Not if you live in Australia - sunny days and warm ocean water :)

Oh, and +1 to your comment about an MMO needing to be live for a while before it's "ready".

It is a shame that MMOs have this reputation that they are rarely ready on release. There is no reason for this as that is what Beta testing is for. Regrettably most people chosen for beta testing only use it as a chance to play the game before anyone else, and not for what it is intended for.

To all STO beta testers out there: if you are chosen as a beta tester, GIVE FEEDBACK TO THE DEVELOPERS. Dont just sit there playing the game, moan about how unfinished it is then never play it again. Lets try and buck the trend and make this game actually viable on release by letting the devs know what is wrong BEFORE release.

You talk how if the game dont go to receive updates or changue after launch.

MMO are long tern games, and their best shape begin moths after launch. Not are singleplayer games that live or die in their firsts weeks.

A MMO can be awful for everyone in his launch (EVE) but gain momentun and receive succes many moths or years inclusive after launch.

Perhaps in people perception games can be considered succes or fail in their first moth, but the MMO reality is different. The SWG-NGE disaster was years after the SWG launch.

Also the STO engine is the same that the CO engine, CO has been how a "beta" for STO, for that many bugs and crashes experimented in CO will not appear in STO.

I disagree. While I to have been victimized of rushed release dates and buggy launches; something in my gut says these guys have their stuff together. I expect a pretty decent release.

You have to keep in mind that Cryptic bought the game, content, and rights from Perpetual. A lot of the leg work was already done, they just redesigned a few areas and built content.

In reality the game has been in development for a pretty long time, I think this seems just about right.

No, and that's half the point; they are clearly not yet comfortable enough with the platform's stability to let people who paid significant amounts of money ($200 if you're a lifetime CO member like myself) in. Well, not all of us, anyway.

Which is fine, but to see an MMO go from very limited beta test through to release in 3 months seems unlikely.

With the exception that Cryptic uses a server less setup. The game world will be all tied into one gaming server database. Just like CO I imagine.

The problem is that sometimes key parts of the setup can / do crash and it causes everything to hangup. If the login server goes down people can no longer log into the game. If you use multi login servers then you will need a master server to control what login server people get sent to.

What happens if the server or the network between the shards goes down that handles people moving from one zone / shard to the next? Too many ways for the system to go down / wrong if theres noone there to monitor / manage it. And during alpha/beta testing its all about getting as much work done as you can with as little overhead cost as you can. Not saying there way of doing testing is the right way.

But it does have the added bonus of not burning out your testers / players before the game releases. Alot of games today face heavy tester / release burn outs. You get testers that play through all the content durning alpha/beta and then end up not playing the game at release. And thats a huge kick to the nuts since you have effectively tuned the game to make it fun for the people currently testing it based upon there feedback. Theres just not alot worse then adjusting a game to meet the expectations of feedback from beta players and then they just turn around on you and don't play the game you tuned for them simply because they have already played through it all dozens of times.

I wouldn't doubt if you do not see more and more companys move to a limited style testing like this. Well actually I see this the wave of the future for doing beta tests. Since they have been dumbed down to the point of being nothing more then marketing blimps before release anyways. Nothing worth happening ever happens in the beta stage anymore. Everything has moved to the F&F / alpha stage of MMO development. If your game is not ready by the time it hits the beta stage, well your games in serious trouble then.

Good reply. Candor appreciated!

If testers burn out after running out of content after a month of testing, it's clear the game launched with insufficient content.

thing is with MMOs the key is to have as many ppl out there who can play your game
so looks cant be state of the art as most ppl have old systems

I would agree but theres no substitute for playing. Games are not movies - video footage is not representaitve of the whole game as games are for playing, not watching.

Im reserving judgement until release. You never know, it might be good...! :)