Some of the complaints of free-to-play simply refer to the more aggressive in-game marketing. Blue Kae, for example, among others, has complained numerous times about the in-game button to buy consumables in the LOTRO Store in Lord of the Rings Online. Me? I barely notice it. I have a vague awareness that the button is there, but maybe it’s a combination of playing the game since beta so I just know where things are on various UI frames plus the fact that I have no use for any of those consumables anyway. That button isn’t going to be clicked by me, no matter what, so I just ignore it. (Despite having the Lifetime Subscription, I have bought things like additional storage and costume slots. But consumables? Sorry, no sale here.) Age of Conan, on the other hand, opens a huge window on the screen every time I login. It’s just a matter of reaching up and closing that window but that offends me much more than frequent store button placement does. Perhaps it’s a relic from my IRC days, but I find it extremely rude and offensive when an application opens additional windows on its own without my input to do so. That is also why I tend to get highly annoyed when people reply via tell to a conversation I’m holding in normal public chat, despite MMOs not opening separate windows for private messages like an IRC client might. But I digress…

This past weekend two totally unrelated posts came up on the subject of subscriptions.

Pete over at Dragonchasers has canceled both his Rift and Star Wars: The Old Republic subscriptions because he isn’t playing them enough to justify the subscription in his opinion.

What makes this whole situation worse is I start to feel guilty about not playing. I’m going through that with SW:TOR now. I don’t really feel like playing but I feel like I -should- play since I’m paying for it. After a while that vague guilt turns to resentment and then I’m even less likely to play.

Last year I wrote a meandering post that touched on the psychology of subscriptions, and the point of that article still applies. It fits what Pete is feeling and what I am currently feeling about SWTOR myself. I haven’t loaded the game in over two weeks. I had four days off last week, and I got plenty of gaming done on both PC and 360, but I couldn’t be bothered to click the SWTOR icon. Now we’re starting the third week, and I have five days off coming up when I get home from this trip. I’ll more than likely play SWTOR out of guilt this week, rather than out of excitement to play it. Who knows, maybe there will finally be more players coming up the ranks in the lower level zones so I can maybe group for the couple Heroics I need. Or at least see some chat going on. Or maybe see some players out in the world.

At this point in my career I am one of those people with a disposable income. Due to being single, no children, and (despite what the previous paragraph makes it sound like, those lengthy breaks are rare) not home very much, so I have far more money than time for gaming, and my interests (and attention span) are very divergent as well. That $15 for the SWTOR subscription? I barely even notice it in the big picture of things in terms of spending the cash. I can blow through ten times that taking my girlfriend to dinner and not blink twice about it. (Well, actually I might blink or gasp even, but I’ll still buy dinner. ) I have no problem whatsoever spending a lot of money on my hobby because it brings me enjoyment and sometimes I think of it as directly supporting a development team I believe in. Example: as I write this I have over $300 worth of Xbox 360 games already pre-ordered for the upcoming few months. I will probably pre-order more as I learn of others releasing in 2012 that I decide I want. That’s just pre-orders. I already own over 60 titles for the 360, some I paid the full $60 for, others I got new at reduced prices, still others I bought pre-owned from Gamestop. I also bought two more games at reduced price from Amazon a few days ago which should be waiting at my door when I get home. And I’m perfectly fine with that. When you put the $15 for SWTOR per month up against what I have and continue to spend for other titles, it’s a pittance. What I resent is the "get your worth" psychology inherent in a subscription. In normal games that are sold as a product, it doesn’t matter to me if I blow through the game in 6 hours or if it takes me 6 years to finally complete it. I paid my money, I have it available to me at any moment. Inasmuch as software is ever "owned" those games are essentially "mine." But when a "service" is introduced, that changes my (and many others’) mindset, and we want to feel like we’re getting value out of our service fees. The same applies to most services. We adjust our wireless phone plans to match our usage. I just lowered my monthly bill $10 by dropping to a lower tier SMS plan because I very rarely exceed 100 SMS per month, for example. Pre-paid phones or time-limited plans are becoming increasingly popular with certain segments of the population who either can’t afford the full "unlimited" monthly plan or have learned that they don’t use their phones enough to "get their money’s worth" from that "unlimited" plan. I could also look back at my Netflix habits last year. I had the "one DVD at a time" plan plus unlimited streaming. I only used the streaming for the most part, but because the psychology of knowing I was paying for DVDs too was a factor, I would put DVDs on my queue as well even though I am not fond of physical media any more, and with my limited time at home it often felt like I was watching the DVD because I "had to" not because I wanted to. On the plus side, I did get to see a handful of newer movies that were not available on streaming, but I resented the feeling that I "needed" to order a DVD simply because I was paying for that particular service. When Netflix finally ordered a streaming-only option, I went for that immediately and dropped the physical disc plan like a hot potato.

It’s one thing to dedicate yourself to playing solo in an MMO. I’m often forced to do so simply because of my job and schedule. It’s another thing entirely to be the only person around in an MMO, which further highlights the fact that when you get down to the nuts and bolts, MMOs really are not very good games at all. It’s only the fact of the other players around you – whether you choose to interact with them directly, indirectly, or not at all – that makes MMOs "special." Tesh has written a few times that he would gladly buy World of Warcraft if it were a single-player offline game. I’ll bet he wouldn’t, though. It’s "easy" enough to try yourself – just go download one of the WoW server emulators, set up your own private server and go play WoW as the only person on the server. Then tell me how long you last at that. Continuing this train of thought, here’s another snippet from Pete:

I’ve been in a love-hate cycle with MMOs for a long time. Lately it feels like my “love” phases are getting shorter and shorter and I think that’s just a result of me acknowledging the reality of my situation vis a vis games that are focused on playing with a regular group of friends. It’s just not going to happen until I give up my night job.

