a smooth launch, not "give a sneak peek of a broke game and fix those bugs after launch". Hopefully BioWare will give TOR the thorough testing it needs, and not just one of these "testing with a deadline set even though the testing needs to be longer to fix all the bugs found in beta" that everyone else does.

WE ARE THE BORED.

LOWER YOUR FIREWALLS AND SURRENDER YOUR ROUTERS.

WE WILL ADD YOUR MMORPG'S TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN.

YOU WILL BE DDOS'D. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

I got in the beta this weekend and yeah, this story is pretty much accurate. What annoys me is that I get they will have high load, but the game has NO QUEUE FUNCTION! You literally have to hit "Login" over and over and over until it finally lets you in. This is beyond stupid.

I did manage to get in once. My impression was that it felt a little bland. As someone mentioned, space combat is kind of neat, but the "away missions" are fairly stupid and have some sort of baffling decisions. Like, one section I was supposed to beam a Borg from one area of the ship into a hull breach. Sounds simple enough, except the console near him beamed him up, then I had to go to a completely different room to beam him out into space. Why? Why on earth can't you use the same damn console? Every single freaking Star Trek episode and movie says you can. It's little things like this that just ruin the "omg it's Star Trek!" feel for me. That, and the ridiculous bugs like beaming down for an away mission and appearing AS my ship on the planet -_-

The lag didn't kill the experience for me.

The on-foot gameplay took care of that. It's like Mass Effect lite, without the fun.

I have to agree that when I first loaded up the beta I was sort of like "Wow, this is basically Champions Online in space" complete with all its problems and hang ups. But now that I have been playing for a few days, this is the most fun I have had with an MMO yet. Yes, the game lacks the refinement of WoW, but I can see great potential as long as Cryptic remains dedicated to maintaining the game. Over the past week the game has become more and more stable and the lag has diminished greatly. There are still some very odd bugs (like beaming to ground as your space ship or beaming to space as your character) but I am hoping these will be addressed before final release. What I like about the game is that you get to manage not only your character but your ship and it's crew. This gives you alot of options to play around with and help make progression seem more rewarding. Sure many of the patrol missions are just "go here and blow up X number of ships", but some of the more elaborate missions are a lot of fun and capture the Trek experience nicely. I probably won't get a lifetime or montly subscription, but I can see myself playing this game for a least a couple of months....unlike WoW, Champions Online and every other MMO which got stale after about 3 weeks and I got bored and cancled my subs.

True...and a MMO is only as good as the size of its subscriber base. Most people can only afford to subscribe to one MMO at a time, and naturally they will want to subscribe to the best. The deal with WoW is that currently, despite being old, is still the best as viewed by most people. So, they have tons of subscritions, which means tons of money for Blizzard which in turn leads to more investment into the MMO and thus a much better product. If lots of people remain dedicated to Star Trek, hopefully Cryptic/Atari can reach the same critical mass and the game will only get better and better. Time will tell. And then we have Old Republic next year....

This is an open beta, so I think people need to chillax a bit; however, I tried for the last couple of days to download the client with no luck... I just gave up, so I will wait for another beta if there is one. I am a bit surprised on what I am hearing (or maybe I am not) about the difficultly people are having with the beta. You would figure companies would learn about issues with launching a beta and what not to do, yet they always seem to screw up. It is not like MMOs are brand new...

It took me nearly a day to get the beta client, but once I had it, I didn't have any problems getting online...until this past weekend, when it was impossible to login during daylight hours. I played between midnight and 6 a.m. instead. Part of the idea behind the beta was to load-test the servers so I imagine Cryptic deliberately had less hardware online than they will after launch, but the number of beta testers surprised even them. That's the power of the Trek license, no doubt.

I've played the open beta almost every day and I see it getting better almost every day too. There are still major quest bugs, though -- like the one that's supposed to be for the Kinjer system, but your quest log tells you to go to the nonexistent "Mec" system instead. You have to visit that system last, and do it solo, or it won't register as completed. Stuff like this absolutely has to get fixed by launch.

I got one of the Fileplanet beta keys and I've stayed up till 2 am the past few night playing this game for hours on end... It has been growing on me, but I admit that there's a lot repetition there and I'm not sure if it will hold my attention long term... Thus far I've been having a great time finding random teams and blowing the crap out stuff. So far there haven't been nearly enough away missions. The best group of missions I've done so far involved a quest that auto grouped me with a few other players, we warped to different areas in this system and it ended on with a group away mission. If there were more of these in there I would be hooked. The group away mission was a lot of fun.

This thing does need improvement and like most MMOs at launch, probably won't be ready for prime time when they are finally forced to push it out the door.

Keep in mind this is BETA to work out the kinks of the game mechanics, server load etc. I'm sure the retail content will be better...

Yeah they right. Crushed their predications alright. We came, we saw, we crashed alot. We left.

IF you only have an ATI PC and dont have a second option the I wouldnt waste your money. This game hates ATI. I can hardly run it at anything resembling decent quality using my dual 5870 crossfire. In fact it ignores the second card. There is a reported bug list five miles long for ATI graphics issues. I guess they failed to notice there are 2 manufacturers. So the developed for the one that was popular at the time. Subsequently ATI shot into the lead.

I play this at home using an NVidia 295. It actually performs alot better on this game than the ATIs do. Nothing to do with the cards but more to do with the poor stability of the game. Regardless of the machine the game is highly unstable with bugs still present even at the most fundamental level. It makes Mortal Onlines endless Beta look much more favourable. After all, better to keep a game in beta and actually launch it as a finished product than launch it half finished and watch it die the death of Darkfall, AoC or Warhammer.

STO is far far from finished or stable. Hence as usual I am looking at posts rather than suffer trying to play it.

Personally, I am LOVING the game. I only have experience prior with World of Warcraft, but I am definitely enjoying the Star Trek online world! The controls take some getting use to, but the balance of ground and space missions keep things interesting. The storylines are interesting and make you really feel like "living" Trek.

While I have experienced server down issues (as to be expected during a Beta), I am not experienced any lagging or other problems once in. (Maybe I'm just lucky, but if the server is up, all has been good every time.)

Can't wait for the official opening. I'm confident we'll see improved reliability on the servers then.

In the meantime, Live Long and Prosper!