I would have to agree that cancelling a game at such a late stage will have a negative impact with the communities of the other games in development, If I was following STO I would be seriously wondering "Will they cancel?".
I've been following Age of Conan for quite sometime now and each time the game has been pushed back for "Further Polish" I keep getting those dreaded feelings of "Vapourware", but G&H had no real signs that it was going to be shelved and this is what worries me with regards to their other titles, the axe could fall with no warning at all.
Oh and what a waste of a competition Beta place, my second one that I've won here and it had to turn into a turkey =(
There were warning signs of this in the making, but the PE critics were shouted down and dismissed as trolls when they pointed to the two, then three rounds of lay-offs or firings and SOE making a big point on getting as far away as possible from PE, making public statements that SOE had nothing to do with the game and this all PE's baby on their "ROOKIE" debut in the MMO industry.
So the smoking train wreck known as G&H was their debut to the MMO industry. Now on to STO!
"Don't corpse-camp that idea. Its never gonna rez" Bladezz (The Guild)
I've been following Age of Conan for quite sometime now and each time the game has been pushed back for "Further Polish" I keep getting those dreaded feelings of "Vapourware", but G&H had no real signs that it was going to be shelved and this is what worries me with regards to their other titles, the axe could fall with no warning at all. Oh and what a waste of a competition Beta place, my second one that I've won here and it had to turn into a turkey =(
As others have pointed out there were signs that people should havce noticed.
I can't seem to find any posts that describe Perpetual showing off their game at conventions or game shows. Did they ever do this? I would have thought that would have been a real red-flag if they were already putting out pre-orders.
I won my beta from MMORPG.COM too. Never got the thing to even load up properly.
Meanwhile the Devs in interviews were talking about how amazing the in-game re-creations of the Collesium looked. Perhaps their management should have devoted less money to art assets and more to coding and networking issues.
Star Trek Online will NEVER see the light of day. At least not from this company. I am surprised they ever managed to get the IP to begin with. I would have expected it to go to a company with a sucessful track record. Just my opinion.
Its not hard to dazzle Paramount with a merchandising idea as long as they hear investment is low. Win goes to the lowest bidder. There are only a few instances where a top notch product came with a Star Trek tag. For every one good item, there are 4-5 crap ones.
They don't owe beta testers anything... testers aren't doing them a favour, they are doing it because they are enjoying it.
I'm sorry but what orifice did you pull this BS out of? Testers are doing a service for companies that they would otherwise have to pay big bucks for. It doesn't matter whether the testers are enjoying themselves or not. If it wasn't for free Beta testers game companies would have to pay people to test their games or take one hell of a chance of releasing a bug ridden POS. Testers ARE doing a company one hell of a service.
As for G&H some of us have seen this coming for a while now(See Keogh's post above). This move didn't really surprise me even a little bit and just solidifies even more what I and many others have been saying for a while now. PE has no idea what they are doing and have lied repeatedly about it in a vein attempt to cover it up. I'm a huge Star Trek fan but have very little confidence in PE or Daron Stinnett to make anything that a Trekkie would want to play for any length of time. Just what little we know about STO points to a conclusion that it will be a run of the mill MMO with Star Trek skins painted on(Think WoW in space). I do so very hope that I'm wrong but I don't think I will be just like I and many others weren't wrong about G&H.
Star Trek Online will NEVER see the light of day. At least not from this company. I am surprised they ever managed to get the IP to begin with. I would have expected it to go to a company with a sucessful track record. Just my opinion.
Its not hard to dazzle Paramount with a merchandising idea as long as they hear investment is low. Win goes to the lowest bidder. There are only a few instances where a top notch product came with a Star Trek tag. For every one good item, there are 4-5 crap ones.
Well, on paper at least, PE probably looked like a good choice to develop STO. Both Chris McKibbin and Joe Keene were part of the management team from EA that oversaw the development of Earth & Beyond. They probably showed CBS/Paramount E&B and then said, 'imagine this with the star-trek IP...' It would not surprise me if, at the end of the day, STO is essentially E&B with better graphics.
Standard public relations is not let your customer base know about financial difficulties or management problems until absolutely necessary. That way, if you manage to solve the problem quietly, no one need be the wiser (and no bad press!). So it doesn't surprise me that they shut the whole thing down on what seems like a moments notice. What I can not figure out is why PE would cancel GnH outright rather then pushing it to market in whatever state they could manage and then trying to recoup some of their money.
