Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[Kageru]

It's so cool to bash wow now, it's sort of sad but a tribute to their success. Likewise WoW is not easy. It is easy to pickup, easy to make some progress, and has some of the most competitive and challenging PvP and PvE on the market. Integrating hard modes into scripted content is certainly something they've taken further than anyone.

There doesn't have to be a WoW killer. Being as good as wow in another genre or covering some of the gameplay areas it does not (sim-life, RvR) is more than enough to be quite successful. It's just that so many of the modern MMO releases have been outright suck. Poorly thought out game mechanics, half finished content, no thought on where the game will grow to after release.

Which of course brings us back to STO. This game will just have to release without being shit, almost certainly a challenge too far for cryptic, before it worries about the challenges posed by external competition. Not that they care, no matter they'll be releasing another MMO by then.

[UnSub]

IMO, one major factor that is often overlooked about WoW's success is that it can be played on pretty much any PC. Cryptic, using their more standardised Cryptic Engine, should be looking to be in a similar place - a title that can work on as many PCs as possible. But they aren't. If you look at the ChampO forums you can see complaint after complaint of issues that the Cryptic Engine has with both Nvidia and ATI drivers and is perhaps overloading on the CPU, and these are on PCs that theoretically have a fairly reasonable spec.

Nothing is going to be the WoW-killer unless it can be played on two rusty tin cans tied together with twine, just like WoW can.

[Tannhauser]

No other company seems to have the luxury of being able to 'ship when it's ready'.  AFAIK, every MMO since WoW has had to ship at some deadline and always at it's disadvantage. 

I don't see WoW getting beaten for the next three years at least.  This year we get Cataclysm and new graphics and a re-vamped vanilla world.  That will last (with content add-ons) a year and then we get an expansion in 2012/early 2013.

Happy New Year everyone!

[Venkman]

Ah, first long ass post of 2010. Good morning all and happy new year!

WoW at launch was polished, fun, complete and playable on day one. It's aged well, but you need to concentrate on what it was in 2004 to understand why just being fun and polished was enough

But that isn't enough anymore, I don't think. Aion seemed as polished as anything we've seen in a while in terms of an MMO launch, and that has only done moderately well.  And that was launched a year later here than in Asia, so they had a lot of  "post launch" time there, in reality.   

If you released World of Warcraft as it was at launch, in today's market, it would go the same way as nearly everything since it.  Sure, I understand why that worked when it did, but I don't think you can look at it to see what will work NOW.   Unless that isn't your point.

No. WoW still would be a huge hit. You need to consider all of the success factors. I listed them above, but they're as important as the game polish and addictive qualities. These have been listed numberous times, but what the heck, it's a new year

• Gamer-centric IP- not just some movie-to-MMO adaptation, an IP gamers wanted. Nobody else has one outside of maybe Fallout. Or Diablo or Starcraft
  
• Blizzard name - can do no wrong belief
  
• Staggered global launch- every new record broken was a feedback loop of advertising to prior launches
  
• Huge as development budget- biggest MMO dev budget of all time, no idea how much was spent on addiitonal marketing. "Polish" and "content complete" don't come cheap.
  
• Playable on anything with a monitor- As UnSub mentioned.
  
• Proven game mechanic- safe innovation, not risky invention, or "done right" vs "new", identified by a smart team of gamers who know how to iterate and drop bad ideas. Yes, this is based on tweaking addictions. So what? They all are, as are many games in other genres, both core and casual.
  
  

All of those still exist as competitive advantages today.

Plus the polish. Yes, there were bugs (as Ratman mentioned), but nothing on the order of stats not doing anything, not being playable on day one, or a pet class with pets that don't fly.

The genre without WoW would be much smaller. AoC wouldn't have gotten it's huge budget, not being measured against the potential of WoW (instead probably against LoTRO or EQ2). WAR would have been the same but probably without the huge marketing hype machine selling the wrong game. LoTRO would have been the same, and maybe even be #1 at this point). Vanguard would have probably gotten a bigger budget. Aion would have been the biggest launch recently and maybe the game everyone feared (though the credibility damage from AA and TR would still be there), and it's too early to tell how it's doing because we don't have the Q4 numbers from NC yet.

