Star Trek Online offers advanced retail programs

This is all well and good if you happen to live in the US, meanwhile in the rest of the world ... ... ... tumbleweed ... ... ... ...

Just wanna point out something here... Console gamers shell out $60 for new xbox games all the time. Now some of them give you hours upon hours of enjoyment, no addons needed. Others have cash shops (hello rockband/guitar hero? Cash shop songs right there).

And then we come to Dragon Age and you're shelling out extra money right away for other content!

I played DAO for about a month...and now I'm tired of it. I spent quite a bit of money on DLC too.

Paying $40.00 + $30.00 for two months of online time = about what I paid for my console game. ^__^

So. Same price. Same enjoyment.

Now, if I enjoy STO even MORE then instead of picking up a new $60.00 Xbox game, I just pay 15 bucks for another month! The cost/risk ratio is very small with MMOs.

I am fortunate to be in a position where £30/$50 wont break the bank so I will be pre-ordering it and (possibly!) enjoying the game long before the haters who will be spending their time scouring the forums looking for the slightest bit of criticism from existing players to jump all over and declare the game a failure. If the game is poor, so be it, I will be disappointed as I am at ST fan but will just put it into perspective and move onto the next one - theres plenty more MMO's on the horizon and theres plenty more things I can do with my time than worry or post about what a wasted opportunity it was.

There are very few companies that have earned the right to get a pre-order from me without having tested the game beforehand. Bioware, Blizzard, Relic - but Cryptic is not one of them.

With regard to Open Beta - open betas for quite some time now have not been 'true' betas, but rather serve as marketing for the game - a way to generate interest and media attention. Many times this backfires if the game is at a state where it is not ready for launch.

Cryptic lost my respect with the release of Champion Online (which, they last time I played, is still in a state of needing a design overhaul) and it was through open beta that I was 'saved' from the agony of playing a game I pre-ordered.

Don't get me wrong - I do sincerely wish that Cryptic does well with this game, and I will give them every opportunity to do so, as I will reserve judgment until I play the game. Star Trek is an amazing franchise, and a great opportunity for them.

Multiple variations of preorders though just seems a bit too much like outright 'marketing fluff'.

Just a couple of random thoughts.

On pre-orders, you only have to put down $5 to get access to the pre-order open beta and head start, not $50-60. For that $5, you get a two week "trial" of the game. If you like it, pay the price in full when you pick up your retail version of the game. If you don't, hey, at least it only cost you $5 to find that out!

Two, open beta simply means no NDA. There's a difference between an open beta and a public beta. Public betas are generally free for all to access and, imho, ussually cause quite a mess of things. I'd rather pay $5 to Fileplanet or Gamestop to get into the open beta than have to deal with the mess that is a public beta.

Lastly, from what I saw on the Gamestop website, you do not gain access to the "USS Enterprise". As someone pointed out earlier, you simply gain access to the Constitution Class Starship. In fact, even the screenshot in their add for this shows the USS Constitution (NCC 1700), not the Enterprise.

Anyhow, just my two coppers worth. I'll be pre-ordering the game myself. But I can understand why someone would want to wait until after the game launches and hope to gain access to a free trial period after most of the bugs are fixed and before putting down any money on the game. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you doubt whether or not you'll enjoy the game.

CO players STILL don't have beta access? Damn...I'd be pissed off too. I was surprised when I got my closed beta invite for STO so early. Did 2-4 play tests and decided to pick up EVE Online.

People above commented that they hadn't gotten in and they had the CO deal that said they'd get closed beta access. I am merely commenting on what was said don't get your panties in a bunch. Besides, if you read what I said, I only spent 2-4 play tests doing it. I left my feedback in the forums and moved on. Not everyone is out to bash games, take a breather.

Well, I'm in the beta and this game is very excellent. Lots of the doom-speak about this game is simply unfounded, or about old stuff, or just made up! Those who are saying they won't play it because of the "word of mouth" shouldn't be a lemming - see for yourself, it's fun. But, like any game, "fun" is subjective.

As for the multiple items - who cares, really? Why get bent out of shape? I for one totally dig it, because it gives me choices on which item I'd like to get for pre ordering. I also don't have this "I CANNOT BE BEHIND ANYONE ELSE" thought process in MMOs. To me, it's rather pointless. So what if this dude over here gets an item that lets him level slightly faster than me - how does that affect me? Even in PVP games, there is always going to be someone higher level, or it hardly matters at level cap, so... I just don't get it.

As for marketing tactics... it's a business. Marketing happens. Personally, I hope they market to their hearts content and it works - so they will make more money - so they will put more dev power into the game - which makes the game the best it can be. Sure some marketing peeps are cheesy in their tactics - but so what. Every company under the sun advertises. Or should. And you should be happy they do - or else the game wouldn't even exist.

Finally, sure Cryptic messed up some things with CO. Hopefully they learned from their mistakes. That said, everyone makes mistakes - it's what we do after that matters. Let's see what Cryptic does.

People are blowing things too far out of proportion. The free items that come with the pre-orders are like all the other MMO pre-order items. In a couple weeks they will be meaningless.

Also people have lost sight of what open beta means. It is not a free-for-all demo of the game like most seem to think. It is a beta that has no NDA. Some manufacturers have allowed unlimited access to their open(called public) betas, others have not. Add on that most people either have not experienced a MMO launch or have forgotten the experience. It will be a good launch if they keep the servers up the whole day.

There are problems with STO, lots of em. Just like any other MMO that has come out. Don't listen to people who are relaying information 3rd person because most likely someone along the line interpreted it wrong.

Would i recommend STO....yes. It is not where i want it to be IMO, but as with all MMO's it takes time to see where a game will evolve. If you want a complete and finished set-in-stone product, do not buy a MMO.

So the $5 BETA pre-order also grants you access to the head start. So I don't have to actually "pay" for the game until 2-2-2010? Is that correct?