Gosh yes, a lot of people are vicious on the official forums.

I like the ship idea. I especially like that the companions will gather for you. Leaves me time to craft. I wish it worked that way in real life (You! Go gather glassy bits for my evil empire, mwahaha. Please.)

I'm hoping to get pulled into Operations too. I've never done Endgame anything, and that seems to be where the most epic (epicest?) stories are.

CJ

i play League of legends and it is awesome.

I'm really looking forward to flying around in my own ship. I know that may sound corney but I've been in WoW for 7 years and I'm ready for a new type of adventure. I have no idea how good I'll be at flying but heck I'm gonna give it my best shot.

There are a several other things in the game that look very appealing....companions that do the craft! woot! Oh yeah and companions!

The only story lines I know are from the movies. The first three (with Luke, Leia and Hon) are the ones I know. The other three I will probably watch at some point. so I'm not so familar with the galaxy and all that goes on in it.

Like yourself I've been combing thru the offical forums and holy cow some of those folks are just not nice. Every now and then I come across posts that are enjoyable to read.

Personally, I'm looking forward to exploring and getting into the story of the game. When I played WoW and the first time I went through missions in STO I tried to take in a lot of the story, of course I can't get it all in one sitting so once I max out my main It'll be time for an alt. Unless of course I get sucked into the Endgame Operations!!!! he he he

Hi All!

I've been spending too much time on the game forums, reading speculation and guessing. I thought I would try and start an entertaining conversation here, instead :D

I can't wait to get in on an MMO this good(-looking) right at the beginning so that over time I can be a serious player and not a permanent-newbie as I felt with WoW (never really reached "Endgame" content, could never be the best at something in the guild, etc). I'm also excited to see some of the crafting trees. I usually roll one of "each kind" but my primary tends to be a very destructive crafter.

I hadn't watched any of the videos before this evening, I didn't think it was going to look as good as it does right off the bat.

What else is everyone looking forward to in ToR?

CJ (LS: Liastnir, DS: Eclipsis)

Feeling much better about being an LTS... thanks Brandon, and everyone else, for your input.
=/=

My pleasure! Thanks for reading =)

Very mysterious ;)

I will look forward to that.

I find these really useful so thanks :)

That's going to be the last and final one :) Probably a few weeks since some bombshells are going to be dropped and I'll have some other new to write about ;)

Very useful.

Did you already do engineer? :)

Check out my latest STO column and leave your feedback about it here :)

I talk about my favorite Tactical captain abilities

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/09/01/captains-log-class-spotlight-tactical/

I had a feeling this was coming sooner rather than later when Dstahl randomly brought it up after the PW acquisition when he was never asked about it. It felt like he was prepping us for something.

I bought my lifetime sub when the game launched, so I've already run through the number of months required to break even on it. Going to echo the other lifers and say I'm not worried about this. However, I do have requirements if Cryptic wants to stay on my good side. The obvious one is that lifers get the paid membership level for free. Otherwise, it feels like they're invalidating a contract they made with us, and I'll be pissed. Second, given that we gave the game massive support early on, I expect some sort of Cryptic Point stipend. If we don't get this, I'll be annoyed, but not pissed.

Great stuff as always.

One of my challenges with this game has been understanding how the various abilities and skills can positively impact your gameplay - there's a lot of info out there but it's hard sometimes to relate it to the gameplay mechanics so this sort of this is extremely useful.

Cool, Brandon!

My first character was a Sci and it's definitely been a challenging character to play but it's worth it.

As somebody with a Lifetime sub to both STO and LoTRO I do not regret either. My main reason for getting a lifetime for LoTRO was it being 50% off and a real bargain at £75 considering all the upcoming F2P perks it was going to give. I do still play it and it is quite nice when I go back there to be able to quickly nip into the store and buy something without feeling guilty in any way about spending money which I need to keep quiet about to my husband.

I bought a Lifetime for STO without even thinking it may go F2P simply because I did not want to buy things in a store which I then had to pay access for (and of course the genre itself) although I was rather hoping for a bit more Elite'esque trading in game. Now it is going to go F2P I am quietly optimistic about the game. Sure things will change, especially in the C-store as I see the price of ships falling but almost certainly it will be the end of account wide unlocks but with a monthly stipend and patience I can cope with that.

Hopefully this move will be good for the game in the short and long term.

I agree with Brandon, I don't think this will be necessarily a bad thing. City of Heroes was dying before they announced they were going F2P and now I'm seeing more people on the servers than I have in years and it hasn't even gone F2P yet (its this month BTW). I think this is just were most MMO's are going excluding WoW of course. Makes me wonder if I should buy a lifetime sub now.

Actually, there is a free App for Android called Convo . It's ad supported, but it's free, and it works.

http://market.android.com/details?id=dk.rift.android.convo

Quote by DakonKor

I suspect, in the end, this will work out for Lifers in a big way (free Cryptic Points), so they literally never need to spend another dime on the game, ever.

By the way, if you play LOTRO, Turbine is rolling out significant content updates to LOTRO and DDO in the coming months... at least according to X-Play.

I have a LOTRO lifetime account. I had saved up all my TP (Turbine points) to buy the Rise of Isengard expansion. The pre-order is with real money only. If you want the pre-order goodies you still need to spend real money. There are also all kinds off stuff to make you're game-play less grindy which you can buy in the store, if you want a lot of them you'll need to cough up real money too.

Quote by Jonathon_Davis

I know we don't have specifics for a STO F2P model yet, but from other's past MMO going F2P experience, what is the difference in being a lifetime subscriber pre or post F2P? Are there any benefits to me still going forward with getting a lifetime sub prior to F2P?

Lifetimers get the same things as subscribers do, but they don't pay monthly.

FTP means you can choose between paying the monthly fee or buying content packs and limitation removals from the in game store. Subscribers/lifetimers get access to all the content with no new restrictions. Players who don't pay at all get all kinds of restrictions, these could be: limited amount of quests, inaccessible areas, restricted classes, currency cap, limited travel possibilities, no rested-xp, ... These players can grind points to get all those restrictions removed. Non-subscribers can choose to pay for each content pack/restriction removal.

FTP is a good way to try out a game without a time limitation. If you don't play the game a lot it's probably cheaper to buy everything in the in-game store. If you play the game all the time a subscription is cheaper, but the moment you cancel the subscription you loose a lot of access.

Buying a lifetime now will most likely be cheaper than buying everything from the in-game store when the game goes FTP.

Thanks for bringing this to us, Brandon.

I personally haven't played any of the Free to Play MMOs, which is kind of funny considering I actually paid for Champions Online in the first place.

I suspect, in the end, this will work out for Lifers in a big way (free Cryptic Points), so they literally never need to spend another dime on the game, ever.

My big question, as a month-by-month subscriber, how it will work out for us. Do we simply retain the existing access we have now? Will we get a few additional perks (like a smaller C-Point stipend)?

In the end, as long as this doesn't affect additional content rollouts, so it works more like the CoH Free to Play vs. the LoTRO F2P, I see this as a good thing.

By the way, if you play LOTRO, Turbine is rolling out significant content updates to LOTRO and DDO in the coming months... at least according to X-Play.