Importantly, nobody would have learned the play-on-anything lesson, probably still driving for the wrong goal of graphics card pushing ala EQ2 and keeping this genre niche for more reasons than just the game mechanic.

[Malakili]

Well, my point was that if there was the standard of a game that is WoW as it is now (in terms of polish, subs, etc), then WoW-at-launch would probably not impress many people.

Its really nothing very staggering to say, WoW-now makes WoW-then obsolete, and that you need to, I think, do better than WoW did at launch these days if you want to compete with WoW-now, or at least are aiming at the same playerbase.

The other option, which is probably a lot smarter, is to aim at a different playerbase.  Examples are: Fallen Earth, or even Darkfall.  (I leave out EVE because its very well established at this point and isn't an example of e recent release).  Smaller budgets, and aim at a playerbase that wants something you are offering enough to put up with bugs and lack of "polish."   

I suspect WoW has somewhat artificially inflated the perceived size of the MMO playerbase, because I suspect there are a lot of WoW players who aren't really going to play something other than WoW.

[eldaec]

What Darnaiq said.

But was there any 'safe innovation' in WoW, by which I mean was there any innovation at all?

I'm not complaining about this, just saying that it emphasises how from a financial perspective you don't need a massive ip, you don't need new gameplay, but you do need to produce an entire 'massive scale' game in a halfway professional manner; a AAA mmog requires both enormous capital investment and an effective sausage machine capable of managing the sheer quantity of code and content you'd need to build a new WoW.

Some games since wow might have had the budget, but none have had both the budget and the management capability to direct that volume of work.

[patience]

WoW at launch was polished, fun, complete and playable on day one.

WoW launched plagued with bugs, some of which didn't get fixed for years (lootlock anyone?) with very sparse endgame content (Molten Bore and Onyxia) and balance problems. (Lolret) Still, it was fun. And that was enough.

Anyone who says your first sentence is clueless about WoW's success. Ironically your entire statement points out one of the reasons WoW was a success.

When WoW launched the only MMO I played prior to it was Runescape and a few text based games. The one mantra that was continuously parroted in the forums and in game during the first eight months.

"Trust me anything you are experiencing now is far less a problem than other MMOs at launch."

And

"These type of problems are expected and the game offers too much (insert favorite aspects of WoW) that makes this game fun."

It took me a year of research to piece it all together but it's fairly obvious one of the biggest things WoW did right was be polished enough that they quickly created a vocal audience in large enough numbers to defend the game.

These were people who had to deal with attempted abortion debacles like Anarchy Online and SWG.
These were people who expected Everquest 2 to improve upon EQ but didn't, unlike WoW.


WoW at launch was a beautifully crafted world, with lots of room to explore (moreso in terms of game mechanics than the world itself) that was well paced for its time.

Anybody complaining about WoW's faults at launch was quickly corrected and in a civil manner.

This formation of a core audience was one of the three major factors that allowed WoW to grow.

# Playable on anything with a monitor- As UnSub mentioned.

This was one of the other three major aspects that helped WoW greatly which I had a hard time remembering while typing this up.

The last factor was Blizzard's fortunate timing with the expansion of broadband. Every other factor was secondary in terms of building up WoW to the giant it is now.

One could say intelligent game design was a strong factor but I only think certain parts of their decisions were more relevant than others. The most important decisions are reflected in how they attained a core audience and how they ensured few people needed to upgrade their machine.

[Hoax]

First of all WoW at launch wasn't a buggy pile at all.  Hunters had reason to complain because the class didn't quite work at all but beyond that WoW was the least buggy best balanced launch ever.  Period.  We all knew it and said it at the time.  Now that is ignoring the fact that lootlock and servers that were straight up down for most of the first week, queues etc.

The reason we ignored all that bullshit was it was Blizzard and we trust Blizzard and it was the biggest launch ever.

WoW did new things, no game had ever had breadcrumb quest lines like WoW did.  No game had made progressing so obvious and easy, it led you to the correct zones, correct mobs, correct spawns, correct loot.  The underlying mechanics were nothing new but the balance, polish and accessibility was miles beyond anything else.  Also it ran on everything.  That cannot be stressed enough.

[Venkman]

CoX and SWG had breadcrumb questions. And EQ2 did them even better, though that doesn't really count because it only launched a month prior to WoW (and pilfered a bunch of ideas from it once so many beta reports started coming out). Otherwise: yes.