In the meantime, titles like Star Trek Online offer a great experience, guilt free. There are tons of players of all levels and no subscriber’s-guilt for when I decide not to play.

As I mentioned above, my schedule prevents me from any "normal" scheduled activity. I can’t commit to raiding every Thursday because my schedule is completely different every week. I would love and adore to have a static group to play through Dungeons & Dragons Online with, but it isn’t fair of me to demand that every other player involved submit to my schedule, my whims, and none other. Believe me, I am more than self-centered enough to demand exactly that, but I know better than to do so and I know better than to think anyone would be gullible enough either. Pete at least has, in theory, the option of someday giving up the night job. His day job is the normal Monday – Friday, 9 – 5, leaving evenings and weekends open for hobbies and gaming with friends or guild-mates. I will never have that option, at least not until I retire as a curmudgeonly old fart kicking the kids off my lawn. There are a few reasons I have continued with Star Trek Online specifically. Despite instances, the game is hosted on a single shard so there are players active from all over the world 24/7, which has not been the case with The Old Republic. Addtionally, STO does not use the "Trinity" group makeup so when I use the PvE Queue to play an STF, it doesn’t matter if there are no "tanks" or "healers" around. You can just play the game, play with others, and unless things go horribly awry you should at least complete the STF with the bare minimum reward. If you happen to get placed into team with a lot of Tactical captains with uber dps, you’ll likely succeed at the optional objectives for additional reward. If you go into the STF with a pre-made team, there should be little question of your successes just like doing a pre-made guild-only raid in a Trinity MMO. So STOs design allows me to indulge in all the team-play I want without the Trinity stress and limitations, since again with my schedule there just aren’t going to be many friends or guild-mates around; I have no choice but to rely on PUGs. I don’t get all angry if we don’t complete the optional objectives. They’re "optional" for a reason, and life is too short to live it angry at Internet People on an Internet Game.

Now, to completely turn this on its head, I could look at Stargrace’s wonderful adventures in Wurm Online recently. It’s a small, niche, "indie" sandbox MMO. If I chose to involve myself in Wurm, and if I enjoyed the game and believed in what the development team was doing, I might not have as much of a problem supporting them – even with a subscription – because additional charitable psychological factors come into play, those of supporting the "underdog" or the "starving artist" that might make me feel as if I’m doing a good deed and legitimately helping that team as opposed to giving my money to the corporate machines of Activision or Electronic Arts.

Gorden over at We Fly Spitfires is still a fan of subscriptions, and offered up his idea of an adjustable subscription rate based on the number of active players. I’ll just go on record here and say that my own opinion is that is a horrible idea. In fact, banks giving out adjustable mortgages at subprime rates a few years ago were a major factor in the current housing and foreclosure crisis in the US as the economy collapsed and rates rose to the point homeowners could no longer afford them. Sure, you could cap the MMO subscription but why would you? Gamers are hobbyists and fans, and we like to think the people who make the games are as well. In most cases, that’s true, but they are no longer strictly hobbyists – it’s their job now. Companies are in the business of making money. I’ve said for years that I no longer believe the standard $15 per month subscription is profitable on its own. It was one thing in 1999 with Everquest, but can you name a single service that has not increased its rates in the past 13 years? The world economy is crap, inflation is much higher than in ’99, the cost of living is higher than in ’99, the cost of game – especially MMO! – development has skyrocketed since ’99 (waves at SWTOR) and you expect me to believe that every single game that slaps "MMO" on the label can survive at the same $15 per month that EQ got by on? If that were true, Sparkle Ponies would be standard in-game quest items…  Remember when WAR was still popular? Yes, that’s right, it was before launch. (Couldn’t resist the dig.) Mythic specifically spoke of the possibility of needing a higher fee than the $15 we’ve become accustomed to. Oh, the Internet Nerdrage was strong with that one. Mythic quickly backtracked and stuck with the $15 after the backlash they received over the very notion of paying a higher fee.

There is still a market for subscriptions, but I am more supportive of having multiple means of monetizing online games. Turbine’s Adam Mersky gave an interview about just that last month at Eurogamer. Pete canceled his Rift and SWTOR because the only option is subscribe or don’t play. I’m considering canceling my SWTOR for the same reason. It has been speculated that SWTOR just might be the final big-name AAA MMO that can even release as subscription-only. Every other MMO that follows will have other methods if they are smart. The Hybrid or F2P model fits my personal style and schedule, while the full subscription might fit others. We demand more "choices" of things to do in-game, and now the reality is that players are going to start demanding more choices of how we pay for or support these online games.

Because I am running out of time before I catch the van to start my day at work, I will end on a tangent: I am also extremely supportive of not limiting oneself to solely "MMOs" or solely to monetized online games, or to any other single genre. If you are truly a gamer, you will indulge and enjoy offline games, multiplayer games, singleplayer games, and the various sorts of massively multiplayer games. To many so-called "gamers" are really just "MMO gamers" and even then limit themselves to a very specific style of MMO. (Gosh that was extremely difficult, but I did it just for Pete LOL!) Try new things! Oh, and get outside every once in awhile, the MMO out there has way better graphics and interactivity!