The way I see it, PE has managed to generate about 20 million in funding since its initial start up in 2002. About 11 mil came from (mostly Asian) venture capitol firms (see here and here) and another 9 million came from the purchase by Korean game publisher Gravity Co Ltd of 16% of PE's stock.
I am guessing that most of this money is now gone. It is hard to tell how many employees PE has/had (it is not a publicly traded company) but from its layoffannouncements, I suspect that at its peak it had maybe 120 people working on GnH alone. Supposing an average of 75K per person, that would easily translate to 9 million a year in salaries alone. This is sunk cost that they now have no hope of recovering.
The only thing that makes any sense to me is that CBS took a look Perpetual's balance sheet and demanded that they close down Gods and Heroes or else they would pull the IP. I couldn't find any hard sales figures for GnH preorders, but any product that Amazon ranked as #9,624 in Software could not have been burning up the charts. Given the choice between supporting a quickly sinking game or losing their one valuable asset (the Star Trek IP) they chose (or were forced to choose) the later.
not that g&h sounded/looked amazing or anything, but STO (from my perspective) appears to be the most boring game ever conceived of ( ooh i can be a medic AND an engineer!!). while i'm sure they did pay anally for the license (thats how star trek employees like to get paid) it would seem more "logical" to cancel a boring game with a dying fan base that cost tons of $ than one that was 90-95% complete even if it did just do "ok" @ the registers.
if the whole gladiatorial pony (or fad if you like) couldn't carry them what makes them think a nearly 50 year old pony can? they should just dissolve the company so some of the "talented" people can go work for companies that are developing ORIGINAL content rather than trying to cash in on fame (or hype) created by others.
They don't owe beta testers anything... testers aren't doing them a favour, they are doing it because they are enjoying it.
Testers aren't doing them a favor? Then perhaps they should have just went with paid testers then, right? Or PE could find all the bugs themselves while developing the game, right?
They don't owe the testers anything?
Wrong. Many of those beta testers were future paying customers of GnH, as well as STO. Take a crap on the community of one game, don't expect them to be wagging their tails and lolling their tongues like enchanted lapdogs when you want them to buy the next one.
Ah well. Another Sci-Fi MMORPG with a great license, lotsa potential, and a company we can't imagine will deliver. A Star Trek MMO was going to be tough to do from the start, because the IP is missing many of the things that almost all MMOs use (money, war, crafting, pets, etc.). It DID have the potential for a massive new quest system (exploration, away teams, solving a bigger problem than "kill 10 borg-rats and return to me" that had puzzle elements in it), but it's pretty clear from reading posts recently that nothing new is being done and, in fact, they're attempting to squeeze the ST IP into the tried and tired formula.
If, indeed, STO would be an EnB with better graphics, that wouldn't be half bad. EnB was my first MMO and still holds very fond memories. But it was WAY too small scale for the huge potential player base of an ST MMO. And we don't really NEED a huge, new EnB. We've already got the ultimate extension of EnB in EVE, and THAT company (CCP) seems to be one of the best I've ever seen. We'll even soon have the old EnB avatar-at-the-station graphics candy that EVE is currently missing. So STEVE (!) would be just a watered down version of EVE with a ST skin, and that won't fly for long.
I had bad feelings when the guy at PE started opening his mouth back aways. A little voice in my head reminded me that the initials D.S. and sci-fi gaming have been linked before, and with disasterous results. (Let's see who's old enough to remember...lol).
All in all, both G&H and STO seem to be in the hands of the same kind of mess that Horizons had from the start. I mean, if the company's Big Boys are snapping at their potential audience before anything even hits beta, if they're cancelling projects to shift emphasis to their one HUGE IP license, then you've gotta wonder just how sound they are. Maybe we see PE sold to somebody else in about a year? Oh man. SOE?
-- Xix "I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"
not that g&h sounded/looked amazing or anything, but STO (from my perspective) appears to be the most boring game ever conceived of ( ooh i can be a medic AND an engineer!!). while i'm sure they did pay anally for the license (thats how star trek employees like to get paid) it would seem more "logical" to cancel a boring game with a dying fan base that cost tons of $ than one that was 90-95% complete even if it did just do "ok" @ the registers. if the whole gladiatorial pony (or fad if you like) couldn't carry them what makes them think a nearly 50 year old pony can? they should just dissolve the company so some of the "talented" people can go work for companies that are developing ORIGINAL content rather than trying to cash in on fame (or hype) created by others.