Well, my point was that if there was the standard of a game that is WoW as it is now (in terms of polish, subs, etc), then WoW-at-launch would probably not impress many people.

And my counterpoint is that the genre that has existed since 2004 would not exist if not for WoW, so WoW launching today would be the same as WoW launching then. Just so we're clear on how we disagree

[Ratman_tf]

The reason we ignored all that bullshit was it was Blizzard and we trust Blizzard and it was the biggest launch ever.

WoW has survived shit that would have sunk other games. Broken instancing, broken battlefields, broken characters. But people waded through that shit because the core game was fun. Hell, for a few weeks there during Wrath, my brother couldn't raid because the instances they wanted to run were not available. Instead of going to play another game, they stuck around the instance entrance hopping in and out hoping the instance would load.

That's impressive.

[Endie]

I was at a Hogmanay party last night, and was rather startled to find myself being told by a bunch of people how I was wrong, and that they'd be playing this game at launch.  A couple of them were Star Trek geeks, but most were XBox types who had either never played an MMO or had only dabbled with WoW for a bit.  I was rather taken aback.

[Kageru]

CoX and SWG had breadcrumb questions. And EQ2 did them even better, though that doesn't really count because it only launched a month prior to WoW (and pilfered a bunch of ideas from it once so many beta reports started coming out). Otherwise: yes.

EQ2 at launch was a ghastly abomination of non-fun though, so it wasn't really relevant. It took Hartsman many months some time after release to remove the worst of the brain damage and the game has never really recovered.

WoW had only one real failure on launch, other than which it was insanely polished and content packed compared to the state of the art. The Blizzard guys completely underestimated the interest and demand for their product and their back end didn't scale. I remember interviews before release where they hoped they'd be able to equal EQ's 400k. It was definitely a failure on their part but somewhat understandable because no-one really thought there were that many people willing to play a subscription based MMO.

[eldaec]

CoX and SWG had breadcrumb questions. And EQ2 did them even better, though that doesn't really count because it only launched a month prior to WoW (and pilfered a bunch of ideas from it once so many beta reports started coming out). Otherwise: yes.

Well, my point was that if there was the standard of a game that is WoW as it is now (in terms of polish, subs, etc), then WoW-at-launch would probably not impress many people.

And my counterpoint is that the genre that has existed since 2004 would not exist if not for WoW, so WoW launching today would be the same as WoW launching then. Just so we're clear on how we disagree

This is a daft thing to say. Everquest existed before 2004. Wow is exactly the same game, only with far superior execution and production values. There is no 'genre that existed since 2004'.

And arguably, the genre only existed up until 2004, and has now ceased to exist, since CoH and EQ2 were the last 2 titles to bring anything worthwhile and new to the table, and wow is the only AAA title after that which succeeded on any kind of practical level.

[Venkman]

My point was that none of the post-2004 games designed, budgeted nor marketed against the expectations of millions of paying subs without WoW showing it's possible. Prior, 500k paying subs was awesome. The only game to even think about getting a full million was SWG. Kageru's exactly right in that Blizzard's biggest failing was underestimating by an 10x the number of people that wanted to play WoW. WoW is an improved EQ1, but "improved" took a lot more effort than ripping off the design and tweaking the payouts.

Now, you're going to tell me WAR would have gotten its huge ass marketing budget, TR and AoC would have been given all those dev dollars, and LoTRO wouldn't have made up some statistic just to release a press release with "million" in it in a world without WoW?

If so, then we're just going to have to agree to disagree.

I also think you're being pretty Eve-myopic if you think nothing worthwhile has come to the genre since 2004, especially if you use something like CoH and EQ2 as the last examples of innovation. But since you're not into these kind of games, there's no frame of reference to have that debate.

[eldaec]

Now, you're going to tell me WAR would have gotten its huge ass marketing budget, TR and AoC would have been given all those dev dollars, and LoTRO wouldn't have made up some statistic just to release a press release with "million" in it in a world without WoW?