But I have to give Cryptic – and Perfect World Entertainment – a major kudos for the success STO has seen. It started off with PWE funding Cryptic a few months ago when the acquisition was completed, so Cryptic hired more people for STO (and the other games too). It takes a few months to get trained and up to speed on the toolset but we’re about to see the results, first with this weekend’s brief 2nd Anniversary events, then next Saturday we’ll see the launch of the next Featured Episode.

PWE has also been advertising the game, something Atari never allowed for either Star Trek Online or Dungeons & Dragons Online. STO also reappeared on Steam last week, and yesterday was the featured F2P game on the Steam Store. Between the advertising, the events, and the general influx of going F2P anyway, it shows:

I’ve never even heard of a login queue for STO! But there it is, in all its glory! LOL! Gold players (monthly or lifetime subscribers) get bumped to the top of the queue, and so far no one is reporting anything longer than 10 seconds. My own queue times have been less than 5 seconds. Silver players (F2P non-subscribers) remain on the queue, which is showing well over 1,000 players as you can see here.

While I’m ecstatic for the success STO is seeing in the short-term, I’m not going to go all fanboi and call it an instant win. Players are fickle as a rule of thumb, and the general consensus is that F2P players are even moreso. This weekend with the Anniversary and next weekend with the first new Featured Episode story content will be STO’s "trial by fire" for F2P. Or I suppose, more appropriately, the week(end)s following the initial FE release. Either way, it sounds like good things will be coming in 2012 for STO players if this continues!

I’m sure everyone who still reads this has noticed my marked neglect of Pumping Irony this year. I just didn’t feel it, for the most part. I had a lot of fun writing about Champions Online‘s first Comic Series, though my glass cannon character got stuck (and still is) on the final fight. The draft post is still sitting there since July waiting for me to finish it, meanwhile Cryptic has the second Comic Series currently running. For the most part, I’ve damn near given up on MMOs, and what’s left of my readership are primarily MMO Gamers. Right now the exception is Star Trek Online but the catch is, MMO or not, I don’t play that like an MMO. Other than that, I’ve mostly gaming on the Xbox 360, which has become my preferred platform for everything except MMOs for now.

The Blog

[This is the "glass is half empty" paragraph] That leaves me in a predicament. I’m barely playing MMOs and when I do, I’m still not bothering to write MMO blog posts. I’m mostly active these days on Google+ where everyone who’s moved there too has been far more accepting of my non-MMO and non-gaming interests. I’m still deciding, but don’t be shocked if I just pull the plug on Pumping Irony. I know one of the top rules for writing is "write for yourself," but this is a blog, not literature. If I get the interaction I seek elsewhere – in this case, Google+ – then elsewhere gets my focus.

[Now for the "glass is half full" treatment] However, I’ve also made a pact with myself to write more in 2012. I have Pumping Irony, and I have a few other blogs that have nothing to do with gaming at all. I’ve neglected all of them, so one way or another I’ve promised myself to take time to write on at least one of them, and to finally pick up writing fiction again. So, in one form or another, I expect more writing out of  myself next year even if it’s in a location you gamer-only readers never see. I enjoy the creativity involved in putting words to paper pixel, the behind-the-scenes research, and hopefully learning new additions to my vocabulary.

What I’ve Been Doing

Other than the aforementioned Star Trek Online, as I said I’ve mostly been on the Xbox 360. But what fantastic games came out this year! The past few months (and upcoming few still) was an onslaught of AAA titles that are well-deserving of anyone’s hard-earned cash.

Role Playing:

Skyrim. Obviously the big recent RPG was Bethesda’s Skyrim. Finally, Bethesda made a game that gets it right for me. Oblivion was a chore for me to slog through a few months ago, but I did it mostly out of spite. With Skyrim, on the other hand, I finally "got" what people say about Bethesda’s games being mostly about the exploration. Oblivion was bland – nearly every environment looked identical and the same music always played. In Skyrim, everywhere I go has its own unique appearance and music. The dungeons are more varied, even though I can still spot individual 3D "tiles" (a 2D description, but you know what I mean) being re-used for dungeon construction. And something very important for me, finally a third-person view that is functional and playable! First-person melee is horrid and bland, and honestly I don’t see it improving, so putting me in a third-person camera where I can see moves that cannot be accomplished from first-person keeps the combat interesting for me.

Fallout 3. As much as I’m enjoying Skyrim, it has caused me to get an interest in finishing Fallout 3, which I last played in May, 2009. I was level 16 at the time, but I had botched a few achievements. Similar to how I played Oblivion, my goal with Fallout 3 is to finish the game (and DLC) with 100% achievements. So I deleted my previous game and started over. This time around, I still can’t say the exploration is all that exciting or interesting, but achievement-wise (which equates to quest-wise) I’ve already surpassed where I left off two years ago, but am also only level 13. I’m not spreading my points all over the place this time, mostly concentrating on small weapons and other skills that will specifically get me through the game. Which is fine, because that’s also how I prefer to play this character. Unless he gets really bad die rolls, he is far more deadly at level 13 than my former level 16 character was. And being able to quickly and violently kill the Wasteland baddies makes me smile and even laugh, which perhaps makes up for the game itself not being all that fun (from a pure "fun" perspective).

Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga. I started DKS a few months ago, and got to the point where I could become a dragon and took control of my own Battle Tower. Then other games took my attention, but I plan to get back to it as soon as possible. It’s a really good RPG with some great action moves and a lot of diversity in its freedom to create characters. I don’t often play ranged characters in RPGs (MMOs maybe but not in real RPGs) but I am in DKS and it’s a blast. Some of the higher-tier abilities are just awesome to behold, and I’ve enjoyed the story so far.

Shooters:

Battlefield 3. This is my new go-to shooter. I can’t say I’m 100% satisfied with it, especially some of the maps like Operation Metro that seem like more of a nod towards the Call of Duty style of gameplay, but when I’m playing on a _real_ Battlefield map, I get that _real_ Battlefield feel again.

Gears of War 3. I’ve always like the campaigns in the Gears of War series but I’ve never been a fan of the multiplayer, which I tend to describe as "shoulder rolling with shotguns." I’m just not that good at it, and because it is built around small teams (5v5) that makes me more of a liability to my team, so in Gears 1 and 2 I mostly chose to just avoid multiplayer altogether. Gears 3 is no exception – I’m still avoiding the competitive multiplayer – but with four-player co-op, Horde 2.0 and the new Beast game modes, there is so much variety with Gears of War 3 that I’ll probably give this one my vote for best value overall.

Modern Warfare 3. I own it. I finished the campaign, which was fun (for me, the best part of any Call of Duty) and finished up the series’ storyline. Multiplayer is horrible, though. As much as Black Ops multiplayer pissed me off last year, I gradually learned to at least tolerate it and would often play it even without friends. MW3 has caused me to violently rage-quit almost every single match, though. COD games have always been hyper-fast and hyper-twitchy, but MW3 seems to have finally crossed some invisible line in the sand that pushes it over the edge for me. It’s just not fun, and I do not enjoy dying, watching the killcam and seeing the guy didn’t even hit me, respawning and dying again before I can count to 5. I also don’t enjoy when I kill someone when I never hit him either. It’s sad when the COD franchise is a license to print money yet the multiplayer experience actually degrades with each iteration. In a related note, I did finally start the Black Ops campaign recently, and I’m about halfway through it. Since I only played multiplayer this past year, I had no idea whatsoever the game was set in the 1960s. Strange, but it seems to have put a slight damper on whatever semblance of positivity I felt towards the game.

Other:

Saints Row the Third. Over the top craziness in an open world. Where the GTA series went all serious on us, the SR series relishes in its zaniness. I’m not finished with the campaign yet, but think I’m getting close. The co-op is a lot of fun, though it’s a shame it still only accommodates two players. Like Gears of War 3, this one has been enough fun that I went ahead and bought the Season Pass which discounts all upcoming mission DLC.

Forza Motorsports 4. I’m not usually into racing games, especially the more sim-like ones that lock me onto the track, but Forza 4 has been quite enjoyable on a casual basis. I also picked up Test Drive Unlimited 2 which is a sorta-kinda MMO (they refer to it as a MOOR – Massively Open Online Racing) game.

Also plenty of other 360 and XBLA games have been in my roster, with more to come. I’ll try to do a better job of writing about them as we enter the new year!

The two most recent posts (as of this writing) are each reflective of the new economy that Cryptic is in the process of developing and evolving on the Tribble test server so that F2P will go live with a viable new economy.

First, Blog #10 detailed the new system of starship acquisition. New ships will be added to the game, along with shifting how ships will be acquired and what they will cost. The table at the bottom of the article shows which ships will be available in-game for either the new Dilithium currency or some other means, such as the free tokens for Gold players, and which ships will be in the C-Store. One very important thing to note is that all Vice Admiral (Tier 6) starships will be C-Store exclusive! To me, this seems a drastic departure from what we normally see in subscription-to-F2P conversions, where players – even Gold players! – have no choice but to buy their "end-game" ship. We’re still only a couple weeks into beta testing, and I expect Gold players to go ballistic and throw conniption fits over this.

As for my own take on how it may effect my own game and experience, I’m a bit torn. I do still believe that as a Gold (I’m a Lifetime Subscriber) player, basic "equipment" should remain available in-game. The C-Store has always been around, and I haven’t minded it. I haven’t gotten around to buying any starships yet, because the only ship I ever wanted since starting the game was the Intrepid class science ship. If it had been C-Store exclusive, I would have bought it. That’s just how "right" that ship feels for everything I wanted in my science officer character. Vice Admirals have the most starship choices available, most of which are in the C-Store, and that’s fine, but I do think at least one basic model should be available in-game for normal means for the Gold players.

Blog #11 goes into how Cryptic ideally wants the normal Energy Credit economy to work as the most common currency players will be spending and needing to acquire. Then comes the new Dilithium currency, which is primarily intended for only high-end gear (like players on Holodeck currently barter for Emblems) and non-C-Store starships. D’Angelo says he does want that gear to be harder to acquire than it is now, since it’s most appealing to the harder-core player, and those players will "work" to get it, giving it more "worth" to the player.

