Where did it all go wrong for Cryptic, weren't COH and COV moderate successes?
I'd say they were fairly succesful but you have to remember for quite a while, COH was the ONLY superhero mmo on the market. I didn't follow it much beyond launch but I think it did respectably well for a while. I don't know what really led up to ncsoft buying COH?COV and telling cryptic to gtfo but pretty much the entire team stayed with ncsoft as paragon. DId COH have a mt store? I can't remember. Fastforward to 6 months ago and you have the CO launch with it's launch day nerf patch (what moron thought it was a good idea to radicall change powers/game mechanics on launch day?) Couple that with the impression the CO was just COH 1.5 with upgraded graphics and a lot of content holes Fastfoward to 6 months later and you get City of Startrek Online which is basically CO with a star trek coating. Add to that cryptics philosophy of trying to get all the cash possible from players up front (box sales, limited lifetime subs, and the cstore). It's pretty much just one blunder after another coupled with the production of two sub par mmo's in the last year that are leading to cryptics downfall. They really should just focus on making f2p mmo's and they may do fairly well there, but people expect a lot more from a monthly sub than what they get from cryptic.
"I'm not sure where you got that number [a player speculating 20k subs], and I can't tell you the actual number of subs we have. However, I do want to correct you on one thing:
Our actual number of subscribers is significantly higher than you have been led to believe. "
So the number of Champions Online subscribers is significantly higher than 20k subs, not below as you falsely stated.
They could have 30k subs, and that statement would be true, since 30k is 50% more than 20k. Even if they had 40k, I'd hardly be bragging about that, either.
"I'm not sure where you got that number [a player speculating 20k subs], and I can't tell you the actual number of subs we have. However, I do want to correct you on one thing:
Our actual number of subscribers is significantly higher than you have been led to believe. "
So the number of Champions Online subscribers is significantly higher than 20k subs, not below as you falsely stated.
If he doesn't know the actual number how does he know whether it's above or below 20k? The fact they can't give us an actual figure says it all really.
There is a difference between "can't = will not, not allowed" and "can't = I do not know, therefore I can not tell you."
not knowing the "actual" figure is not "telling". I do not know the actual population of the UK off the top of my head, but I CAN tell you its over 60 million ------ see how it works?
Yes, i see how that works now. Wow that's really clever what you did there.
"I'm not sure where you got that number [a player speculating 20k subs], and I can't tell you the actual number of subs we have. However, I do want to correct you on one thing:
Our actual number of subscribers is significantly higher than you have been led to believe. "
So the number of Champions Online subscribers is significantly higher than 20k subs, not below as you falsely stated.
I don't think it's very accurate for either side to take Stormshades post into consideration. For one thing, it was posted on February 12th. Anybody that started during launch would still be on their free month, and technically were subbed, even if they canceled 5 minutes in. And God help em if they had numbers anywhere near 20k at that time.
My guess is that the 190k at launch is fairly accurate. And now they have a great deal less than that.
"I'm not sure where you got that number [a player speculating 20k subs], and I can't tell you the actual number of subs we have. However, I do want to correct you on one thing:
Our actual number of subscribers is significantly higher than you have been led to believe. "
So the number of Champions Online subscribers is significantly higher than 20k subs, not below as you falsely stated.
My idea comes from the lack of hype, the infamous reputation of Cryptic(yea thats going to happen with bombs like CO and now STO), and the negative reviews STO has garnered, If Stormshade wanted to comeout and say how many subs there are then he should. Stop beating around the bush. There is a reason they won't admit it. Its because its patheticly low.
There is no way STO has over 100k subscribers. 100K is not an easy number to get. You can't throw garbage on the market and get that number. I'm sick of people thinking all these underpopulated MMOs have over 200K subs but have 3-6 servers. That doesn't compute. EQ had over 40 servers when it had 550K subs. Those servers were all packed. DAoC had 19 servers with 250K, and again all servers were packed. STO has 4 servers, which have been reported by many gamers to feel pretty darn empty. It really shouldn't be that hard to figure out the subscription numbers are reallly, really low.
Where did it all go wrong for Cryptic, weren't COH and COV moderate successes?