I agree with almost all of that, I just think WoW wasn't about genre definition, it was about delivery and execution. Wow hasn't done anything to help the genre; where it has influenced later games, it has encouraged failure by challenging people to take on wow directly, rather than find a new space, and by raising financial expectations to idiotic levels. Many post 2004 mmogs would have been better games if not for wow, and in the long term might even have had greater subscriptions, I'm not criticising wow or blizzard for this ofc, the problem is that nobody else knows wtf they are doing. If I had any hope for STO, it would be because cryptic are far from the worst offenders, with Champions they at least tried to take a different direction. Also, even if wow was the reason for the budgets (I think you underestimate EA and Sony execs willingness to piss money away on any project that might land a subscription fee) it is very debatable how much impact those budgets actually had.

WoW is the only game ever to deliver AAA single player game production values in a mmog. Non-wow mmogs will never break significantly beyond EQ subscription levels until developers realise that. It wasn't just that wow runs on anything, wow can also be run by anybody, out of the box, without CTD every ten minutes, and with a friendly and interesting enough introduction.

As others have said, it had a large functional game at launch, nobody went around saying 'we've got a good extensible platform to build from'. Their only problem was too many people buying the damn thing. None of this could be said about AA, AoC, WAR, HG:L, D&D etc.



I stand by the 2004 comment though. What worthwhile new mmogs have launched since then? Lotro maybe? That's the the only arguable case I can think of.

[Rendakor]

Cryptic didn't try to "take a different direction", they just copied a different game. Poorly, like everyone else out there.

[Venkman]

it has encouraged failure by challenging people to take on wow directly, rather than find a new space, and by raising financial expectations to idiotic levels.

I respect why you might think this, but I think WoW has actually done both. Keep in mind some of these games that launched after were well past the concept/design stage prior, so they were designed to compete in the pre-WoW space and were then forced to make changes after.

Most of these studios are not fundamentally risk takers. They can't afford to be at these budgets. Most of the risk you see is on the smaller projects, and even those just choose something else to emulate. These games only "took on" WoW in terms of how they were marketed, because in marketing, you don't try to sell something as second best. If not for WoW, they'd have been marketed as the "next LoTRO killer" (or maybe next EQ2 killer).

The genre was expected to continually incrementally grow. WoW was like a shotgun of new players. Instead of competing in a base of hundreds of thousands, now it's millions. Without WoW, incremental growth may have gotten the US and EU to a full million, not a potential of six. The genre isn't measured with WoW in it because those players are mostly not a potential playerbase, because WoW does for them everything they need in a way nobody else has been proven to do. So really, the MMO platform is largely the second-placers.

Many post 2004 mmogs would have been better games if not for wow

I disagree. Their basis of comparison would have been EQ2, which probably sucked more players from EQ1 than it did increase the EQ subs across the franchise. Heck, EQ2 itself probably wouldn't have gotten the Pub 19 treatment (the end of sub-classing et al) if not for WoW.

So you would have had a diku, a diku sequel, and a bunch of knockoffs with slight tweaks (PvP DAoC, no-loot CoH) and still-broken SWG/UO as the basis of comparison.

In that competitive set, still just launching a functioning content-complete diku would have been just fine.

• LoTRO would still be exactly the same (though fewer people would care about the feeling of combat under water because the only comparison was EQ2). This would probably be the most successful MMO today, though they may be less compelled to make some of the improvements they have,
• Vanguard still would have launched exactly the same though maybe with slightly more marketing dollars.
• PotBS would still be AA 2.0. Maybe they wouldn't have bothered with the ground game (I really wish they hadn't).
• GW would still be GW. No reason to change anything here. Today we'd probably be debating how you compare the two biggest successes of LoTRO or GW when how they're measurewd are so different, in the same way that years ago we debated EQ1 vs Lineage 1.
• AoC would probably have launched sooner, with even less of it working and complete (and Falconeer wouldn't be able to claim the game was content complete in the middle, because it wouldn't have been  ).
• WAR would have been more responsibly marketed because Mythic would probably still independent (because the genre wouldn't have gotten big enough to require a second entry into it).
• Aion would still have launched the way it did (Korean launch first, independent of WoW) but maybe moved to the US sooner.
• STO, well, that's under NDA...
• Lumped together we'd still certainly have Free Realms (innovative and inventive), Fusion Fall, Club Penguin, and all the rest of the non-AAA browser/thin-client games, because they'd still be chasing a new audience.

The only game I can think of that might have been improved in world without WoW is Tabula Rasa. Maybe it wouldn't have gotten rebooted and we'd have the original butterfly/unicorn vision, which wasn't bad.