New to equation (at least to me, I don’t frequent the forums) is the planned Currency Exchange where players can sell Dilithium to other players for C-Points! Cryptic will not be selling Dilithium in the C-Store, so the only Dilithium available on the economy market will be that which other players are willing to go out and get, then put up for sale. Prices are expected to be reflective of the amount currently on the market. On the one hand, I think this is an intriguing RMT-ish addition to the game. Players who absolutely refuse to buy C-Points for a Vice Admiral starship could grind Dilithium and sell it for the C-Points. On the other hand, I routinely witness just how much the hardcore STO players are willing to grind. When the Borg Incursions went live last month, the hardcore guys went… hardcore… over completing all the related accolades, including the final one for destroying 2,000 Borg ships, and finished them all in about two weeks. When the F2P beta went live on Tribble, several hardcore types got to Vice Admiral rank in under 48 hours. The KDF faction just went live last week, and those players did the same thing getting level capped KDF characters in record time. Now they’ll have a way to make all that time grinding have some value in that they can earn C-Points from other players and turn around and buy stuff from the C-Store! The primary bottlenecks will be two-fold. First, how many ways will there eventually be to earn Dilithium in-game? In the recent (today’s patch isn’t finished downloading yet) build, there were a few new ways to earn Refined Dilithium (the real currency used to buy starships and gear) and a few ways that awarded Dilithium Ore, which the player has to refine (just a button click) and is capped at refining 8000 per day. So we’ll see how this ends up working out. Either way, it should be interesting.

As I mentioned recently, Star Trek Online‘s test servers have been reassigned. The RedShirt server, which is usually for internal testing or invitation-only Quality Assurance testing, is now assigned as the public test server. Tribble has been reassigned as the F2P Beta server, and that’s where I’ve been spending all my time with STO lately.

Unlike most MMO betas, which are nothing more than marketing speak for glorified free trials, the F2P Beta hearkens back to the late 20th century where, by golly, beta meant beta! So much stuff is broken, it isn’t even funny. If nothing else, this goes to show how many seemingly unrelated systems in an MMO end up being related after all. These things are complicated under the hood! I’ve lost count how many bug reports I have filed already, and several more that I’m debating filing or not because I know other testers have already filed them.

One minor, but cool, graphical overhaul is that the Bajoran wormhole is now visible from inside DS9!

Bridge Officer (“BOff”) AI is broken in the current build in the respect that your BOffs will no longer automatically perform CPR on incapacitated team members when out of combat, so you have to manually resuscitate your team on away missions. Items from a future event somehow ended up in the loot table, so we occasionally pick them up. No big deal other than everyone wonders what they’re for. If you’re quick enough you can sell them for 50 Energy Credits each, otherwise you’ll soon see a notification that you “used” the item and it vanishes from your inventory. There are plenty of others, mostly small bugs and glitches.

R&D (crafting) has been altered so that players can only make odd-numbered tier items. I can’t even imagine the reason for this, unless it’s to force purchasing dilithium in the C-Store (see the Dilithium Conspiracy a couple paragraphs down) but I typically R&D gear for my ship every tier then use badges of exploration to outfit my away team. This not only is a drastic change, it nearly makes R&D completely useless until reaching level cap.

The big show-stopper is broken missions. Unlike the current game, the F2P game will be very story line-dependent for leveling, and the mission journal UI has been updated appropriately for this. The good part of this is that each story line will be given in a linear manner, so we can play through a continuous story to its conclusion rather than the current live game where it’s not always clear which missions are related. The bad thing is that if a mission breaks, your progression comes to a dead halt. Not good. The very first story arc in the game has a mission that is broken in the current build, for example. At the end, you fight an Undine dreadnought ship. The glitch is that it keeps spitting out smaller ships who quickly overwhelm and destroy the player’s ship. Over and over. The workaround for this is to team with other players. Ha! Teaming with other players? In an MMO? Whodathunkit? But, as with most group content (and this is supposed to be a solo mission) finding other players isn’t always easy. Luckily, I had already joined a pretty large and active fleet on Tribble so four guys joined me — one of whom had played for over 24 hours straight, no sleep, no breaks, to reach Vice Admiral! — so we scaled ourselves to the highest team member (VA) and took out the dreadnought in record time. There are apparently other broken missions as well. I keep reading the complaints on the test chat but haven’t reached them yet. But hey, this is why we’re Beta Testing, right?

The other big deal is the new Dilithium currency. I dislike the name, simply for role-play purposes I don’t think trading dilithium makes sense from a canon or lore perspective (but I’m no big Trek fanatic, so maybe it does?) but I was really excited to have the currencies whittled down. In the live game, there are so many that become useless as you level up but you still have all these leftover marks and badges. The only use for them is to go ahead and barter for gear then sell the gear for Energy Credits. Or, I suppose barter them to twink an alt? Now everything will use Dilithium, so no feeling of “wasted” badges and marks leftover. In the current system, you’ll get one large payment of Dilithium when you get promoted to the next rank, starting with Commander. The “glitch” (quotation marks because it isn’t truly a glitch) in the system as I write this is upgrading your starship. In the live game, when you earn a promotion you also receive a token for a free ship of the appropriate tier you were just promoted to. Those tokens are gone now; everything will be bought with dilithium. Cryptic says the intent is for your promotion payment to roughly equal 80% of the cost of the starship, and it’s your responsibility to come up with the other 20%. However, in the current beta build, the other means of acquiring dilithium are not in the game yet. So, in order to afford your Tier 3 (Commander rank) ship, you have to fly your Tier 2 (Lt. Commander) ship all the way to Captain, where you would normally pick up your Tier 4 ship. Essentially, we’re always one tier behind. I suppose on the plus side, this certainly makes space combat more difficult! The flip side for the F2P Conspiracy Theorists is that ships will also be available in the C-Store, so it will be a choice of grinding for the extra 20% dilithium or just buying your ship with Cryptic Points. Also, keep in mind, gear that was formerly bartered for badges will now also use dilithium. And the stuff is expensive! The Test Store gets patched in tomorrow so I’ll see if Cryptic also patches in some other ways of earning dilithium in-game before I put on my “pay to win” foil hat.