I'd say they were fairly succesful but you have to remember for quite a while, COH was the ONLY superhero mmo on the market. I didn't follow it much beyond launch but I think it did respectably well for a while. I don't know what really led up to ncsoft buying COH?COV and telling cryptic to gtfo but pretty much the entire team stayed with ncsoft as paragon. DId COH have a mt store? I can't remember. Fastforward to 6 months ago and you have the CO launch with it's launch day nerf patch (what moron thought it was a good idea to radicall change powers/game mechanics on launch day?) Couple that with the impression the CO was just COH 1.5 with upgraded graphics and a lot of content holes Fastfoward to 6 months later and you get City of Startrek Online which is basically CO with a star trek coating. Add to that cryptics philosophy of trying to get all the cash possible from players up front (box sales, limited lifetime subs, and the cstore). It's pretty much just one blunder after another coupled with the production of two sub par mmo's in the last year that are leading to cryptics downfall. They really should just focus on making f2p mmo's and they may do fairly well there, but people expect a lot more from a monthly sub than what they get from cryptic.
Cryptic/Atari is now known within the gaming community as an upfront money grabber providing little consumer value to their products. The reviewers caught on and gave STO the tarring and feathering it deserved. When Cryptic's reputation gets tarnished enough they'll either get kicked to the curb by Atari or change their name like another poster has stated. I totally agree that they need to either got to f2p or lump their turds together for a price that resembles some value.
My idea comes from the lack of hype, the infamous reputation of Cryptic(yea thats going to happen with bombs like CO and now STO), and the negative reviews STO has garnered, If Stormshade wanted to comeout and say how many subs there are then he should. Stop beating around the bush. There is a reason they won't admit it. Its because its patheticly low.
There is no way STO has over 100k subscribers. 100K is not an easy number to get. You can't throw garbage on the market and get that number. I'm sick of people thinking all these underpopulated MMOs have over 200K subs but have 3-6 servers. That doesn't compute. EQ had over 40 servers when it had 550K subs. Those servers were all packed. DAoC had 19 servers with 250K, and again all servers were packed. STO has 4 servers, which have been reported by many gamers to feel pretty darn empty. It really shouldn't be that hard to figure out the subscription numbers are reallly, really low.
Where are you getting STO has 4 servers?
It would be funny to see STO and even CO to do like EVE and DAoC where you can see how many people are logged on.
Where did it all go wrong for Cryptic, weren't COH and COV moderate successes?
What really hurt Cryptic was getting the Marvel deal pulled out from them. I'm guessing whatever money they had saved up from COH/COV was eaten up by the deal. They already hired staffing, began development, then Microsoft and Marvel pulled the plug. They sold COH/COV to make CO so they wouldn't have to lay the people off. Jack was bored just supporting COH/COV and wanted to make more games anyways imo. COH/COV did well for it's time because it was unique but the standards have changed since WoW's success. As they are seeing you can't just throw a game out there with little development time and expect players to fund a subpar game's development.
"I'm not sure where you got that number [a player speculating 20k subs], and I can't tell you the actual number of subs we have. However, I do want to correct you on one thing:
Our actual number of subscribers is significantly higher than you have been led to believe. "
So the number of Champions Online subscribers is significantly higher than 20k subs, not below as you falsely stated.
My idea comes from the lack of hype, the infamous reputation of Cryptic(yea thats going to happen with bombs like CO and now STO), and the negative reviews STO has garnered, If Stormshade wanted to comeout and say how many subs there are then he should. Stop beating around the bush. There is a reason they won't admit it. Its because its patheticly low.
There is no way STO has over 100k subscribers. 100K is not an easy number to get. You can't throw garbage on the market and get that number. I'm sick of people thinking all these underpopulated MMOs have over 200K subs but have 3-6 servers. That doesn't compute. EQ had over 40 servers when it had 550K subs. Those servers were all packed. DAoC had 19 servers with 250K, and again all servers were packed. STO has 4 servers, which have been reported by many gamers to feel pretty darn empty. It really shouldn't be that hard to figure out the subscription numbers are reallly, really low.
Im afraid your logic is flawed.
STO is one server, but it's not actually one server in the way DAoC servers were set-up, it's actually a cluster of servers all broken down into instances so it's very difficult to gague the number of players as there are no open world areas.
Releasing a garbage game doesn't stop people buying it, especially when it has a popular IP and will draw players from outside the normal mmorpg pool. SWG was broken beyond belief at release, but it drew a massive number of sales and pre orders, so did STO. Remember also that STO has lifetime subs, those numbers will never drop as a lifetime sub effectively never closes even if the owner is not actively playing. Also remember a lot of players bought 3, 6 or 12 months subs at release, all those subs are still active, even if the players aren't.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
My idea comes from the lack of hype, the infamous reputation of Cryptic(yea thats going to happen with bombs like CO and now STO), and the negative reviews STO has garnered, If Stormshade wanted to comeout and say how many subs there are then he should. Stop beating around the bush. There is a reason they won't admit it. Its because its patheticly low.
