Was it because I’ve enough geek in me to have a thing for Star Trek? No, but I’m sure that helped.

Was it because the gameplay is fairly tolerable – a rarity for an MMORPG? No, but this, too, probably helped.

Was it because I have great and unwavering faith in Cryptic Studios? No, after Champions Online, Cryptic Studios /cons dubious to me.

Was it because I believed I would honestly get 16 months of play out of this? No, that would really surprise me.

Honestly, it was mostly because I was curios about what owning a lifetime subscription to a major MMORPG would be like.

I can look at Lum’s article to MMORPG.com which basically boils down to, “it’s Star Trek Online and I’m a trekkie. Sold.” I can respect that.

However, as more or less a gamer purist, I can look at Star Trek Online and notice that the game probably won’t have much of an end game. City of Heroes didn’t. Champions Online doesn’t.

I’m anticipating that, if I had a lifetime subscription, as soon as I hit level maximum I’m pretty much tooling around in my uber-high-level ship, out of missions to do, and a very poor infrastructure for roleplay based on the way they decided to build the thing as a heavily instanced fusion of Fleet Battles and Away Team.

The third mind I have about this enters the picture when I ask myself, “what MMORPG has an end game other than grinding for meaningless gear, anyway?”

I do expect lots of things to change and hopefully improve over the next year, I can play it then if I get bored with it now. But I’ve not been bored by beta, I’m ready to do it for real and not for practice in beta already.

One thing people seem to forget about MMOs is that they grow and improve over time. So maybe it will launch a little sooner than optimal, but Cryptic has 20 million reasons to release it when they will, that’s the bonus they’re getting from Atari for fulfilling the release window. That, and the lifetime subscriptions (I have one) will get them over the hump while they add content for Klingons and improve the weaker areas.

That’s true… and it was the same reason I shelled out for a 6 month Champions Online subscription…

… and regretted it. Although MMORPGs in general improve, and City of Heroes improved incredibly, it seems Cryptic Studios was either unable to put a lot of improvement into Champions Online since release or unwilling (perhaps because a lot of their firepower was focused on the far larger Star Trek Online).

It made me very, very cautious about considering purchasing this and, indeed, question the very merit of paying $15/mo to a MMORPG to begin with when (a) they’re generally built in such a way these days you can get a comparable experience from a single player game (b) they’re hesistant to really improve them where they need to be improved and (c) there’s plenty of F2P alternatives around these days…

So at this point, I’m thinking I’m either not going to buy the game at all or I’m going to get a lifetime subscription. Such a big gap owed to not believing in monthly subscriptions anymore. Very heavily leaning on the former option over the later in that I really doubt I could get the 16 months worth of play out of this that $240 works out to.

But the truth is for myself, and I suspect other gamers as well, games like these have a window. Once that window of time closes the likelihood of ever playing that games.

Right now I am kind of busy with the whole Fall of the Lich King thing, but once we down Arthas I am up to trying new things. As it stands STO won’t be one of them, I’ll probably just end up playing ME2 and Dragon Age DLC.

Had they actually taken the time to develop a solid combat system based around the bridge, maybe. But not too far on the horizon lies a Cataclysm and an Old Republic. I don’t think post patches fixes of STO will be something I am even thinking about by then.

Who knows, maybe someday Bioware will get the ST license. But if I had to guess I think Bioware is using SWTOR as a guinea pig/advertisement, and the real end game is not another license but a Mass Effect or Dragon Age MMO.

And yha, if i had time i’d play sto because, damnit, it’s trek!

So never say never.