How long do you believe Star Trek Online will last?

[Extrocomp]

Movies, TV episodes, comics, novels and single-player games can all last forever, but MMORPGs seem to have a limited lifespan. Even if you buy an MMO from a store, you can't really own it. You're just buying permission to play the company's game and when that company decides to stop playing, the game is over forever. Here are a few examples of dead or dying MMORPGs and how long they were around for:

The Sims Online (5 years)
Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa (1 year)
Shadowbane (6 years)
The Matrix Online (4 years)
Star Wars Galaxies (8 years)
City Of Heroes (8 years)
Cartoon Network Universe: Fusion Fall (4 years)
Disney's Toontown Online (10 years)
Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning (5 years)
Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes (7 years)

On the other hand, Asheron's Call, EverQuest, Final Fantasy XI and Guild Wars have been around for a decade or longer and are still going strong despite having to compete with their own sequels. World Of WarCraft is still the most popular MMO even though it's nearly 10 years old. And Ultima Online has been around since 1997.

How long do you believe Star Trek Online will last? Can it last forever? Or will it be shut down in a few years due to low player numbers, licensing issues or some other reason? Does the Foundry give Star Trek Online a potentially infinite amount of content to keep it alive indefinitely?

Sometimes you can tell that an MMO is dying because the number of servers is decreasing. But Star Trek Online only ever had one server.

 

[intrinsical]

As someone who has training in computer science, played MMOs since 2000 (EQ, CoH, WoW, V:SoH), alpha & beta tested Vanguard: Saga of Heroes for 3 years, once wrote my own web-based space game... here's my 2 cents.

Richard Garriot's Tabula Rasa (1 year)
The Matrix Online (4 years)
Star Wars Galaxies (8 years)
Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning (5 years)
Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes (7 years)

It is a known fact that the above MMOs were terribly made or served very niche and small audiences. Matrix Online for example, had no more than 50,000 players at their peak. City of Heroes had 200,000 at its peak and took 4 years for the population to drop to 100,000. EverQuest 500,000 and took 7 years to decline to 100,000. According to this forum post from 2010, a player guesstimated STO had around 200,000 players. That sounds about right. Assuming a similar trajectory as CoH, STO's current population should be around 100,000. That's still a good sized population considering The Matrix Online had only 1000 players when it closed.

CoH was actually more profitable after its F2P conversion, so it could have easily continued on for well over a decade. But for some unknown reason, NCSoft decided to pull the plug early. I chalk it down to a shift in corporate strategy.

Vanguard which I'm intimately familiar with, launched with a fifth of its promised land size, only had one "above average" adventure zone (Ruins of Trengal Keep), lots of bugs and exploits, broken adventuring classes and a non-existent management team. And yet it still managed to survive for 7 years.

So barring external factors, most MMOs decline very slowly.

As for Star Trek Online, yes I do get the sense the population is declining - but that's the same with every MMO that's been in the market for 4-5 years. I do notice a sizable influx of new and old players every time a new season, expansion or movie comes around. I will assume that overall, it is a very slow decline. Which means it will be a few years before the population falls to unprofitable levels.

As for Foundry, its like the KDF faction. I think the number of players who regularly play foundry missions is about a thousand or less. Thus it is my belief that there are not enough foundry players for foundry to have any impact on STO's longevity.

In terms of profitability... Just this year alone, the Galaxy pack and Undine lockbox/lobi ships should have given Cryptic quite a big influx of cash. And the expansion coming in Nov/Dec should bring in even more players and more money to Cryptic. Furthermore, unlike Matrix and Warhammer fans, the fanbase for Trek is significantly larger and much more loyal. So I do not think STO will close any time soon. It should easily continue operations for at least 10 years.

The only possibility where STO will close operations under 10 years is if either Paramount, CBS or Cryptic decides to make a strategic shift away from Trek like NCSoft did with CoH.

 

[Caesar753]

I think STO is a healthy game and will be around for a while. Cryptic keeps making new content, so they are clearly invested in keeping the game going strong.

 

[Blamo]

Been with the game since about a month after it came out. While I've lost my temper with the game a few times, it's really only now I'm seriously contemplating leaving it. Though this is probably more to do with some decent alternatives showing up.

Cryptics tactic at the moment is to focus on the casual player, the person who logs in for maybe thirty mins to an hour a day. Anyone who puts more than a casual amount of thought into their build will probably find NPC's blow up in seconds. This alone will keep a lot of people playing, as there isn't any real reason not to. You can play other MMO's while still popping into STO.

I'll probably be spending most of my gaming time in Star Citizen once it releases (probably in two years). Most likely I'll be a crewman on one of my organisation's Idris frigates, exploring the outer star systems and going on away teams. Unlike STO, the ship interiors exist on the same map as the exterior and will be pretty much fully realised. Despite first impressions and early focus on the space combat elements, exploration seems to be equally important (a recent poll that was done showed exploration to be the number 1 want).

 

[T'Girl]

For the foreseeable future, the only thing that would end Star Trek Online would be if CBS took legal steps to shut it down.

 

[Shikarnov]

Well, they just came out with a Mac version -- and thus my wife and I just started playing -- and so they better be around for a while. I'm not stopping until I earn my very own Sovereign class ship.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Well, they just came out with a Mac version -- and thus my wife and I just started playing -- and so they better be around for a while. I'm not stopping until I earn my very own Sovereign class ship.

Next weekend then?


Leveling in Star Trek Online is a short experience and you don't have to get to max level to get a Sovereign. Level 40 will do the trick.
Though you need to get to level 50 and have considerable resources to get a Fleet Sovereign, which has the better performance.

 

[Shikarnov]

Well, I think it'll be a while before I get that far. My wife and I play together when we have time -- but with a 13 month toddler running around and a baby due to be born in about two weeks, it might just take a year to get to Level 40. We're both at Level 18 now and I'm loving my Probert Connie.

Would like to join the TBBS fleet though -- whenever I figure out how -- since we get our butts handed to us rather routinely. Just last night we ended up destroyed three times each (at different times though) to complete a quest fighting a batch of Klingon fighters.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

just type your name@handle here or in the TrekBBS Armada thread and someone will invite you... both of you if you like.

 

[Shikarnov]

I hate to ask a stupid question, but exactly where do I find that? I see my account name / email. I see my display name. My character name. My ship name. Etc... But nowhere can I find the name@handle

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

charactername@accountname

if you type something in the ingame chat it displays both those name in the format we need for a fleet invitation.

 

[Shikarnov]

Thanks. I'll try it later after the baby goes to sleep.

 

[Capn Flukie]

You can open up the chat window, and just type 'hi' and you'll see how your name is displayed.

 

[otomo]

I saw on here there's a mac version. Is this a game that's playable without killing your life and sucking all the time away like WoW and enjoyable at a couple hours a week? lol

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I saw on here there's a mac version. Is this a game that's playable without killing your life and sucking all the time away like WoW and enjoyable at a couple hours a week? lol

I heard of a guy who managed that. It is even rumored that he occasionally caught some sun light in the real world.

Seriously, as MMOs come, this one is as casual as it gets.

Though it has a habit of becoming a habit.

 

[T J]

Right now with my life getting kinda busy I manage around an hour a day... seems to be enough time to grind my reps... Would I like to play more, you bet! I have a week vacation at the end of the month, I shall call it my STO vacation!