It's also possible we wouldn't have SWTOR nor a Pirates of the Carribean Online.

Edit: forgot to make my point.

[Riggswolfe]

Ok,like a dork I've preordered this. I figure if I play for a month or two and set it aside I still got some fun out of it. If I get surprised and it's actually fun I have something to keep me busy between LOTRO content updates.

[statisticalfool]

What Darnaiq said.

But was there any 'safe innovation' in WoW, by which I mean was there any innovation at all?

I'm not complaining about this, just saying that it emphasises how from a financial perspective you don't need a massive ip, you don't need new gameplay, but you do need to produce an entire 'massive scale' game in a halfway professional manner; a AAA mmog requires both enormous capital investment and an effective sausage machine capable of managing the sheer quantity of code and content you'd need to build a new WoW.

Some games since wow might have had the budget, but none have had both the budget and the management capability to direct that volume of work.

I'm not enough of a MMO historian, but here are some guesses on innovation that launch wow had:

* First MMO to have a nonstop stream of quests, in which not only was it possible to go 1-60 by questing, but it was the default.
* Real emphasis on small-scale instance groups (both pre 60 and and at 60), and in bringing more than tank and spank to even small-scale instance (sure, LBRS/UBRS may look simplistic by today's standard, but I think a lot of the work in getting to: "don't stand in these 5 fires, get this color, then stand in these 3 fires in this order" was forged by WoW)
* Every class is a viable solo class.
* (I doubt this one is true) First mainstream MMO to have an essentially non-existent death penalty.
* Rest XP (this one is more important than it seems)

Regardless of which of those actually originate with WoW, every single one of those orients in one direction: friendly to non-hardcore players. That's part of the success of WoW: they believed that they grow the niche by an order of magnitude, and proceeded accordingly.

[Evildrider]

Ok,like a dork I've preordered this. I figure if I play for a month or two and set it aside I still got some fun out of it. If I get surprised and it's actually fun I have something to keep me busy between LOTRO content updates.

I am having less reservations about getting this game then I am SWTOR. 

[Riggswolfe]

Ok,like a dork I've preordered this. I figure if I play for a month or two and set it aside I still got some fun out of it. If I get surprised and it's actually fun I have something to keep me busy between LOTRO content updates.

I am having less reservations about getting this game then I am SWTOR. 

SWTOR is far enough out that I am trying not to worry about it one way or another.

[CaptainNapkin]

Couple day head start on beta for Fileplanet founders club members, possibly making it worth forgetting to cancel that sub before it renews each year.

[eldaec]

I'm not enough of a MMO historian, but here are some guesses on innovation that launch wow had:

* First MMO to have a nonstop stream of quests, in which not only was it possible to go 1-60 by questing, but it was the default.
* Real emphasis on small-scale instance groups (both pre 60 and and at 60), and in bringing more than tank and spank to even small-scale instance (sure, LBRS/UBRS may look simplistic by today's standard, but I think a lot of the work in getting to: "don't stand in these 5 fires, get this color, then stand in these 3 fires in this order" was forged by WoW)
* Every class is a viable solo class.
* (I doubt this one is true) First mainstream MMO to have an essentially non-existent death penalty.
* Rest XP (this one is more important than it seems)

Regardless of which of those actually originate with WoW, every single one of those orients in one direction: friendly to non-hardcore players. That's part of the success of WoW: they believed that they grow the niche by an order of magnitude, and proceeded accordingly.

* Except CoH and EQ2 (and Atitd, and probably some others)
* Except CoH, EQ LDoN, and I still argue Diablo II was a MMOG (and in WoW wasn't this pvp only at launch?). Also Puzzle Pirates.
* As much as EQ2 and CoH and GW and UO and EVE and AC.
* You're right, it's not true, everyone has aimed lower than the last guy since forever.
* Didn't EQ2 have this first? Otherwise you might have to go back to muds.

friendly to non-hardcore gamers

I completely agree that it was this focus that made the whole show work, but isn't really in design innovation, it's in things like production values, scripting of the newbie experience, and marketing; probably most important, once Blizzard had this crowd they've kept aiming the new content at them. Launch Wow and early patch Wow had a much higher proportion of raid based and EQstyle content than it does today.

