Darren Kitlor

The Good:
+Some of the best storytelling in videogames
+Crew System rivals STO's Duty officer System in terms of adding layers of depth to the game (i.e. assign crew members to missions and receive either gameplay or story rewards)
+Some of the best multi-part instances available, esp. The Black Talon
+Beta UI asks lots of questions regarding the "fun" of each mission and questions regarding client stability
+Little to no lag for me

The Bad:
+Lots of quest bugs: from unclear directions, dialogue not playing, lipsyncing not working on some content (i.e. Black Talon Flahspoint)
+Very linear first ten levels.
+Lack of PvP Emphasis

Stress Test brought the servers down.

CCP: you were already doing almost everything better than Cryptic Studios.

Why'd you feel the need to outdo their microtrans model?

I buy cheap, therefore I buy digital.

So, where was the EVE CSM during this fiasco?

Here's the tentative plan:

July 7th:
+New Ground Combat
+New Qo'nos Neighborhood + Shipyard
+New Open PvP DSE (freighter raids)

Coming on July 7th or shortly thereafter:
+Borg Updates *(Adaptive Shields!) and STFs tweaks, to include new loot and accolades
+Klingon Intro Missions (around one level or grade's worth to introduce the new Qo'nos)

TBD (but before Season 5):
+Duty Officer System (needs a month on Tribble for testing--it's that major)
+Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy
+New Tutorials (both factions)
+Featured Series 4 (rumored to be Cardassian-centric)

Of course, no one mentions how much a vanilla WoW CD cost a year and a half after launch.

The ones in the refurbished AOL Online sleeves. :D

Granted, WOW did a helluva lot better but what MMO doesn't try to lower the entrance fee at that point.

@stoyer Did you play LOTRO during its initial F2P? Content from the original launch was still gated and needed purchase.

I just read the FAQ from AoC and it says that all of HA is included for free (minus a few raids and instances) and part of Khitai.

That's a win in my book for F2P users.

I boil the whole Atari sell-off to the 25m USD bonus that Atari allegedly awarded Cryptic during this past year.

It seem quite clear that Cryptic reached those goals and that the "loss" is just another example of Atari not realizing the potential of one of their developers (and having to pay through the teeth for it).

Moving forward, the game's got too much fracking potential and the devs seem to be capitalizing on it--in spite of mismanagement from Atari.

I'm worried about DCUO.

I hated the control scheme but...
it was a fast-paced game and I enjoyed most of my time with it.

The whole SOE shutdown and account information has me very leery about resubbing to any of my favorite SOE games.