There is no way STO has over 100k subscribers. 100K is not an easy number to get. You can't throw garbage on the market and get that number. I'm sick of people thinking all these underpopulated MMOs have over 200K subs but have 3-6 servers. That doesn't compute. EQ had over 40 servers when it had 550K subs. Those servers were all packed. DAoC had 19 servers with 250K, and again all servers were packed. STO has 4 servers, which have been reported by many gamers to feel pretty darn empty. It really shouldn't be that hard to figure out the subscription numbers are reallly, really low.
Where are you getting STO has 4 servers?
It would be funny to see STO and even CO to do like EVE and DAoC where you can see how many people are logged on.
He might mean Age of Conan, which has 4 servers in North America. AoC also has 8 European servers.
Even if they only had 10,000 or 20,000 Subs its enough for them to plug along. Look at POTBS, EvE early on and any number of small games at the start which keep plugging away. A game cant stay running if its not making enough to keep going. I suspect STO will be around for quite some time growing slowly but surely. We will see though.
As it stands though I havent had any issues in my STO fleet. Were still growing and we haven't had anyone leave. Nor have I seen much disappation of crowds in any zones yet. Overall Id say things are a bit top heavy level wise though.
Even if they only had 10,000 or 20,000 Subs its enough for them to plug along. Look at POTBS, EvE early on and any number of small games at the start which keep plugging away. A game cant stay running if its not making enough to keep going. I suspect STO will be around for quite some time growing slowly but surely. We will see though.
As it stands though I havent had any issues in my STO fleet. Were still growing and we haven't had anyone leave. Nor have I seen much disappation of crowds in any zones yet. Overall Id say things are a bit top heavy level wise though.
Oh dear someone let the Kool Aid drinking lifers in here
Even if they only had 10,000 or 20,000 Subs its enough for them to plug along. Look at POTBS, EvE early on and any number of small games at the start which keep plugging away. A game cant stay running if its not making enough to keep going. I suspect STO will be around for quite some time growing slowly but surely. We will see though.
As it stands though I havent had any issues in my STO fleet. Were still growing and we haven't had anyone leave. Nor have I seen much disappation of crowds in any zones yet. Overall Id say things are a bit top heavy level wise though.
Even if they only had 10,000 or 20,000 Subs its enough for them to plug along. Look at POTBS, EvE early on and any number of small games at the start which keep plugging away. A game cant stay running if its not making enough to keep going. I suspect STO will be around for quite some time growing slowly but surely. We will see though.
As it stands though I havent had any issues in my STO fleet. Were still growing and we haven't had anyone leave. Nor have I seen much disappation of crowds in any zones yet. Overall Id say things are a bit top heavy level wise though.
Even if they only had 10,000 or 20,000 Subs its enough for them to plug along. Look at POTBS, EvE early on and any number of small games at the start which keep plugging away. A game cant stay running if its not making enough to keep going. I suspect STO will be around for quite some time growing slowly but surely. We will see though.
As it stands though I havent had any issues in my STO fleet. Were still growing and we haven't had anyone leave. Nor have I seen much disappation of crowds in any zones yet. Overall Id say things are a bit top heavy level wise though.
You have a LTS don't you? /emote points and laughs
The fleet that I was in started in head start and felt like it was decimated barely 2 months from launch. They didn't quit the fleet, they just stopped logging in any more and went inactive. It wasn't a small fleet either there were more than 250 applicant threads in the membership forum over two months. I think there were 120-130 RA5s in the fed fleet.
Where did it all go wrong for Cryptic, weren't COH and COV moderate successes?
What really hurt Cryptic was getting the Marvel deal pulled out from them. I'm guessing whatever money they had saved up from COH/COV was eaten up by the deal. They already hired staffing, began development, then Microsoft and Marvel pulled the plug. They sold COH/COV to make CO so they wouldn't have to lay the people off. Jack was bored just supporting COH/COV and wanted to make more games anyways imo. COH/COV did well for it's time because it was unique but the standards have changed since WoW's success. As they are seeing you can't just throw a game out there with little development time and expect players to fund a subpar game's development.
That's interesting. I wasn't aware of the Marvel/MS issue. Unfortunately for Cryptic though, I'll be steering clear of products sporting their name in the future. Pity, as Star Trek could have been a real treat.
Where did it all go wrong for Cryptic, weren't COH and COV moderate successes?
What really hurt Cryptic was getting the Marvel deal pulled out from them. I'm guessing whatever money they had saved up from COH/COV was eaten up by the deal. They already hired staffing, began development, then Microsoft and Marvel pulled the plug. They sold COH/COV to make CO so they wouldn't have to lay the people off. Jack was bored just supporting COH/COV and wanted to make more games anyways imo. COH/COV did well for it's time because it was unique but the standards have changed since WoW's success. As they are seeing you can't just throw a game out there with little development time and expect players to fund a subpar game's development.
