Gratz on the baby Snoop.

I'm confused.  The last time you were here posting you said the whole team is working on AI but now the team is working on a new city, a trade system and AI along with several other things?  My understanding is the actual coding "team" (or in other words, the people who actually make things happen in the game) is made up of a single digit figure and can possibly be counted on one hand.  Can you elaborate on who is doing what so we have some idea of what kind of changes to expect?  If only one guy is working on AI, it would really go against your previous postings.

Several new threads have been deleted on the official forums so it is not a housekeeping issue as you suggest.  Some of those threads have valuable feedback that could actually help your company to grow.  Can you tell us who at SV is directing that any post that could be considered negative, should be deleted right away?  Is this being directed from Henrik? If not, does he know it is happening?    Do you honestly feel that hiding things is helping to improve SV's reputation among gamers?

With core systems broken like being hit from invisible enemies and the log-off inside keeps, dont you think SV should stop trying to add new (half-finished) features into the game in search of a hypothetical new customer base and instead fix what they already have to support the existing customers who have supported you?  Honestly, if you could fix a few of those game breaking issues that have been in since launch, the current base would be happier and more people would come over.  

You are once again posting how the population is rising and things are booming in-game.  If the next financial report comes out and proves (once again) that you are misinterpreting the actual size of the population, will you promise to stop posting about the population until the financial reports actually prove it?  I can go back and show you your old posts in the 4th quarter that claim the population is up and then show you the most recent financial report that CLEARLY states it has gone down.  Either you are mistaken or SV is submitting false financial reports.  

What is the plan to keep the company alive in the future if the break-even prediction of mid-year does not happen?  Will there be a third stock split?   Are the founding investors very happy that their initial investments have been reduced to less than 10% of what they started with?

You posted back in Dec that vet rewards were in progress and that they should be out in a week, then you disappeared and didnt reply to any of the threads.  I wont ask any questions about this one since it is pretty self explanatory but I do hope you learned a lesson and that you no longer make statements here that you cant back up.  I dont know if you jumped the gun or you got schmucked by your supervisors but either way, please dont give timelines that you can not back up.

I think I love you...

These numbers dont really tell us much without more information. 

"Population increases by 800%" could mean = Our game stunk so bad only 20k people were still playing it but now that it is free, we have 160k who are playing.  160k for a free game is not really that much.

Profits increases by 400% could mean = We were only making 300k per month and after paying for servers and the 10 man team we were losing money.  In the last two months we made 1.2 million but it was mostly due to people buying the things they needed just to play the game like inventory space since we start them out with so few slots.  We dont expect to make this kind of money in future now that everyone bought inventory and bank space plus a needed weapon.

Not saying this stuff is true, just saying that without the base numbers from which these figures are made, we really dont know anything other than they made a bit more money than they were making.  There is no way to know if that will continue.  These same announcements were made when every other game went F2P during their first two months.

I have a three year old who sits on my lap while I play.  He likes FPS games where I make a noise when I shoot and he makes fun of me when I die, games like BlackOps.  He likes SWTOR, we make a special noise everytime I use the mortar round and while I run around he spams the spacebar.  He also likes the space part and I have him point out the enemy ships before I shoot them.  He also likes driving the mounts in MMO's, I have a giant turtle thing in Rift and he loves driving that thing down the road and making it jump. 

There is a site with free flash games called kizi-dot-com that he likes and he can actually play some of those games.  I also find he likes the clone wars and marvel super hero squad.  He likes the cartoon graphics and likes to tell me what to do with his guy.  Another one we play together is Minecraft.  Him and my 6 year old are nuts about that one.  I run three accounts and host the server so we can all play.  He likes to run around my house and mess it up or sit on map and tell me what to build.

Hope that helps.  Have fun!

Someday when I retire and have a crazy amount of freetime, I am going to play the crap out of Eve.

My guess is, this is just the beginning of the truck load of stuff to hit the c-store exclusively.  I was actually quite shocked Cryptic recently gave away a free ship to players. 

Originally posted by Mari2k

Come on... shes not even pretty and her reports are below avarage

 

I dont know if your monitor is all ate up but on mine, she is rocking that blue hair and looking delicious.

I would suggest you talk to one of the people who actually paid to play STO for the last 10 or so months and got NO new content.  You also might want to talk to the people who purchased multiple copies of the game to get "exclusive" items that then showed up in the c-store shortly after launch.  You also might want to talk to the people who pre-purchased the game and got 30 days of gametime who then got slapped in the face 3 to 4 weeks later when Cryptic offered the game at half price and with 60 days of gametime, (though Cryptic did retract the offer after the current sub-base went nuts over it).

As a F2P casual game that you jump into and out of, it is a nice game.  As a company, Cryptic has terrible leadership.  I offer the Cryptic financial reports and the fact they have never made a profit since breaking away from CoH as proof.  Very sad for a company with two major MMO's that have been out for over two years.