Aside from the changes to the existing game, we’re also testing the new feature we’ve been looking forward to for months: Duty Officers! (“DOff”)

Beginning at Lt. Commander, grade 2 (level 12) you receive a mission to receive your first batch of 20 duty officers. From there, bring up the new Duty Officer UI and assign them to positions on your ship or send them on assignments. There are a ton of different types of duty officers, some including civilians (even prisoners in your ship’s brig) with various areas of expertise in addition to the Starfleet (and coming soon, Klingon Defense Force!) officers.

For Starship Duty, you can assign up to five duty officers to provide essentially passive buffs or special “proc” to your normal build. I’m still working with my first batch of duty officers, so I’ve only assigned two to ship duty. One provides a chance of partially recharging my ship’s shields if I use the Brace for Impact ability, while the other reduces the refresh time on Transwarps. I’ve seen several other “proc”-style duty officer abilities but they did not apply to my tactical officer abilities (duty officers will not “proc” for bridge officers, by the way).

Duty Officer Assignments are as varied as the officers themselves. Each has a chance for success, critical success, failure or disaster. Rewards vary as well, but the big deal is the new progression, Commendation XP (“CXP”). Some assignments can reward various types of CXP per the assignment type, such as Military, Science, Trade, and so forth. There are even diplomatic assignments that will reward your captain with Diplomacy XP (“DXP”) to help with his diplomacy progression. Others may reward items such as R&D data samples, a piece of gear, or the new prototype schematics which can in turn be used for shipboard assignments.

As your duty officers successfully complete assignments that award CXP or DXP, your commendation tier in that area will increase, opening up new (and riskier) assignments, as well as “leveling up” your duty officers if I am understanding it correctly. Failure will put that duty officer in sickbay for a certain period of time, so he is unable to be used for other assignments, and I think I read that disaster could possibly result in your duty officer being killed. Permanently. So this could certainly be a risk versus reward system when we get into the Duty Officer “end game.”

Duty Officer assignments also occur in real time. Some of the simpler ones may only take 10 to 30 minutes. I’ve done several of those already. Others take 1 to 8 hours that I’ve seen so far. Still others take 1 to 3 days. Days! Yes, this means duty officer assignments continue when you are offline. For example, after receiving my initial complement of DOffs, I beamed down to Starfleet Academy where a 3-day assignment to recruit another cadre of DOffs was available. I still have 2 days remaining on that. I was also enroute to a mission yesterday when the test channel lit up that the Sirius sector block had a recruitment for an Andorian duty officer, so I warped to Sirius to get that, which also turned out to be a 3-day assignment.

So in essence, the Duty Officer mechanic is more of a long-term system to work towards some minor build customization (I don’t play EQ2 so can’t say how analogous this is to “alternate advancement”), coupled with some limited offline progression of sorts.

All in all, STO F2P looks to be interesting once they get the bugs ironed out and full details on how Dilithium is going to work both in general and alongside the C-Store.

Community Rep “StormShade” made the announcement yesterday afternoon in the forums:

Hey gang!

Those of you have had access to Tribble will now have access to a new server, “Public Test (Redshirt)”. This server will be taking the place of Tribble as our test server for all builds that are heading to our live environment, Holodeck, while we prepare Tribble for an upcoming beta, and make use of that server during the beta.

If you currently have access to Tribble, you shouldn’t need to do anything other than transfer a character to STO Public Test, and resume testing as normal. If you don’t have access to Tribble yet, you can gain access to both Tribble, and STO Public Test, by following the steps outlined in this handy FAQ.

Thanks, and happy testing!

The Star Trek Online Team

Those of us already playing, however, caught the update prior to the announcement as RedShirt was stealthily added to the launcher.

Currently, RedShirt is a duplicate copy of Tribble. Monday, however, Tribble gets wiped — all characters, etc. will be gone! — as the new beta build gets implemented. Presumptions, both my own and other players who read forums more, gleaned from the vague forum notes about Monday’s update are that it will be the Duty Officer system, which sounds like requires new methods of inter-system mechanics, which is why Tribble is being wiped.

It’s no secret that I’ve become a fan of, shall we say, alternate pricing arrangements for my entertainment. MMOs in particular, I find more and more difficult to justify a $15 monthly subscription simply on the basis that I know I won’t “get my money’s worth” out of any particular MMO in any given month. I’m in the travel industry, therefore I’m only home a couple days a week. Totaled, I am away from home roughly 8 months of the year.

The unfortunately-named “Free To Play” or F2P model is attractive to me at this point in time because, in theory, in allows me to play at my own pace and toss the devs a few bucks here and when I see fit if I decide their product is worthy of my dollars. I say “in theory” because we’re all-too-familiar with years of F2P systems that either routinely gate content behind a mandatory pay wall, or gouge players for mandatory consumables.

Guild Wars is my favorite model, and one which in another sense is similar to my experience on Xbox Live: buy the software once, play forever at no additional charge, and buy DLC for continued adventures. I am very interested to see how often Arena.net issues content updates for Guild Wars 2 which will also be using this model.