I am sooooo glad you dont make games :P what you smokin? or you just hate star trek is that it?
I am NOT a star trek fanatic but I know it is sure money. To say that its fan base had dwindled just makes me cringe becuase I would love to have its fanbase. Would also love to see where you get your stats. lol
I am sure the star trek community is not very active because there has been no shows but thats changing as we speak.
Star trek also has a chance to stop the trend of making mmo's for the mentally challenged. Being engineers and living in a virtual world once again would get even me to sign up for trekkie membership.
We have no clue what they will do with this game right now but if they go back to making virtual immersive worlds like MMo's promised us early on I'd love it. and this premise gives it the all the more logical feel just for that kind of intelligent design.
If you hate star trek, that I can understand, but to not see how this game could set the companies future if its a hit because star trek is a household name, well thats just foolishness. seriously.
not that g&h sounded/looked amazing or anything, but STO (from my perspective) appears to be the most boring game ever conceived of ( ooh i can be a medic AND an engineer!!). while i'm sure they did pay anally for the license (thats how star trek employees like to get paid) it would seem more "logical" to cancel a boring game with a dying fan base that cost tons of $ than one that was 90-95% complete even if it did just do "ok" @ the registers. if the whole gladiatorial pony (or fad if you like) couldn't carry them what makes them think a nearly 50 year old pony can? they should just dissolve the company so some of the "talented" people can go work for companies that are developing ORIGINAL content rather than trying to cash in on fame (or hype) created by others.
I am sooooo glad you dont make games :P what you smokin? or you just hate star trek is that it?
I am NOT a star trek fanatic but I know it is sure money. To say that its fan base had dwindled just makes me cringe becuase I would love to have its fanbase. Would also love to see where you get your stats. lol
I am sure the star trek community is not very active because there has been no shows but thats changing as we speak.
Star trek also has a chance to stop the trend of making mmo's for the mentally challenged. Being engineers and living in a virtual world once again would get even me to sign up for trekkie membership.
We have no clue what they will do with this game right now but if they go back to making virtual immersive worlds like MMo's promised us early on I'd love it. and this premise gives it the all the more logical feel just for that kind of intelligent design.
If you hate star trek, that I can understand, but to not see how this game could set the companies future if its a hit because star trek is a household name, well thats just foolishness. seriously.
I've been following STO. You won't like what is planned.
2D flight pathes in space ( x and Y axis, not graphics ).
No player interactive ship interiors during combat.
Player controlled ships are mounts for travel.
Ship interiors, vendors, npc quest givers will be in stationary hubs ( capital ships and space stations ).
Space combat will all be external views of ships only.
Stinnett, Executive Producer STO quote: "We aren't making a game for Trekkies. We are making a world class MMO".
Stinnett, Executive Producer STO quote: "Don't worry, there is plenty of time to cancel your subscription."
"Don't corpse-camp that idea. Its never gonna rez" Bladezz (The Guild)
If you hate star trek, that I can understand, but to not see how this game could set the companies future if its a hit because star trek is a household name, well thats just foolishness. seriously.
Star Trek is certainly a household name, but it popularity is waning. I'd venture a guess and say that for most people under 25 there is very little fondness for the franchise. I know none of my children (ages 14-23) care a whit about Star Trek, and think its the province of old geeks like their father.
Say what you will about younger players, they are part of the market too (a big part) and I don't see a Star Trek MMO ever being anything but a niche game for older players....
And if this game sees the light of day before Fall of 2010 I'll be really surprised.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
If you hate star trek, that I can understand, but to not see how this game could set the companies future if its a hit because star trek is a household name, well thats just foolishness. seriously.
Star Trek is certainly a household name, but it popularity is waning. I'd venture a guess and say that for most people under 25 there is very little fondness for the franchise. I know none of my children (ages 14-23) care a whit about Star Trek, and think its the province of old geeks like their father.
Say what you will about younger players, they are part of the market too (a big part) and I don't see a Star Trek MMO ever being anything but a niche game for older players....
And if this game sees the light of day before Fall of 2010 I'll be really surprised.
Well, you never know. If they pair it with a really good movie or new series, it might take off. If somebody asked me four years ago what were the chances of a Battlestar Galactica remake appealing to a mass audience, I would have laughed in their face. Now there is some chatter about turning that IP into a MMORPG as well.