That's interesting. I wasn't aware of the Marvel/MS issue. Unfortunately for Cryptic though, I'll be steering clear of products sporting their name in the future. Pity, as Star Trek could have been a real treat.
One of the issues the three companies had was that they couldn't agree on basic things like how combat should work. Another thing to consider was that the Marvel MMO game was being developed during the time Vista was new and Microsoft was trying to push any game maker they were partnered with to make their games Vista only, which probably didn't help matters either. Don't feel sorry for Cryptic in this case though; there was absolutely nothing preventing Marvel from continuing to work with Cryptic if they so wished. That they didn't and instead chose to have another company develop the Marvel MMO says a lot to me. I'm guessing Marvel had a good sense of the direction Cryptic was wanting to go, and decided to use the Microsoft pullout as an easy excuse to drop Cryptic.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Where did it all go wrong for Cryptic, weren't COH and COV moderate successes?
What really hurt Cryptic was getting the Marvel deal pulled out from them. I'm guessing whatever money they had saved up from COH/COV was eaten up by the deal. They already hired staffing, began development, then Microsoft and Marvel pulled the plug. They sold COH/COV to make CO so they wouldn't have to lay the people off. Jack was bored just supporting COH/COV and wanted to make more games anyways imo. COH/COV did well for it's time because it was unique but the standards have changed since WoW's success. As they are seeing you can't just throw a game out there with little development time and expect players to fund a subpar game's development.
That's interesting. I wasn't aware of the Marvel/MS issue. Unfortunately for Cryptic though, I'll be steering clear of products sporting their name in the future. Pity, as Star Trek could have been a real treat.
One of the issues the three companies had was that they couldn't agree on basic things like how combat should work. Another thing to consider was that the Marvel MMO game was being developed during the time Vista was new and Microsoft was trying to push any game maker they were partnered with to make their games Vista only, which probably didn't help matters either. Don't feel sorry for Cryptic in this case though; there was absolutely nothing preventing Marvel from continuing to work with Cryptic if they so wished. That they didn't and instead chose to have another company develop the Marvel MMO says a lot to me. I'm guessing Marvel had a good sense of the direction Cryptic was wanting to go, and decided to use the Microsoft pullout as an easy excuse to drop Cryptic.
Didn't know that thanks for sharing ! STO was made to play on PC/Console and I believe CO was as well. For some reason things didn't work out for either. Cryptic just needs to find a good focus that works well with their business plan. STO would have worked better with a focus on role play instead of a total shoot em up game imo. I hope they figure it out soon.
Comments
I'd say they were fairly succesful but you have to remember for quite a while, COH was the ONLY superhero mmo on the market. I didn't follow it much beyond launch but I think it did respectably well for a while. I don't know what really led up to ncsoft buying COH?COV and telling cryptic to gtfo but pretty much the entire team stayed with ncsoft as paragon. DId COH have a mt store? I can't remember. Fastforward to 6 months ago and you have the CO launch with it's launch day nerf patch (what moron thought it was a good idea to radicall change powers/game mechanics on launch day?) Couple that with the impression the CO was just COH 1.5 with upgraded graphics and a lot of content holes Fastfoward to 6 months later and you get City of Startrek Online which is basically CO with a star trek coating. Add to that cryptics philosophy of trying to get all the cash possible from players up front (box sales, limited lifetime subs, and the cstore). It's pretty much just one blunder after another coupled with the production of two sub par mmo's in the last year that are leading to cryptics downfall. They really should just focus on making f2p mmo's and they may do fairly well there, but people expect a lot more from a monthly sub than what they get from cryptic.
They could have 30k subs, and that statement would be true, since 30k is 50% more than 20k. Even if they had 40k, I'd hardly be bragging about that, either.
Yes, i see how that works now. Wow that's really clever what you did there.
I don't think it's very accurate for either side to take Stormshades post into consideration. For one thing, it was posted on February 12th. Anybody that started during launch would still be on their free month, and technically were subbed, even if they canceled 5 minutes in. And God help em if they had numbers anywhere near 20k at that time.
My guess is that the 190k at launch is fairly accurate. And now they have a great deal less than that.
My idea comes from the lack of hype, the infamous reputation of Cryptic(yea thats going to happen with bombs like CO and now STO), and the negative reviews STO has garnered, If Stormshade wanted to comeout and say how many subs there are then he should. Stop beating around the bush. There is a reason they won't admit it. Its because its patheticly low.
There is no way STO has over 100k subscribers. 100K is not an easy number to get. You can't throw garbage on the market and get that number. I'm sick of people thinking all these underpopulated MMOs have over 200K subs but have 3-6 servers. That doesn't compute. EQ had over 40 servers when it had 550K subs. Those servers were all packed. DAoC had 19 servers with 250K, and again all servers were packed. STO has 4 servers, which have been reported by many gamers to feel pretty darn empty. It really shouldn't be that hard to figure out the subscription numbers are reallly, really low.
Cryptic/Atari is now known within the gaming community as an upfront money grabber providing little consumer value to their products. The reviewers caught on and gave STO the tarring and feathering it deserved. When Cryptic's reputation gets tarnished enough they'll either get kicked to the curb by Atari or change their name like another poster has stated. I totally agree that they need to either got to f2p or lump their turds together for a price that resembles some value.
Where are you getting STO has 4 servers?
It would be funny to see STO and even CO to do like EVE and DAoC where you can see how many people are logged on.
What really hurt Cryptic was getting the Marvel deal pulled out from them. I'm guessing whatever money they had saved up from COH/COV was eaten up by the deal. They already hired staffing, began development, then Microsoft and Marvel pulled the plug. They sold COH/COV to make CO so they wouldn't have to lay the people off. Jack was bored just supporting COH/COV and wanted to make more games anyways imo. COH/COV did well for it's time because it was unique but the standards have changed since WoW's success. As they are seeing you can't just throw a game out there with little development time and expect players to fund a subpar game's development.
http://games.venturebeat.com/2009/10/16/star-trek-online-game-gives-cryptic-studios-a-chance-at-a-mass-audience/
Im afraid your logic is flawed.
STO is one server, but it's not actually one server in the way DAoC servers were set-up, it's actually a cluster of servers all broken down into instances so it's very difficult to gague the number of players as there are no open world areas.
Releasing a garbage game doesn't stop people buying it, especially when it has a popular IP and will draw players from outside the normal mmorpg pool. SWG was broken beyond belief at release, but it drew a massive number of sales and pre orders, so did STO. Remember also that STO has lifetime subs, those numbers will never drop as a lifetime sub effectively never closes even if the owner is not actively playing. Also remember a lot of players bought 3, 6 or 12 months subs at release, all those subs are still active, even if the players aren't.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
He might mean Age of Conan, which has 4 servers in North America. AoC also has 8 European servers.
Even if they only had 10,000 or 20,000 Subs its enough for them to plug along. Look at POTBS, EvE early on and any number of small games at the start which keep plugging away. A game cant stay running if its not making enough to keep going. I suspect STO will be around for quite some time growing slowly but surely. We will see though.
As it stands though I havent had any issues in my STO fleet. Were still growing and we haven't had anyone leave. Nor have I seen much disappation of crowds in any zones yet. Overall Id say things are a bit top heavy level wise though.
Oh dear someone let the Kool Aid drinking lifers in here
roflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflrofl
(deep gasp)
roflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflroflrofl
IF THE ONLY DEFENCE FOR CRITICISM OF A GAME IS CALLING SOMEONE A TROLL OR HATER, THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE GAME
How OLD are you man !
You have a LTS don't you? /emote points and laughs
The fleet that I was in started in head start and felt like it was decimated barely 2 months from launch. They didn't quit the fleet, they just stopped logging in any more and went inactive. It wasn't a small fleet either there were more than 250 applicant threads in the membership forum over two months. I think there were 120-130 RA5s in the fed fleet.
That's interesting. I wasn't aware of the Marvel/MS issue. Unfortunately for Cryptic though, I'll be steering clear of products sporting their name in the future. Pity, as Star Trek could have been a real treat.
One of the issues the three companies had was that they couldn't agree on basic things like how combat should work. Another thing to consider was that the Marvel MMO game was being developed during the time Vista was new and Microsoft was trying to push any game maker they were partnered with to make their games Vista only, which probably didn't help matters either. Don't feel sorry for Cryptic in this case though; there was absolutely nothing preventing Marvel from continuing to work with Cryptic if they so wished. That they didn't and instead chose to have another company develop the Marvel MMO says a lot to me. I'm guessing Marvel had a good sense of the direction Cryptic was wanting to go, and decided to use the Microsoft pullout as an easy excuse to drop Cryptic.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Didn't know that thanks for sharing ! STO was made to play on PC/Console and I believe CO was as well. For some reason things didn't work out for either. Cryptic just needs to find a good focus that works well with their business plan. STO would have worked better with a focus on role play instead of a total shoot em up game imo. I hope they figure it out soon.