But lots of developers have tried to do this, both before and after Wow. Blizzard were just more disciplined and better managed.

[Ingmar]

CoH at launch didn't have a totally full mission slate, there were spots you had to grind.

Given that EQ2 and WoW released within a couple weeks of each other, saying "EQ2 did it first" for any features that were in-game at release is sort of disingenuous.

[statisticalfool]

EQ2

I totally forgot EQ2 beat WoW to market, apologies.

friendly to non-hardcore gamers

I completely agree that it was this focus that made the whole show work, but isn't really in design innovation, it's in things like production values, scripting of the newbie experience, and marketing; probably most important, once Blizzard had this crowd they've kept aiming the new content at them. Launch Wow and early patch Wow had a much higher proportion of raid based and EQstyle content than it does today.

But lots of developers have tried to do this, both before and after Wow. Blizzard were just more disciplined and better managed.

Yeah,  I guess, in essence, I agree with you: there's something called innovation that games like ATitD have and games like WoW are lacking. But I'm not sure that the opposite of innovation is a lack of design, which is I think the usual dichotomy this topic gets pulled into.

For example, and I'm picking a really easy-to-bash target intentionally, one of Halo's major design choices was the two gun limit. Combine that with a philosophy that all guns had their use, and that all enemies drop easily retrievable guns, and the combat of Halo felt largely unique: you constantly were evolving your evaluation of which gun to have moment to moment. But I'm sure none of the three features I've mentioned are "innovated" by Bungie, yet the feel was unique, before they beat it into the ground (I'm sure somebody is about to show me up on this history).

WoW was a mix of a lot of elements out there, in very well thought-out proportions. I have no need to call that innovation, but I don't think it ends up being uncreative either, especially when you put it next to a game like Alganon.

[Rendakor]

* Except CoH and EQ2 (and Atitd, and probably some others)
* Except CoH, EQ LDoN, and I still argue Diablo II was a MMOG (and in WoW wasn't this pvp only at launch?). Also Puzzle Pirates.
* As much as EQ2 and CoH and GW and UO and EVE and AC.
* You're right, it's not true, everyone has aimed lower than the last guy since forever.
* Didn't EQ2 have this first? Otherwise you might have to go back to muds.

In EQ2 at launch it was not possible to get from 1-50 with quests alone; it was only after the first few patches that this became possible. EQ2 highly underestimated the importance of the solo player at launch. The game was exclusively "group and grind" to level, until the massive success of WoW convinced them that the hardcore was not the majority.

[eldaec]

WoW was a mix of a lot of elements out there, in very well thought-out proportions.

Exactly, if say, CoH, had the specific elements most people mention as key wow design features, it still wouldn't have had the success wow had.

In fact, CoH did have 90% of them, plus sidekicking (fuck why does noone ever copy sidekicking properly), an easily superior character creator, and a more interesting-to-mainstream setting which hit at a time when superheroes were cooler than elves.

What it didn't have was the discipline or effective content creation processes, or the 'well thought out proportions', or quality. Same goes for everyone else whose game didn't go full-SWG-retard.

It's not that these other games added more grind for hardcores, or nerfed shit, they were aiming at the same casual players (not Vanguard). It's that they didn't execute well enough, consistently enough, and often enough to hide exactly the same grind of approximately the same length from exactly the same game mechanics behind sufficient fun.

[patience]

I don't agree with some of these assertions that other games being listed were doing what WoW did (and I'm not even thinking of EQ2) but the conclusions being made I feel are valid. When AoC and WAR launched, people raved constantly about 1-20 and Tier 1+2 in those respective games. Then brick walls were hit as everyone realized the content after that wasn't of a higher quality than the low level content.

[Venkman]

The brick wall was the amount of grind post-20, when the quests dried out. Not like WoW is replete with engaging content. Every zone goes through the same sequence of quests with the occasional story. The competition didn't have the discipline (or money or time or whatever) to ensure the same went for their game. So people played very complete early games and then that ended.

Given that EQ2 and WoW released within a couple weeks of each other, saying "EQ2 did it first" for any features that were in-game at release is sort of disingenuous.

This. So much of EQ2 was borrowed from what the developers were experiencing in the WoW betas that it's impossible to really tell who had what idea first.

In fact, CoH did have 90% of them, plus sidekicking (fuck why does noone ever copy sidekicking properly), an easily superior character creator, and a more interesting-to-mainstream setting which hit at a time when superheroes were cooler than elves

Yea. CoH had a lot of good ideas, unfortunately hidden by a game with unenviable subs. And it was one of the first "big"(ish) launches to experience a pretty sizable post-launch decline. Mostly because of the grind. But unfortunately it meant we had to wait years for things like teleport-to-me, sidekicking, and deep customization in other games.

[Hoax]

CoH did not have a flawless lead by the nose questgrind progression ala WoW, that is total bullshit.  Not only did it not have that but it doesn't have loot.  Which somehow all of you have failed to mention.  WoW has Blizzard itemization, sure I prefer it in Diablo but Blizzard does items better then most.  CoH has no items.  People played CoH realized there were no items to get and the powers were few and far between got bored and quit.  Saying CoH did it all is such bullshit because CoH didn't have fucking items, let alone crafting, much for content or half the things people are now pretending it had (L1 to max quest chains).

I know that bagging on WoW is the cool thing to do these days, I've been sick of it since they first added BG's and made it clear they didn't give a fuck about the world being influenced by players or pvp all in one swing.  BUT it was the pinnacle of diku gameplay and miles beyond CoH and EQ2 at launch pretending otherwise is fucking crazytalk.

[UnSub]

CoH/V did a pretty good job of growing up until the release of CoV, even through the nerfs. It's been a slow decline since then, however, to the point where I think they have under 100k players (not bad for the age of the game, but not good to be in NCsoft's stable with declining sub figures). Going Rogue is the make or break point for the future of CoH/V.

EDIT: CoH/V not having items was a positive to some people Hoax. But yeah, for others it was a turn-off. You can see how ChampO has tried to pick the middle ground by having both items and costume customisation, but I think Cryptic probably missed the sweet spot on getting it right.

On innovation: there's a concept known as innovator's tax that basically says, "The innovator might be first to market, but everyone gets to see their mistakes and learn from them". Innovation can also scare off new players who have to learn how to play first - there's a reason why the basics are so often stuck to.

Of course, there are also some really great ideas that exist in failed MMOs that no-one touches because the game failed and everyone likes to reinvent the wheel over and over again.

[Ghambit]

Couple day head start on beta for Fileplanet founders club members, possibly making it worth forgetting to cancel that sub before it renews each year.

It's more than a couple days.  I'll be smashing Klingon skulls in 2 days.
http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/star-trek-online/

[Numtini]

All registered, tho I didn't see any agreement anywhere.

[CaptainNapkin]

I only recall the standard EULA, though I registered on my phone so had assumed I just missed it. /shrug

*Edit - There's an NDA posted on the forum dated 10/15, no update that anything was lifted.

[Malakili]

Looks like Digital Deluxe edition is up for pre-purchase on Steam:

Steam Exclusive Pre-Purchase Offer

Chromodynamic Armor: This armor is based on technology brought back from the Delta Quadrant by U.S.S. Voyager and is personal body armor that improves the damage and critical hits of your energy weapons

Star Trek Online Digital Deluxe Edition Exclusives

The Star Trek Online Digital Deluxe Edition offers such bonuses as five exclusive in-game items as well as the ability to play as a “Joined Trill” – a symbiote that grants you several lifetimes of experience. The five exclusive in-game items include:

Original Star Trek Uniform Set: Three uniforms from the original series (blue, red, yellow).
Exclusive “KHAAAN!” Emote: An unforgettable moment from the second Star Trek Film. This exclusive emote allows players to relive Kirk’s unforgettable moment of fury, with the timeless cry… “KHAAAN!”
Exclusive Klingon Blood Wine Toast Emote: Raise a glass like a Klingon! Greet other players with an exclusive Klingon gesture –the blood wine toast.
Unique Registry Prefix: Give your ship the coveted NX prefix, seen only on a handful of elite Starfleet vessels like the Defiant, 22nd century Enterprise, and Prometheus.
Unique Ship Item: Automated Defense Battery. This Tactical Module grants any ship a passive 360 arc attack power with a short range.

59.99

Not going for it myself, but figured it was worth posting in this thread, as it seems more relevant than 1/2 the discussions we've had lately.