I’m on another hiatus from Star Trek Online. Once again I find myself waiting to play the game STO could be (with the Season 4 update in July) rather than the game it is now. But it’s more than that this time. I’ve had a string of annoyances and disappointments with the game, customer support, the Foundry, and active participation in the forums. Perhaps my love for STO has finally died the death of a thousand cuts.
I’ve played STO enough to scratch off the veneer of Star Trek and see too much of the generic MMO RPG beneath. LOTRO and STO got my attention and my cash because of the intellectual property, not because I like MMOs. Although the massively-multiplayer aspects can be fun sometimes, they’ve also been immersion-breaking, road-blocking, distracting, and even discouraging. It feels like these games have all the limits of a computer-based game with none of the advantages of a real multi-player (tabletop) RPG.
It’s not clear what Atari divesting itself of Cryptic Studios means for the developer of STO. Word in the forums is “business as usual” of course. For me, I have to wonder if the game will last long enough to reach the break-even point for my lifetime subscription–especially given months of hiatus I’ve taken since launch. It seemed like an easy bet with such a big IP back then. Oh well.
I may pop into STO and LOTRO for a few hours here and there, but I’ll probably devote most of my game time to single-player games: a heavily modded The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Portals 1 & 2, and either Mass Effect or Dragon Age to psych me up for the MMORPG that might be more RPG than MMO: Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Here’s hoping!