SiriusXM ran a promotion recently where they gave everyone two weeks of free satellite radio, along with a promotion to signup for $25 for 5 months, equating to $5/month compared to the normal $13/month. As I just mentioned above, I’m not home enough to justify $13/month for radio, no matter how many stations they offer. The longest I’m in my car is driving to and from the airport, twice a week, 30 minutes each. Otherwise nearly everything I need is within 10 minutes of my home. But for $5/month? That’s the cost of a Frappucino at Starbucks, so I can justify that to have a few months of new radio stations I couldn’t otherwise experience.

Bringing that back to MMOs, at this point in my life with not only limited time for gaming but so many gaming choices, both within and outside of the MMO genre, I feel developers or publishers need to continue their pricing experiments, perhaps offering a time-limited access for a substantially lower fee if they insist on subscriptions. I could foresee spending $5 to $7 (which is what a streaming-only Netflix subscription costs) per month for say, a block of 50 hours per month tops?

I look at everyone on Twitter playing RIFT and I can tell just from the scenery graphics I would enjoy the game (or at least the scenery) for awhile, but at the end of the day, it’s just another “level up, gear up” game that has and/or will have all the same problems every other vertical-progression MMO has. I may not have played RIFT‘s sub-systems but, to paraphrase Bartle, I’ve already played RIFT countless times and can’t justify $15/month on it when I consider the other MMO’s I’m already invested in plus all the other games I play in my limited time.

A lot of this falls in line not only with my limited gaming time but also the notion that the subscription is a “game as a service” which is where the unconscious “need” to get your money’s worth comes in. Currently, I don’t have any MMO subscriptions. I casually play three MMO’s — Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online — all of which I have Lifetime Memberships for. Aside from the convenience of never having to update my account page doing the Re-sub/Un-sub dance, lifetime memberships allow me to change my outlook from “game as a service” back to the normal “game as a product” that I grew up with and continue to experience with non-MMO games. I can pick up or walk away from any of those three at any time, never having to concern myself with my account status, never worrying about getting value out of a single month. Are they a gamble? Certainly! One has to look no further than Hellgate: London to see how short a game’s lifetime can be. But I figure $200 is roughly equal to four full-price games for my Xbox 360, which would be $240 (plus taxes or shipping) or six PC games at the $50 that seems to be the average these days. I currently have a stack of 58 games for my 360, only a few of which are “finished,” and my Steam library shows 26 games installed. Add to that all the MMOs I’ve bought, the non-Steam PC games at home, and so forth. Even though a good chunk of those were pre-owned from Gamestop or purchased during a Steam sale, that’s still a large chunk of money set aside just for my gaming hobby. So when I look at the total gaming library I’ve already invested in, $200 doesn’t seem like that much of a worry anymore. The two Cryptic games are pretty much the only chance I have to play alongside certain people like Blue Kae, MMO Gamer Chick and a few others, so I can easily place the “reward” of that over the “risk” of the lifetime membership as part of my own justification process.

Similarly, I bought Call of Duty: Black Ops and both it’s map packs ($60 for the disc plus $15 for each map pack) strictly so I could play online with Aaron and Oakstout (even Genda jumped in twice as a bonus). I’m not sure if I’ve ever ranted here on PI.net about my utter frustration with Call of Duty games, though both Aaron and Oakstout are well-versed with my oft-profane-laden outbursts of vitriol towards the multi-player game. During my worst tirades, Oak usually breaks out into giggles and I have a suspicion Aaron mutes me momentarily if I enter territory that offends his Catholic upbringing. I’ve had a neighbor knock and ask if things were OK, so yeah, to say Call of Duty pisses me off is an understatement, but it’s also a testament to what I’m willing to put up with for the sake of having fun with online friends. I don’t necessarily approve of the steep price of the map packs, but in a sense the model itself falls in line with Guild Wars where I buy the game and play for free, then buy DLC on top of that to continue support. (Don’t even get me started on Call of Duty: Elite, however…) The only difference being that Call of Duty is a “game as a product” and will be replaced in twelve months with the next annual edition of the franchise as opposed to the continuing growth of something of the scale of Guild Wars 2.

Back in the pre-internet days of GEnie we had to pay hourly for the service itself then an additional hourly fee to play online games like Air Warrior or Islands of Kesmai. That adds up way faster than any F2P game that I have deigned to play, believe me. I don’t want to go back to those days, but I also feel that for myself and others who participate in the myriad gaming choices available, subscriptions just don’t cut the mustard any longer. I don’t want to feel psychologically “locked into” one game to the near-exclusion of others because of the full-price subscription.

Funny thing is, and perhaps this is a whole other aspect of psychology, even a few years ago I was all about the subscription games even as more viable choices began to appear, diluting my overall gaming value or perhaps making me spend more on multiple subscriptions. Money was tighter then, too. Now that I’m in a better financial position where I can easily pay for essentially three Frappucinos per month (roughly the same as an MMO subscription) I am more loathe to do so knowing I won’t get the same value from it as I did back in the earlier days where I had to consider the finances, but also had more time to devote to my one (or precious few) choice(s).

However, Champions Online recently switched to a F2P model, which alleviates the psychological burden of "getting my money’s worth" out of an MMO. One of the benefits (in my opinion) of Champions Online‘s Silver (F2P) system is it uses Archetypes (ie. classes) whereas Gold (subscription) players can construct Freeform heroes as they always could. Both Silver and Gold still have all the costume generation during character creation, but Silver players cannot choose Powers, as the Archetypes have preset Power pools. That’s perfect for someone like myself who never liked the character creation in City of Heroes and Villains either. I know for many people that was their favorite part of the game, but at best I have zero patience; usually negative. Why waste my time on a "deep" character creation system then dump me into a shallow beat-em-up game? Just get it over with and let me start beating up bad guys as soon as possible, if not sooner.

