I only asked because of my Fleet of 25 active players (most from my former WoW guild and 6 from EVE Online); only myself and 3 others are actual Star Trek fans, etc, etc...
I generally don't think that personal anecdotes are a way to judge a game's success. My experience has been just the opposite of yours, with people mostly complaining, leaving the game, bitching about nothing to do at level 45, etc.
That's not what I base the potential "problems" on. It's the fact that they aren't even six months in and the items that people paid extra to get special are now available to everyone for rock bottom prices. You don't do that just because you're "listening to your players", that's an attempt to keep people who might be riding the fence interested in playing your game. Otherwise it's nothing more than an attempt to piss off the people who paid for the $200 lifetime subscription or the $70 collector's edition or bought the TOS season 3 blu-rays for the TWoK uniform and such.
I also base it on the number of instances running now as compared to the number of instances running one month after launch. When you brought up the "change instance" option a month after launch, you could choose from between 15-20 different instances. Now, sometimes, you're lucky if there are two open at a time.
As for STO going F2P in a couple of months (or anytime within the next year - if ever); I don't think it's going to happen as they are within the number of reccuring subs they projected; and if anything the games numbers are consistent or rising slightly if the number of people asking questions regarding the game at Earth spacedock are any indication.
Again, personal anecdotes aren't an indication at all and every company lies about (or creatively fudges if you prefer) their numbers. No one knows what Star Trek's subscription rate is but their people. Even WoW lies about its subscription rates to the public/media.
(Hell, WoW was still a mess in plenty of areas 5 months out)
This "example" is used a lot and it's just not true. It was far from perfect, but it was still pretty damn excellent. I'll freely admit most other MMOs have real issues 5 months in, but WoW was definitely at the top of the pack for best from launch MMO title.
The Season 2 update is adding a good amount of things to the game (it's due on the test server around July 1, and will probably be put out on live in late July/early August); and like all MMOs, stuff will continue to be added and updated. If STO were in serious trouble at this poiint, I'm sure we'd be seeing Dev staff reductions, etc.; and were not.
And this is what has me optimistic. I want it to be better. I want it to be a great game. I want tactical to always be spelled tactical and not sometimes tacticle. The more they put into it the better chance it has to become something great.
They also anounced the play character 'companion' system; which from reports seems remarkably like STO's 'Bridge Officer' system; so again, interesting that this new stuff (along with a release date pushback) happens aftyer abother MMO (STO) introduced, and showed stuff like this can work in an MMO.
I do have to call BS on this. Bioware was planning on implementing these things LONG before Star Trek came out. Maybe the ship combat and interiors bit is new, but I know the companion system was announced when ToR was announced.
I don't think:
1) STO will be shutting down anytime soon.
I hope you're right. But I also hope it improves significantly.
2) STO will be switching to a 'free to play' model anytime soon either.
I can see this happening. DDO has become very profitable since going this road and I think a lot of the less popular, struggling MMOs with passable gameplay like Star Trek may be going F2P. But we shall see.
I'm so slow. Cryptic are kinda annoying now, they don't release anything on time, and people are constantly having issues with certain parts of the game. I'm still wondering if it's a good idea to move to Tribble or not.