Personally, if I was a developer looking to make a quick buck from an IP, I would go for Heroes...
Yeah I have to go with that, I'm kind of sad about this going on hold. I never even managed to make it into beta after a lot of trying. So by the looks of it I won't get a chance to even try it for quite a while.
Yeah I have to go with that, I'm kind of sad about this going on hold. I never even managed to make it into beta after a lot of trying. So by the looks of it I won't get a chance to even try it for quite a while.
I'm not trying to be mean, but you need to understand that you may "never" get to play G&H at all, ever.
"Don't corpse-camp that idea. Its never gonna rez" Bladezz (The Guild)
If G&H still needed more polish before it launched (and it did - I was in the beta and they needed to get, at bare minimum, server stability up to scratch) despite being feature complete, then I have to think that any opportunity for G&H to rise again is going to be limited by that required polish. Add to that the focus on the Perpetual middleware apps and the focus on STO throughout 2008 (at least, maybe 2008 and 2009 for a 2010 launch is more realistic for STO) then the idea that PE can go back to G&H and pick up where they left off is a bit laughable.
Could you imagine G&H launching post 2010 if all they did was polish the game up? By 2010, Vista / DirectX 10 is going to probably the standard (if not something higher - DX11? DX12?), so G&H is going to need new graphics and animations if they want to be able to compete with the subscription MMO market. Basically PE would have to start from scratch if this is what they wanted to do.
Unless PE can resurrect G&H within six months, I doubt this game is ever going to see the light of day for anything other than a tech demo used to sell the PE middleware. And I don't believe they will be able to bring it back within six months because the focus will be on STO.
With that company in charge on Star Trek online i'm afraid it will turn into another SWG or even worse. I hope the peoples of ST will wake up and remove the franchise from that incompentent company.
The only way Star Trek can be A popular entity again is if the younger generation would stop being the "Instant Gratification spectrum". I'm not saying I am old or anything but I did grow up with classic Sci-Fi books and movies/shows. What I personally feel is if Perpetual is ever going to make or even produce a good ST game, is to actually get and listen to the older generation with a good core of the younger generation to add the fun and spice of current game mechanics . But then again you have the mentally blind (Daron Stinnett) leading this project and speaking for whom I will never understand.
Don't follow everyone else but forge yourself a name and a better tomorrow. There is plenty to be said for the current projection of the game and many months to come, if it ever blossoms to fruition under the current leadership. Followed this for a long time waiting in the back to see where it went. Is it too late to hope against hope and the voices whom stood back waiting idly now speak upon deaf ears? One could and does hope that it is not too late and the future will hold what most only dream of.
They can spin whatever they want and talk about what is to come but to me actions speak louder then mindless drivil and pandering to shills (wont mention whom they are but most of us here actually know whom I speak of).
Either do this right of drop it and the hate and pain of what once was shall be no more.To A worthy association and development company who will put heart and soul into a great franchise takes the ball and rolls with it.
I'm now totally convinced that this genre is dead.
The warning signs were in the air with Age of Mourning scamming as easily as they did. The rot spread with Dark and Light. The SWG NGE debacle showed that even popular games weren't immune. Seed, Horizons, Auto Assault, Vanguard, and now Gods and Heroes. All casualties of a market that's quickly realizing that MMOs are just a quagmire.
I don't know about you all, but I don't see many new titles listed "under development." Given the track record, who can blame anyone for getting out of this business? All of this is because developers and publishing houses have made it too easy to scam, too easy to drop out, and too easy to skimp on reliability.
Unless Blizzard develops it, the smart money ain't gonna go into MMOs. Who can blame it, when we can't even produce a game anymore?
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Comments
i am very sad for this game, i don`t believe is "dead", mmo community needs a non medieval fantasy game...
There were warning signs of this in the making, but the PE critics were shouted down and dismissed as trolls when they pointed to the two, then three rounds of lay-offs or firings and SOE making a big point on getting as far away as possible from PE, making public statements that SOE had nothing to do with the game and this all PE's baby on their "ROOKIE" debut in the MMO industry.
So the smoking train wreck known as G&H was their debut to the MMO industry. Now on to STO!
"Don't corpse-camp that idea. Its never gonna rez"
Bladezz (The Guild)
LoL to the poll, The Talaban are winning! (Most Trusted).
As others have pointed out there were signs that people should havce noticed.
