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Star Trek Online: Referral Program, Veteran Rewards, Demo Announced
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Cryptic Studios has announced a number of new programs for both current and potential players of Star Trek Online.
For current players, Cryptic has announced the Veteran Rewards program, which allows players to collect a number of rewards for every 100 days they are subscribed to the game. Rewards include new titles, ship and ship slots, costume pieces, boosts, character slots and more.
A new Referral program was also announced, which allows current players to earn rewards for recruiting others to the game. Rewards for the Referral program include several titles, a unique Tribble, non stacking points for your Captain and his Officers, a unique holographic Bridge Officer, and 400 Cryptic points. Additional rewards can be earned for recruiting more players.
Cryptic Studios is even offering something for former players in the form of a "Winback Weekend" which begins tomorrow at 10AM PST. Former players with an inactive subscription will be able to login to Star Trek Online this weekend and play through Monday.
Finally, for those of you who never got into the game for whatever reason, Cryptic Studios will be offering a Demo program similar to the one currently being offered for Champions Online. The demo will allow players to play for an unlimited amount of time, however, there will be a number of restrictions. The demo will include the "Stranded in Space" mission, which pits players against Orion space pirates. The demo is currently available for pre-load, and will be officially released tomorrow.
View the official announcement here for additional details.
Comments
I want my 2 $50 purchase back!
Don't need any more proof than this confirming the sorry state this game's sub numbers are in.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Seeing more and more posts, positive intentions or negative intentions, it makes me not want to pick up the game.
I hate referral programs. Reason being, i dont want to be coerced into being their marketing campaign. If the game is good enough and i enjoy it immensely, i will do my own promoting for free of charge. Alot of referral programs always have elite items or stuff which you cannot buy or earn in game, and they require an army of people to get you at least one reward.
I think i may go play bridge commander now, since even after all this time, i can jump in and still have a blast....especially with all the mods.
100 days lol they should be doing every 30 days since ppl dont even stick longer than that .
Remind me to have no part of that. As far as Cryptic and STO are concerned, my money would have been better off in my pocket than theirs.
This Game is a EPIC Mess... and this type of promo is a show as to how bad things are. I will never refer anyone to this shallow game. But i would never refer friends to it as it will give me a bad rep...! This promo is a bust!
This isn't a defense of Cryptic it's more of an observation.
Seem's like popular opinion is that Cryptic is doing this out of desperation. If I'm remembering correctly SWG has been doing it about since launch, in fact I'm pretty sure they've been doing it since before the cu, well before they started screwing with thing and becoming desperate. Blizzard does this but they do it annualy and they aren't desperate in the least.
How is it then that Cryptic is doing this because they are desperate for subs yet other games are not?
I don't see anything wrong with this practice, it won't entice me personally to play for it and I'm lifer even, but I don't think something like is such a bad thing. In any game either for that matter.
Because STO is barely 4 months old.
CoH has welcome back weekends all the time, but that game is six years old. Likewise WoW is five years old, SWG is what, seven years old? CU was released in 2005, two years after the games release date.
Go on, show us an MMO that has done this sort of thing within the first six months.
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/en_US/players/content.vm?page=Veteran Rewards I don't klnow if the link will work or not but the first reward is the 3 month mark. Now as to when they initially started that program I don't quite remember but there you have it, 3 months and you get a reward. I played that game at launch and have resubbed several times since and I do have all the rewards, even made a bunch of credits selling some of them.
Desperation or not, I still don't see why it's such a bad thing.
Sanguinelust: it's not a bad thing in and of itself; it's just so many people have been burned by this game - which is MUCH less than Cryptic said it would be when they announced it - that seeing the constant marketing gimmicks popping up evokes bitterness and fury.
I played this game almost since it came out. The veteran rewards were not added until well after the 1st year anniversary of the game. And the rewards given were retroactive. The first veteran reward ever released in game was the Anti-Decay Kit which was for 1 year playing the game. Later on as they added more and more veteran rewards the retroatively added them. Everquest 2 did the same exact thing and until recently i had been playing that game since dec 2004.
I am not discounting what a Veteran Reward means or how early on it is given. Veteran Rewards are a common sight in most games these days that seeing them being implimented early on is an issue? Its called proactive. A lot of people expect Veteran Rewards or recognition for their time spent playing. (I almost said hard-work but games? hardwork? HAH
)
Excellent response and extremely true. My wife and I are huge Star Trek fans (not the dressing up kind but even so). This IP had bucketloads of potential. Instead they made a shallow game that is not Star Trek except for the skins. Cryptic, IMHO, used the Star Trek name to rip a lot of people off. My wife and I bought each other collector's editions but luckily were not duped into a lifetime subscription fee. $250- what a tragic joke for a game that is a tragic joke. I dropped my recurring monthly subscription after giving the game almost three months so I could honestly say that my initial disappointment in what I thought the game should be was not coloring my decision to stay or to go. After giving the game a fair chance I decided that it well and truly stank and there was no use throwing good money after bad.
I just wish this game would be scrapped and they would go back and do it over again correclty
A few rl friends of mine still play and bought the life time subs (sucks to be them). They still swear it's awesome and fun and getting better, but I imagine that is because they are diehard trek fans. I did have fun at first and it was a different angle getting away from fantasy. But it has no real content, no real point, and all the missions are basically the same with some degree of variation on location.
Cryptic's attempt to bolster it's subscription numbers so quickly after launch shows how they are struggling. Most games go for about 6months at least before offering a trial. At least that's what I"ve observed.
I did a lifetime sub and don't regret it. I'll agree that it could have been so much more in-depth, but I've come to accept it for what it is - a casual game. For me it's perfect though. I don't have time to sit down for hours at a time, every day to play a game. With STO I can jump in for 20 minutes, do a mission/pvp, and feel like I've accomplished something. In EQ2, which has been my primary mmo the past few years, the most I could get done in a short amount of time is log in, do some crafting, check the broker, and then it's time to log out.
So if you're looking for a deep game, STO isn't for you. If you're looking for something you can pretty much pick up and play for short periods well it might just be worth looking into.
I've been sort of pecking at it since launch to see how things have been progressing patch-wise, but the last couple of weeks I've really been having a lot of fun.
To each his own I guess.
What bugs me is that all this crap they're adding to do this costs quite a lot of man hours and $$$. Which would have been *much* better invested in making a more compelling game in the first place. None of this will actually improve the experience of playing. I played about a dozen hours in open beta, and that was about all I needed to satisfy my curiosity. And I'm a life-long average Trek fan, i.e. presumably exactly their target audience.
fixt
/10charizo
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
You know. I just can not be nice about this. This game is a pile of junk. I've played MMO games since 1999 and this is the first title that I did a charge back on. It was that bad.
If Fanny and Freedy and Mac and mike and Ford and Freddy Fender deserved a bail out, STO really deserves a bail out!
I dont know why they are still plugging this game so strong. Fix it up, get it clean, add some content. Then plug it. As it is, they are just pissing off more and more people and corrupting thier brand.
I did enjoy STO for a short while, until I hit level cap and found nothing to do. It is a nice change of pace from elves and magic and what not. If you want to give it a look, they're offtering this wkend as a trial period.
Free Trial Weekend
Taking a break from Star Trek Online? Have a friend you think would enjoy the game? Take advantage of our periodically free trial weekends, where you can play Star Trek Online completely unrestricted.
Our first free trial weekend, called the Welcome Back Weekend, is available to our former players. Welcome Back Weekend begins Friday, May 7, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific and ends Monday, May 10, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific.