I'm thankful for the conversation this has started, I've learned alot. Unfortunately one of those things is how disgusted foreigners seem to be with America. Don't worry, you'll be working for India or China soon enough, we can't farm our jobs or national pride out fast enough to them.

I'd be alright if I could get in to test by mid-December, 4 weeks before open beta. Otherwise I'll ask for a full refund as others have. Someone stated on the STO forums that they've commented on mid-December for us.

The problem is America and the people it votes into office don't foster competition. Everything's about a dollar. Cable companies and ISPs get locks on certain areas and you have no other equal choices in most of them, same for health care: there's no competition. Having said that, the internet is quickly moving to a utility level service within our society.  Some form of government intervention is needed either in encouraging competition for same services in markets, breaking monopolies or really working to offer it to all citizens. As someone posted earlier, how ironic that we developed it but Asia(- china) and Europe are running with it. That all ties back into how they put more emphasis on quality of life over quantity. Greed is destroying this country and it's turning America into a backwater. Public high-speed rail, health care, internet access and the digital divide between the have's and have-nots are strangling us. We just love our "too big to fail" companies.

The only gauge I really have outside the game of how many are still playing are buddy keys and after posting on several forums requesting one I have yet to get a response. That tells me it may not be selling well. I know several of the Best Buy stores near where I live don't even stock it.

For anyone who played when it launched but may have left and then returned recently, does it seem like the population's growing or is it just because of the server merges due to their cancelled subs?

If that's the case, then that's ridiculous. Their system can't tell that I've never played that game before and I'm on a trial for it? Having an existing "station" account should have nothing to do with a free trial for a game that was never subbed. Also, why was I allowed to launch it last night / early this morning and play for hours?

If it's because the month / hour cranked over then that's even more ridiculous. They should have stated that in clear type and not advertised a full 14 day trial.

I appreciate you're help in making sense of it, I'm just stunned that a company like Sony with its resources can't design a better system, all though I played SWG so I don't know why I'm surprised

I got it downloaded and played for 2 hours last night. It's interesting enough that I want to play more to decide on a sub but today the SOE Launcher says my sub is closed and is requiring CC info which I'm not doing at this time. I posted in the Vanguard Official forums with no response yet (Sunday tho). I have no idea what's going on but it's happening to other trial players as well from the posts I've seen. FYI for potential people thinking about trying the free trial.

I thought I read once that the PvE servers only had PvP in border areas or no-man's land type areas when defending guild posts, etc. I assume PvP servers are FFA everywhere. Can someone clarify please? Thank you.

Thanks for the reply. I wish they would raise the memory requirements then or give the option of performance for higher end rigs in favor of no zoning, at least in safe areas. I'm glad to hear GW2 won't have it.

I have a PCIe 16x slot actually, I thought 7800s were the last AGP cards. I just broke down and bought a new one and some more memory so we'll see how far I can take it. I'll post my results here with my current rig and then with the additional memory and new card.

The re-review has peaked my interest.

- I like realistic style graphics

- I love seamless worlds with no zoning (I can't BELIEVE new games come on the market that still have zoning)

- I like complex crafting

- I solo often but I like socializing with other players and sharing experiences once in awhile too.

This game sounds like a fit but I run Vista 32 Ultimate on an AMD 64 4200 (2.2ghz) with 2 gigs of ram on a 7950 graphics card with 512mb of ram.

Can I run this game? I read there's a bug that prevents the weather patterns from showing up on Vista machines. Does it stutter or lag alot?

Thanks for the feedback!

That is AWESOME news! They're a great studio. Cryptic, NCSoft, Mythic and maybe Funcom are the only ones I trust anymore to deliver good products.

I think someone at Paramount or whoever owns the ST license told PE they want this to ship around the time of the new movie for tie ins, etc. and kicked their ass. "Noboby puts baby (ST) in a corner." The minute PE's sales people got the ST license they should have dropped G&H like a bad habit.

That interview from 10/19 with the execs at PE is stupid. No @#$$ ST is a big license! I'm also willing to bet if it sucks, whoever they got the rights from has an option for damages or to sue them. A certain level of quality I'm sure was stated legally somewhere and PE finally woke up and said "Holy @#$# we need to work on STO".

STO could be monster if it has depth.

Sucks though, I was looking forward to Imperator too and I know Monolith would've made it great but this established licenses are hard to pass up. I'm starting to think Roman-themed games are cursed.

...is it really that bad? Is G&H that bad? I haven't played it but the premise sounded good.

I loved EnB but they screwed it with little depth or space to explore. That and the weird, non-unique stances everyone had in station. It was ahead of it's time with both an avatar and a ship That third person perspective in the cockpit was AWESOME. I still remember it.

Damn SOE's a joke. #1: don't smart-ass your boss in front of the customers. Most of the videos are commercials with no real gameplay save maybe the Agency, which has "great" enemy A.I. btw (guys running up to you without shooting). They ruined SWG and EQ2 with the latter having a horrible design from the ground up (load times anyone? Bad customer service with items attached to the server, not to the player profile???).

I hear Vanguard's a joke and Sony in general as a company isn't doing so hot.

Cool, thanks for posting!