I can't seem to find any posts that describe Perpetual showing off their game at conventions or game shows. Did they ever do this? I would have thought that would have been a real red-flag if they were already putting out pre-orders.
I won my beta from MMORPG.COM too. Never got the thing to even load up properly.
Meanwhile the Devs in interviews were talking about how amazing the in-game re-creations of the Collesium looked. Perhaps their management should have devoted less money to art assets and more to coding and networking issues.
Its not hard to dazzle Paramount with a merchandising idea as long as they hear investment is low. Win goes to the lowest bidder. There are only a few instances where a top notch product came with a Star Trek tag. For every one good item, there are 4-5 crap ones.
I'm sorry but what orifice did you pull this BS out of? Testers are doing a service for companies that they would otherwise have to pay big bucks for. It doesn't matter whether the testers are enjoying themselves or not. If it wasn't for free Beta testers game companies would have to pay people to test their games or take one hell of a chance of releasing a bug ridden POS. Testers ARE doing a company one hell of a service.
As for G&H some of us have seen this coming for a while now(See Keogh's post above). This move didn't really surprise me even a little bit and just solidifies even more what I and many others have been saying for a while now. PE has no idea what they are doing and have lied repeatedly about it in a vein attempt to cover it up. I'm a huge Star Trek fan but have very little confidence in PE or Daron Stinnett to make anything that a Trekkie would want to play for any length of time. Just what little we know about STO points to a conclusion that it will be a run of the mill MMO with Star Trek skins painted on(Think WoW in space). I do so very hope that I'm wrong but I don't think I will be just like I and many others weren't wrong about G&H.
Bren
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PE sucks, I feel sorry for you star trek nerds out there. Bad market feasiblity research (:
Its not hard to dazzle Paramount with a merchandising idea as long as they hear investment is low. Win goes to the lowest bidder. There are only a few instances where a top notch product came with a Star Trek tag. For every one good item, there are 4-5 crap ones.
Well, on paper at least, PE probably looked like a good choice to develop STO. Both Chris McKibbin and Joe Keene were part of the management team from EA that oversaw the development of Earth & Beyond. They probably showed CBS/Paramount E&B and then said, 'imagine this with the star-trek IP...' It would not surprise me if, at the end of the day, STO is essentially E&B with better graphics.
Standard public relations is not let your customer base know about financial difficulties or management problems until absolutely necessary. That way, if you manage to solve the problem quietly, no one need be the wiser (and no bad press!). So it doesn't surprise me that they shut the whole thing down on what seems like a moments notice. What I can not figure out is why PE would cancel GnH outright rather then pushing it to market in whatever state they could manage and then trying to recoup some of their money.
The way I see it, PE has managed to generate about 20 million in funding since its initial start up in 2002. About 11 mil came from (mostly Asian) venture capitol firms (see here and here) and another 9 million came from the purchase by Korean game publisher Gravity Co Ltd of 16% of PE's stock.
I am guessing that most of this money is now gone. It is hard to tell how many employees PE has/had (it is not a publicly traded company) but from its layoff announcements, I suspect that at its peak it had maybe 120 people working on GnH alone. Supposing an average of 75K per person, that would easily translate to 9 million a year in salaries alone. This is sunk cost that they now have no hope of recovering.
The only thing that makes any sense to me is that CBS took a look Perpetual's balance sheet and demanded that they close down Gods and Heroes or else they would pull the IP. I couldn't find any hard sales figures for GnH preorders, but any product that Amazon ranked as #9,624 in Software could not have been burning up the charts. Given the choice between supporting a quickly sinking game or losing their one valuable asset (the Star Trek IP) they chose (or were forced to choose) the later.
~nox
not that g&h sounded/looked amazing or anything, but STO (from my perspective) appears to be the most boring game ever conceived of ( ooh i can be a medic AND an engineer!!). while i'm sure they did pay anally for the license (thats how star trek employees like to get paid) it would seem more "logical" to cancel a boring game with a dying fan base that cost tons of $ than one that was 90-95% complete even if it did just do "ok" @ the registers.
if the whole gladiatorial pony (or fad if you like) couldn't carry them what makes them think a nearly 50 year old pony can? they should just dissolve the company so some of the "talented" people can go work for companies that are developing ORIGINAL content rather than trying to cash in on fame (or hype) created by others.
Testers aren't doing them a favor? Then perhaps they should have just went with paid testers then, right? Or PE could find all the bugs themselves while developing the game, right?
They don't owe the testers anything?
Wrong. Many of those beta testers were future paying customers of GnH, as well as STO. Take a crap on the community of one game, don't expect them to be wagging their tails and lolling their tongues like enchanted lapdogs when you want them to buy the next one.
How about they make Gods & Heroes open source ?
I'm sure the private server comunity will welcome the source with open arms
Ah well. Another Sci-Fi MMORPG with a great license, lotsa potential, and a company we can't imagine will deliver. A Star Trek MMO was going to be tough to do from the start, because the IP is missing many of the things that almost all MMOs use (money, war, crafting, pets, etc.). It DID have the potential for a massive new quest system (exploration, away teams, solving a bigger problem than "kill 10 borg-rats and return to me" that had puzzle elements in it), but it's pretty clear from reading posts recently that nothing new is being done and, in fact, they're attempting to squeeze the ST IP into the tried and tired formula.
If, indeed, STO would be an EnB with better graphics, that wouldn't be half bad. EnB was my first MMO and still holds very fond memories. But it was WAY too small scale for the huge potential player base of an ST MMO. And we don't really NEED a huge, new EnB. We've already got the ultimate extension of EnB in EVE, and THAT company (CCP) seems to be one of the best I've ever seen. We'll even soon have the old EnB avatar-at-the-station graphics candy that EVE is currently missing. So STEVE (!) would be just a watered down version of EVE with a ST skin, and that won't fly for long.
I had bad feelings when the guy at PE started opening his mouth back aways. A little voice in my head reminded me that the initials D.S. and sci-fi gaming have been linked before, and with disasterous results. (Let's see who's old enough to remember...lol).
All in all, both G&H and STO seem to be in the hands of the same kind of mess that Horizons had from the start. I mean, if the company's Big Boys are snapping at their potential audience before anything even hits beta, if they're cancelling projects to shift emphasis to their one HUGE IP license, then you've gotta wonder just how sound they are. Maybe we see PE sold to somebody else in about a year? Oh man. SOE?
-- Xix
"I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"
I am NOT a star trek fanatic but I know it is sure money. To say that its fan base had dwindled just makes me cringe becuase I would love to have its fanbase. Would also love to see where you get your stats. lol
I am sure the star trek community is not very active because there has been no shows but thats changing as we speak.
Star trek also has a chance to stop the trend of making mmo's for the mentally challenged. Being engineers and living in a virtual world once again would get even me to sign up for trekkie membership.
We have no clue what they will do with this game right now but if they go back to making virtual immersive worlds like MMo's promised us early on I'd love it. and this premise gives it the all the more logical feel just for that kind of intelligent design.
If you hate star trek, that I can understand, but to not see how this game could set the companies future if its a hit because star trek is a household name, well thats just foolishness. seriously.
I am sooooo glad you dont make games :P what you smokin? or you just hate star trek is that it?I am NOT a star trek fanatic but I know it is sure money. To say that its fan base had dwindled just makes me cringe becuase I would love to have its fanbase. Would also love to see where you get your stats. lol
I am sure the star trek community is not very active because there has been no shows but thats changing as we speak.
Star trek also has a chance to stop the trend of making mmo's for the mentally challenged. Being engineers and living in a virtual world once again would get even me to sign up for trekkie membership.
We have no clue what they will do with this game right now but if they go back to making virtual immersive worlds like MMo's promised us early on I'd love it. and this premise gives it the all the more logical feel just for that kind of intelligent design.
If you hate star trek, that I can understand, but to not see how this game could set the companies future if its a hit because star trek is a household name, well thats just foolishness. seriously.
I've been following STO. You won't like what is planned.
"Don't corpse-camp that idea. Its never gonna rez"
Bladezz (The Guild)
Star Trek is certainly a household name, but it popularity is waning. I'd venture a guess and say that for most people under 25 there is very little fondness for the franchise. I know none of my children (ages 14-23) care a whit about Star Trek, and think its the province of old geeks like their father.
Say what you will about younger players, they are part of the market too (a big part) and I don't see a Star Trek MMO ever being anything but a niche game for older players....
And if this game sees the light of day before Fall of 2010 I'll be really surprised.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Star Trek is certainly a household name, but it popularity is waning. I'd venture a guess and say that for most people under 25 there is very little fondness for the franchise. I know none of my children (ages 14-23) care a whit about Star Trek, and think its the province of old geeks like their father.
Say what you will about younger players, they are part of the market too (a big part) and I don't see a Star Trek MMO ever being anything but a niche game for older players....
And if this game sees the light of day before Fall of 2010 I'll be really surprised.
Well, you never know. If they pair it with a really good movie or new series, it might take off. If somebody asked me four years ago what were the chances of a Battlestar Galactica remake appealing to a mass audience, I would have laughed in their face. Now there is some chatter about turning that IP into a MMORPG as well.
Personally, if I was a developer looking to make a quick buck from an IP, I would go for Heroes...
~nox
I had high hopes for this game. Two tries at the closed beta eventually paid off, but I was quickly disappointed once I got in.
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Yeah I have to go with that, I'm kind of sad about this going on hold. I never even managed to make it into beta after a lot of trying. So by the looks of it I won't get a chance to even try it for quite a while.
I'm not trying to be mean, but you need to understand that you may "never" get to play G&H at all, ever.
"Don't corpse-camp that idea. Its never gonna rez"
Bladezz (The Guild)
That's not mean. Frankly, I would have told him that he was one of the lucky few who didn't get in.
If G&H still needed more polish before it launched (and it did - I was in the beta and they needed to get, at bare minimum, server stability up to scratch) despite being feature complete, then I have to think that any opportunity for G&H to rise again is going to be limited by that required polish. Add to that the focus on the Perpetual middleware apps and the focus on STO throughout 2008 (at least, maybe 2008 and 2009 for a 2010 launch is more realistic for STO) then the idea that PE can go back to G&H and pick up where they left off is a bit laughable.
Could you imagine G&H launching post 2010 if all they did was polish the game up? By 2010, Vista / DirectX 10 is going to probably the standard (if not something higher - DX11? DX12?), so G&H is going to need new graphics and animations if they want to be able to compete with the subscription MMO market. Basically PE would have to start from scratch if this is what they wanted to do.
Unless PE can resurrect G&H within six months, I doubt this game is ever going to see the light of day for anything other than a tech demo used to sell the PE middleware. And I don't believe they will be able to bring it back within six months because the focus will be on STO.
With that company in charge on Star Trek online i'm afraid it will turn into another SWG or even worse. I hope the peoples of ST will wake up and remove the franchise from that incompentent company.
Like SWG? You could only hope. It will be like Guide Wars. Only the towns will be spaceships.
Star Trek might be big again, they are doing moives with the first crew only recast with younger people.
The only way Star Trek can be A popular entity again is if the younger generation would stop being the "Instant Gratification spectrum". I'm not saying I am old or anything but I did grow up with classic Sci-Fi books and movies/shows. What I personally feel is if Perpetual is ever going to make or even produce a good ST game, is to actually get and listen to the older generation with a good core of the younger generation to add the fun and spice of current game mechanics . But then again you have the mentally blind (Daron Stinnett) leading this project and speaking for whom I will never understand.
Don't follow everyone else but forge yourself a name and a better tomorrow. There is plenty to be said for the current projection of the game and many months to come, if it ever blossoms to fruition under the current leadership. Followed this for a long time waiting in the back to see where it went. Is it too late to hope against hope and the voices whom stood back waiting idly now speak upon deaf ears? One could and does hope that it is not too late and the future will hold what most only dream of.
They can spin whatever they want and talk about what is to come but to me actions speak louder then mindless drivil and pandering to shills (wont mention whom they are but most of us here actually know whom I speak of).
Either do this right of drop it and the hate and pain of what once was shall be no more.To A worthy association and development company who will put heart and soul into a great franchise takes the ball and rolls with it.
I'm now totally convinced that this genre is dead.
The warning signs were in the air with Age of Mourning scamming as easily as they did. The rot spread with Dark and Light. The SWG NGE debacle showed that even popular games weren't immune. Seed, Horizons, Auto Assault, Vanguard, and now Gods and Heroes. All casualties of a market that's quickly realizing that MMOs are just a quagmire.
I don't know about you all, but I don't see many new titles listed "under development." Given the track record, who can blame anyone for getting out of this business? All of this is because developers and publishing houses have made it too easy to scam, too easy to drop out, and too easy to skimp on reliability.
Unless Blizzard develops it, the smart money ain't gonna go into MMOs. Who can blame it, when we can't even produce a game anymore?
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"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE