“STO can’t even be labeled a MMORPG. It is multiplayer but beyond that, its arcade, nothing more.” – STO forums

“I am not whining, I am demanding companies produce a quality product, not complete fluff then attempt to market it as something it is not. Cryptic is on the verge of ruining any chance of getting a quality Star Trek game, one that involves tactical thinking, like a Star Trek game should be.” – STO forums

“Maybe it’s just not for you, and others will enjoy it. Maybe even you will enjoy it…” – STO forums

“Right now all you do is die and repsawn over and over under you complete the mission, nothing is hard because you can’t lose anything. EVE Online makes you really pumped up for combat because you can lose everything that’s on you and man it just makes the whole game exciting. – mmorpg forums

“Sorry, most people don’t want to lose days/weeks/months of work becauser they died, have fun torturing yourself though.” – mmorpg forums

“I don’t think we need to go to the point of EVE or Darkfall. Losing everything you’ve gained is no fun. The only time death should be tough is in PVP, and IMO the best way to solve that is to be kicked out of the battle until it is over. As others have said, you have other gaming options if you get an adreniline rush from harsh death penalties.” – mmorpg forums

“Space combat is very much like the shows. It’s not a dogfight—you’re not zipping around. You’re in huge 1,000-meter starships with hundreds of crew onboard. In the shows, it’s all about tactics and positioning. It’s about bolstering a shield that’s taken damage, transferring power from your deflector dish to your weapons or engines at the right time. It’s about knocking your enemy’s shields down with phasers and taking them out with photon torpedoes…” – CZ

“Well, first and foremost, it’s a game. We thought of a whole bunch of different ways to do interesting things for respawn, but it really came down to getting players back into the action. You don’t lose your ship [if it blows up]; you just respawn at the beginning of the map with a little damage done to your systems. But overall, we don’t want you to spend 80 hours getting that Sovereign class vessel, get owned, and then lose that ship.”  – CZ

Quick…of all the opinions above, which one counts – we mean really counts.  If you ask the authors of all of the above statement more than likely each one will probably think their opinion counts. What about this? Whose opinion doesn’t count?  If you find out that “CZ” stands for Craig Zinkievich, executive producer for Star Trek Online the first thought (at least the first reasonable thought) might be that only his opinion counts. But does it?

Home of the un-silent minority…

This last weekend we read through the Star Trek Online (STO) forums. Mind you this is a dangerous habit at best to anyone who actually enjoys the game to which the forums belong. We say this is a dangerous habit because the forums are where what our own Julie has dubbed “the un-silent minority” resides. These are the individuals WHO USUALLY TYPE IN ALL CAPS – no doubt because they feel the rest of humanity lacks the attention span necessary to grasp the meaning of their words otherwise. These are usually accompanied by the individuals who threaten legal action, such as the individual, bereft of any understanding of tort law, who threatened a class action lawsuit for being denied some of their gaming time this weekend, or having to wait a few hours to play his “liberated Borg character”.

Home of the wise (or should we say wizened) blogger…

One of the more irritating habits that players in any mmo have developed is whipping out the “e-peen” meter.  Sister Frances talks about this on our next show where some mage proudly displayed his dps meter during a raid and denounced the good sister (who was playing the tank role) for not doing enough damage. The catch (or two) of course, is that it is the tanks role to take damage. And if the mage manages to dish out enough dps to rival an atom bomb the old mmo adage “you spank it you tank it” comes in to play.

But mmos participants aren’t the only ones who like to whip out e-peen meters. Every now and then a blogger likes to whip out a meter that measures “numbers of unique hits” on their web site.  If said blogger manages to reach an number that would fill a small school auditorium sometimes said blogger will begin to pat themselves on the back and like Tevia says of “the rich man” in Fiddler on the Roof “think they really know.”  The result will be an individual who sometimes catching the briefest glimpses of beta gaming, or sometimes actually playing the first level or two of live release, will pronounce their edict as if they are the Almighty Himself, relegating the game developer and publisher to gaming Heaven or hell mere based on their whim.

The biggest stick

American president Theodore Roosevelt once said “Speak softly and carry a big stick” – but who really has the biggest stick here? Is it Craig Zinkievich? After all, he is the executive producer of STO.  In the short term perhaps his opinion does matter the most. But even he reports to someone.  Keep in mind here that no matter who Craig Zinkievich reports to, Cryptic Studios is owned by Atari (the other name on the screen when you log on to STO). Taking it a step further even Atari is owned by a French corporation named Infogrames, by some estimations the largest manufacturer of games in the entire world.  So this must mean that the CEO (chief executive officer) of Infogrames has the biggest stick – right? Well maybe not.

The wheel turns…

Julie often says that her grandmother used to describe a “big wheel” as something that “goes around and around in circles, never gets anywhere and little dogs pee on it.” We couldn’t agree more.  We have noted that the more successful the developer or publisher the bigger their “britches” (and sometimes head) seems to get. Mind you this isn’t always the case but believe me there are plenty of examples. (perhaps this is why we love independent developers so much).  But in the long run even the big 800 pound corporate gorillas can be slapped back into their cage and told to beg for bananas for a living.  A heck of a good example is General Motors. They have required not one but two bailouts by the United States government.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.” – Tommy Lee Jones as “Agent K” from Men in Black

In the case about the reason that General Motors needed a bailout is simple enough; not enough people bought their cars.  The key word in the last sentence is people, not person.  There may be a very verbal minority that voices their opinions very loudly in the Star Trek Online forums that feel that STO is doomed, DOOMED I SAY,  because Cryptic has had enormous gall, the massive chutzpa, to create the game and institute a virtual death penalty without consulting them first.  The truth of the matter is, of course, that such a concept is ludicrous.  But while a person or even small vocal group of people on the forums may be inconsequential people are dumb, panicky dangerous animals. Taken as a while people can bring even the greatest game, and the best developer or publisher to its knees; but a person, can’t do it, no matter how much they think of themselves.

So in the end, who has the biggest stick? Well it seems to us that in the end analysis no one has the biggest stick. Game development and publishing is just like everything else – it is just like life…it is one big enormous circle.

See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team

But wait…there’s more. Don’t the pictures we use in our articles always have something to do with the theme of the article? Well in this case the picture is related only in that it is from STO. It’s just something we noticed the first time we saw an “enemy signal contact” in sector space – the very first thing we thought of was, as you can see, the Eye of Sauron, from Lord of the Rings.

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