LOL funny thing is it does feel a bit like a ripoff.  I haven't bothered loggin in since my last post and there's 6 days left.  I'm going to have to come up with some really good excuses to log back in, because it just isn't making it.

Ahazi is indeed deserted, but boy did the people leave all their stuff.  Nearly every square inch of buildable space on Ahazi's Tatooine is coverd in player structures.  I did the neighborly thing and took my 3 factories and Mustafar house down.  I should have done that when I left, but I just didn't care, I had bigger fish to fry.  Now I feel sorry about having done that and I won't be putting them back up.  They'll stay packed probably forever at this point.

Maybe I just need to roll a fresh toon on Bria and see it from that perspective.  Playing old characters brings old feelings back, old eyerolling feelings.

The bitch of it is, this is frustratingly close to being a good MMO.  But they've just lost the plot.

But hey, the environments are still great.  That makes one thing.

Those billboards, yeah, they sure do frustrate me looking at them.  At least they have no ads.  How dare they muck up such a great, immersive environment like that.

JTL never really did it for me. Felt like a second-rate X-Wing, if you remember that old PC game. The missions in X-Wing were far more engaging and the features were vastly superior (including Target memory which JTL frustratingly lacks). It is fun optimizing your ship with various parts, and JTL remains more or less untouched compared to the rest of the game.  NGE didn't hit it at all really.

I've been messing around with the Storyteller feature. The system has promise, but you need to be able to name bosses and create dialogue trees, otherwise it makes for a pretty, but hollow experience (just like the NGE itself, eh?)  Points for effort, but they need to flesh it out to make it truly useful. Boss naming and dialogue trees will probably never happen thanks to exploit/abuse concerns. Too bad, the system could be great. And the scenes need to last at least 24 hours, not just 15.

P.S.  Oh, and the interface.  It's as craptastic as ever.  Galaxies has never had a good interface, but the NGE stuck that awful reticle in the center of the screen.  For a noncombatant like a Trader, this interface is just junk.  I hit Alt to switch it to mouselook, and have mouselook as my default, but boy, this interface just blows.

P.P.S.  Does anyone know how to clear the right-mouse button target?  You use an ability and it gets put on that little side window thing so that every time you right click after that it activates that ability/item.  I have no idea how to clear it, and it's frustrating the heck out of me.  Boy this interface stinks!

...and I decided, "Why not?"

Galaxies was my first MMO. I have some really great memories of the post-CU pre-NGE era in which I played. The first few days I played I didn't even do much of anything other than wander around those fantastic, lush environments just marveling at it all.

I found my niche in Droid Engineering. I never thought I'd have so much fun playing what amounts to a business simulation. I loved that there were lots of such non-combat related activities, and near the end I was making millions every day.

That was then.

My 15 days are ongoing, I think I have 11 or so left. Here's my impressions so far:

The environments are as good as ever. This game still has a fantastic sense of place and ambiance about it. I'd stack these environments up against any MMO, they're just terrific.

The crafting is about as good as ever. Droid Engineering especially. I really missed assembling my little friends, and I love how intricate the crafting is. This is quite possibly the best crafting in any MMO even today, I don't think you'll find better anywhere. And they have Droidekas now. First thing I did when I got in was craft a Droideka.  Level 60 seems a bit low for something that should be able to give a Jedi a run for his money, but I'll take what I can get.

The game seems to run much, much better than it did when I left.  Way less lag.  My system is basically the same old tired work horse today as it was then, so something else must have changed.  Which brings me to my next point.

The population.  Ahazi used to be the #2 or 3 server in population.  It's dead even during prime time now. Rarely do you actually see other people. This is probably at least one factor in why the game runs so smoothly now. Less people hammering the server.  Way, way less.

The combat is as junky as ever. If I wanted to play a first person shooter, I'd play a real first person shooter and get a far superior experience. MMOs should have MMO combat.  To me, City of Heroes has the very best MMO combat.

I"ve made some Droids, but I doubt they'll sell with so few prospects for customers. A transfer to Bria, the best post NGE population you're going to find post NGE on the North American servers would be nice, but $50? No way. If I resubbed, I'd just grind Droid Engineer anew.  Excuse me, Trader: Engineer.

I won't be resubbing, but it's nice to see all my old stuff agin, and craft a Droid or two with the finest MMO crafting system in existance.

I'll still sometimes look at my collector's edition and just sigh...

Double Fusion, a well known maker of spyware.  GG CoX.

And for those who like ads, how do you feel about spam?  After all, spam is jut ads, right?

Sometimes I just look at my Collector's Edition and just sigh.

I suppose it's possible for Cryptic to get the license, but I'd be surprised if they did.  It's possible, but Trek is one of the least video game friendly IPs around (as its history in gaming shows).  Cryptic is a good developer, if anyone could pull this off they could, but if I were calling the shots over there I wouldn't touch Trek with a 10 meter pain stick.  Any developer taking on this IP is asking for trouble IMVHO.

LOL  MMs were my favorite Archetype until I realized just how much time I was spending summoning/buffing my minions at the start of each mission (1-2 minutes per mission over thousands of missions total adds up to hours and hours of doing nothing but sommoning/buffing...yitch!  If you play through 1000 missions, that's 16 to 33 HOURS of summoning/buffing! )

The balancing factor to that is that MMs pour on more damage than any one other Archetype Villainside can.  They are very, very powerful.

Defiance 2.0 is a buff.  A BIG one.  Especially in PvP.

CoX sets a very high standard for a Superhero MMO.  It's very playable and very polished.  And the IP of DC or Marvel may actually do more to harm those games than help them in the longrun (either you have 1000s of Spidermen running around, or you play second fiddle to Spiderman.  Neither option is especially appealing).  That CoX is its own IP is actually very freeing for it by comparison.

As to endgame, CoX is not WoW.  CoX is not about an endgame, it is about the journey from 1 to 50 as you watch your characters grow in power.  This is why alts are so heavily encouraged.  A paradigm shift from most MMOs to be sure.

Any new Superhero MMO that comes along (and I welcome any and all new Super MMOs; the genre is one of the great mostly-unexplored areas of the MMO landscape) has its work cut out for it.

This project was headed down the wrong path, I'm glad to see it preempted before it was too late.  The very idea of a Tanker ship, Healer ship, etc. (if that's the way they were going with it) was beyond ludicrous, that's not how ships in Trek work.

Predictions:  No Trek MMO will be released at any time in the next 10 years (if ever); Cryptic is not the new developer

Trek is very cerebral.  It's a very poor candidate for a video game (unlike Star Wars which is a perfect fit for vgs) as Trek gaming history bears out.  It can be done, but even the very best efforts tend  to be mediocre, as Trek just isn't physical enough to lend itself easily to gaming (how do you make exploring the human condition compelling in a video game?  That's the $10,0000 question).

Here's hoping that the IP next goes to a developer just talented enough to pull that very tricky maneuver off.

Hey Paramount.  Time to pull the license.

Starfleet Command 3?  Is that you?  Sure looks like you!

And oscorp313 is the winner!

Gratz and expect a PM with your code shortly!

I have a CoX 14 Day Trial Code to give away!  The first to post the words "CoX rules!" here gets it.

I'm Matrix-curious.  I'd love to give it a try.