Silver, while you may not appreciate it when people warn you away from bad companies, I on the other hand do and I am glad when people post about their bad experiences in a game.  My question to you is...  Why have you not tried the game if you keep coming back here every month?  Are the warnings working?  If they are, I think you have your answer.

I agree with the review score.  At times, this game provides the most fun I have ever had in a game but those moments are few and far between.  Most of the time its, queue up, wait, get mission, get killed by rocket launcher, be told you suck by the guy with all the premium weapons and then log off. 

If you are here to honestly answer questions and try to build support for the game by helping players and being honest about mistakes and shortcomings, Glad to have you!  I wish more companies would be involved in gaming sites.

If you are here to cover up the bad stuff and lie to get a few subs, I hope you suffer the curse of the soft poo for 12 weeks.

If you would like to see a bad example of a game rep on these boards, head over to the Mortal Online section and see how GM Theia announced vet rewards coming in a week and then two months later when it was brought back up, posts get deleted and the rep ignores questions about it.  I have not seen a good example to point you to.  Maybe you can fix that for me?

Good Luck PioPico, I wish you well 

The defense of this issue really surprises me.  You fans of the game keep chanting "we dont want any silly reward" but that is not the issue.  The issue is, a representative of SV came here, made claims of something coming into the game and then not only never addressed it again but also tried to hide it by deleting posts.  Any chance you fan's of the game could address the actual issue and tell us why you support these kinds of unethical business practices?  Do you also support the dev's of the jurrasic park game going to metacrtic and putting in fake reviews to build sales?

I understand that Cryptic had issues with Atari but I dont really see this as any sort of vindication as the title suggests.  Cryptic had several long-time MMO personel on staff when they agreed to do STO and they made several mistakes

1. If they felt the timeline to get the game done was not enough, why take the job and release poor content?  Sweet BaaGeebaa's, the rule in business is dont release until its ready and you never get a second chance at a first impression.  If they had any decent management (I'm pointing at you Jack E) they would have turned it down due to the time frame.  My guess is they saw the IP and were blinded by the money making opportunities. 

2. The terms of work under Atari should have been written out BEFORE they started.  It is way too easy to blame Atari for everything.  The fact is, Cryptic NEVER made a profit under Atari, you can confirm this by the financial reports.  It is only logical for Atari to want to slow down the flow of money into Cryptic after Cryptic released two MMO's to less than good reviews and continued to lose money.  If you owned Cryptic and they continued to lose money after two fo their three games, would you continue to pump money into them?

I dont blame the regular devs, I think they did what they could with what they had.  I blame the Senior management team at Cryptic, "Dollar" Bill Roper, The CEO that bailed out and Jack Emmert.  Jack might have some good game development ideas, but he is a horrible business leader.  You guys can blame Atari if it makes you feel better but Cryptic owns just as much responsibility for the poor performance of their games.

I'll post anything in any topic for a key!!! 

"As recently as the start of this year, we actually got some important new functions in place within our technology that allows us to deliver a much more solid solution in key areas such as the AI."

I was not aware any new AI changes had been introduced into the game recently?  I was under the impression from Theia that the whole team was working on that and it had not been introduced yet.

 

Originally posted by EverSkelly

I don't understand these happy threads. So they are losing money. OK. Every existing game is probably losing subs, except for maybe 1 or 2.

So fucking what?

You look like this:

"OMG OMG they're losing money, they're losing subs, YES YES YES !!1!!!!!!"

All these "i told you they will not succeed" threads makes me puke.  All this malevolance makes you look so lame.

 

For some of us, the investment of time into a game is a large concern.  I dont want to pay $40 and then $15 a month for a bug ridden mess of a game only to have it go belly up after I invested a year or two into it.  Do other games have rough starts and bugs and other problems?  Yes, Eve is a great example.  But it was never in the sad business shape that MO is.  

While you dont care if you invest time and money into a game that is bleeding money and players, some of us do.  While a post on a companies financial health makes you puke, it makes some of us leery of getting involved with it.  It also proves a lot of what SV representatives are saying is false and that the population is NOT growing.  To many of us, those are facts we take into consideration before giving a company our money.  I would suggest Hello Kitty online for you though, the forums are heavily moderated and all you will see is rainbows and butterflys so someone of your weak constitution wont get sick and puke anymore. 

Take Care!

I wish them good luck.  They seemed like a nice bunch of people and really want to make a good game.  I was in on the early parts of testing the game and these people seemed very receptive to new ideas and were very willing to talk to the testers. 

If I am reading that right, it looks like 43% of their annual loss has all come in the 4th quarter.  I guess it is safe to say they are losing more money each quarter in spite of what the fanbois and SV employees are telling us on the forums.

Say what you want but LOTRO is the one game that has stayed on my hard drive.  I can play on and off for free when I am spending more time in a new MMO and when I get bored I can jump back in and pay while I wait for the next MMO.