Silver players get two character slots to start with, with additional slots available for purchase from the C-Store. I bought Champions Online before it went F2P so I had a low-level melee hero with the super-creative name Nightblade who specialized in dual-wielding swords. After the F2P patch/re-launch my free month was up so when I logged in I was given the option of converting Nightblade over to the Blade Archetype. He was only level 7 at the time and the conversion seemed identical to the limited upgrades I had already made.

Just like I am still very much learning Star Trek Online‘s RPG system, I am very much in Noob Territory with the systems in Champions Online as well, though at first glance it seems much more straightforward and near-traditional. If that turns out to be the case then I only have to learn the terminology and how attributes and abilities synergize. I am fairly unclear on what gear upgrades to get Nightblade but I did notice today when choosing a new Power that certain attributes in the description were highlighted so until I learn for certain I am going to assume that highlighted attributes mean those attributes are considered primary for that Archetype. Once I get a grip on that, choosing gear should be a much easier decision.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, it seems faster-paced than City of Heroes and Villains. I liked getting a Travel Power almost immediately after leaving the Qularr Invasion tutorial, too. I don’t remember if I ever played CoX enough for my hero to get any travel ability, so already this is an improvement. After years of MMO combat where auto-attack is just swinging a sword for bare minimum damage, it still throws me off in Champions Online where the ’1′ key sets off an auto-attack loop using the hero’s basic full attack, but I suppose it does help keep the visual pace of combat fast, if that makes any sense? I don’t normally like melee dps classes but I do enjoy his Thunderbolt Lunge ability, which makes him leap at his target feet first, slam them in the chest, which often knocks them down, and backflips off their chest ready to start with some snickety-snick dual-blade action.

Just like Blue Kae, Tipa and MMO Gamer Chick were my inspiration for trying Star Trek Online, Tipa has inspired me by her occasional adventures in Dungeons & Dragons Online. I think I would like to have an extremely casual, part-time guild in Champions Online where we play under the Silver (F2P) system (except Blue Kae who has a lifetime membership) and may only get together once or twice a month. Nothing to get all serious over, nothing that will detract from our primary MMOs, just something fun for a change of pace every so often. If we get this going, not sure I’ll play Nightblade as I think I would like to play either of the "tank" Archetypes for group activities. The Glacier in particular sounds appealing, being a crowd-control tank, but the Behemoth is also attractive and is apparently the superior tank in its current incarnation.

The few other F2P games I ever purchased “points” on — Runes of Magic, for example — have always had a secondary password for the Store which is separate from your login.

In LOTRO’s (and DDO’s) case, if your account is compromised and your account tied to your credit card, the hacker can buy all the Turbine Points he wants. Unlikely, perhaps, since the gold sellers committing these attacks just want to get in, get your gold, and get out as quickly as possible, but nevertheless there is a weakness just waiting to be exploited.

I had left Jerreth in his house to accumulate XP/TP bonuses, which at this point were pretty much full. Once loading into Aslan Valley, my screen was assaulted with messages and a bright little pixie appeared! A Newbie Pet!

This little pet was included as part of the 3.03 patch for characters of levels 1 through 30. Sheesh. Here I thought “newbies” (excepting player knowledge and skill) were primarily characters in the starter zones but apparently Frogster has determined everyone less than level 31 is a newbie.

I checked both Jerreth (25 Priest/25 Knight) (now 27 Priest) and Arwellyn (13 Druid/10 Mage) and in both cases their Newbie Pets were level 10. I don’t have any other characters so I will assume that even for brand-new characters, the Newbie Pet is always level 10. It is worth noting that the Newbie Pet is a non-combat pet and as such will never draw aggro from monsters.

What does it do?

Clicking it brings up a UI dialogue frame that is essentially a small FAQ. The pet has text describing how to get quests, the difference between a normal quest and a daily quest, using the party search system, the transport book, etc. Perhaps useful for legitimate new players who maybe skipped the tutorial or forgot small details but by the time a character is level 10 or so, most of the content would already be known.

At level 11 and above, however, a more useful choice appears on the dialogue frame: Get Attonement Vouchers. Starting at level 11 in Runes of Magic, each death incurs an XP/TP penalty and 70% of all XP/TP you earn goes towards paying off that debt. Retrieving your tombstone will also relieve a large percentage of the debt, if you’re able to get to it. Once per day, the Newbie Pet can place an Attonement Voucher in your inventory which will completely erase the death penalty! The vouchers also stack, so you can collect them even if you don’t use them every day. Once you achieve level 31 any unused vouchers will be removed from your inventory.

The Newbie Pet will also cast a Heal spell on you in combat which will regain 300 health points. The catch is the pet seems to wait until you are in the vicinity of 10% health before it begins casting Heal, which has a two second induction, so it’s entirely possible you may die before the pixie heals you. Additionally the pet seems to have a lengthy cooldown on its Heal spell so while it’s a nice extra “oh crap!” feature, it isn’t something to rely upon if you’re out pulling mob after mob.

The downside to the pets (aside from accidentally clicking them instead of the intended target) is that everyone has them and when you go into heavily populated areas such as Logar and Varanas those little pixies kill the framerate. So please, be courteous and dismiss your pixie (and other non-combat pets) before going into towns!