My long range sensors indicate that there’s a lot of you faggots ruining my Star Trek Online gameplay experience. That’s right, all you little nerds running around asking stupid shit like “Where’s Sulu?” or “How do I access my bridge?” Let me tell you something, I’m a fucking Trek VETERAN, asshole! You want to be like Picard and shit? Man fuck that old dickhead twat! I fucking grew up with Spock and shit. I’m hardcore, bro! Kirk? I was the inspiration for Kirk! He wasn’t even in the original Star Trek! Which is why it sucked! So one day when I was a toddler my babysitter lived next to Gene Roddenberry. After the first episode of Star Trek, Gene was like “Fuck this shit, my show is full of pussies.” And when he came home he looked into his neighbor’s window and saw my baby self shooting my phaser rifle up my babysitter! And that’s how Gene got inspired to create Kirk, he was all like “Damn I wish I could put such a badass in my show as the Captain, but they got child labor laws and shit.” So Gene went out and found William Shatner because he is the closest lookalike to me and The Original Series was born. Don’t believe me? Check out my blue bitch.

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After spending a few weeks trolling the Star Trek Online forums, I’ve come to realize that some people there are really fucking weird… The following quote is an actual post from the forums:

ummm… let me think…. YEA!!! if i get a touch screen computer… i will definitely have an LCARS mod for it!

Don’t forget to ask to be beamed up to Masturbation Station while you’re at it. If this was Star Trek, you’d be the red shirt guy. But aside from the hardcore geekiness, there’s the hardcore virgin horniness:

Who’s the Hottest Trek Babe?

Man Argument part 1: Ezeri Dax or Jadza Dax …. Discuss

Hottest TOS babe

There isn’t a day that goes by where a debate breaks out on whose tits were firmer, Jeri Ryan’s or Jolene Blalock’s. But females are not to be intimidated by this. There’s a few threads for your personal pleasure too:

For the girls, Who´s the hottest star trek captian

There’s even one for the homosexuals:

Am I the only Gay in the Multiverse?

And one for the confused:

Who’s the hottest non-male/non-female Star Trek character?

In essence, it’s been about a month since STO was “relaunched” by Cryptic and already the fans are running out of things to talk about. They’re combing every portion of the Star Trek Universe for things to talk about, including:

How Do You Want Your Tricorder to Work?

Cryptic’s screenshots didn’t spark much discussion, except for a huge debate regarding the graphics. This game needs a jolt of content…FAST! I’m officially afraid to visit the STO forums now, thanks to al this. I advise everyone else to avoid them at all costs.

Your dreams of losing your cyber-virginity since you couldn’t lose your real virginity are now OVER.

There’s an increasingly popular trend in MMOs these days that is showing up in more and more games. It isn’t gold farming (although that ticks me off), but instead is the sale of in-game items for real money through means supported by the game’s developer.

Sony Online Entertainment uses its Station Exchange program for Everquest 2 so players can buy and sell items, gold, and accounts. The game has a few Station Exchange enabled servers, so those who do not want to play the game with this system can chose one of the many servers that do not allow it. In it’s first year of operation, Station Exchange oversaw over $1.8 million in transactions. A single seller made almost $37,500 in that year from 351 auctions

Second Life uses a program based off its in game economy. Linden Dollars have a real life exchange rate for US Dollars. People are allowed to create and sell items in game for Linden Dollars and when they accumulate enough of those virtual dollars, they can exchange them for the real money equivalent. Furthermore, you can buy or rent land in the game for real life sums, and charge access fees to users in the game. Project Entropia works a similar way, popularized by a user who payed $100,000 (that’s real US Dollars) for an island in that game.

I was reading the newest issue of Business Week yesterday and interestingly enough they had an article on the MMO business, in particular about Maple Story. Maple Story was a huge success in Asia, so now it has been brought to North America. It’s simplistic gameplay make it perfect for both hardcore and casual gamers. You can buy clothes or hairstyles for just a few cents a pop, or turn around and sell them again. In 2005, Maple Story’s parent company Nexon reaped in $250 million worldwide revenues, 85% of that figure being from virtual items alone.

The MMO industry as a whole is expected to produce revenues of $760 million this year alone and that figure is expected to triple within the next four years. The sale of virtual items via a parent company is becoming an increasingly popular trend, and it is becoming an effective way to combat illegal trading that is happening on Ebay or across the web.

Will Perpetual jump on the bandwagon? Unless Perpetual finds some really innovative and secure method that will prevent the illegal sale of accounts, items, and money on the internet, then this illegal activity is bound to happen. Now, I don’t mean illegal as in “against the law,” but as in “against the game’s EULA.” We’ve yet to see a legal case regarding the validity of the EULA in regards to the exchange of virtual material.

Having the incentive to make money from the game is a great way to attract users. I’m sure many non-fans will play Star Trek Online of they knew that they could bank on selling items or power leveling accounts. However, I don’t believe that this should be something that is commonplace in STO. I am more of a fan of the Station Exchange method SOE uses, where only a select few servers have the option to exchange items. I think that would be the best way for Perpetual to approach this, as it will give users the choice as to whether or not they want to use the program and it will add incentives for non-Star Trek fans to try out the game.

By using this system from the game’s launch, it will easily carve pathways for potential players: those who are in favor of the exchange program will go to those servers, while those who are not will go to normal servers. This will reduce the amount of farming and selling that is done on the net for normal servers, because the majority of the players on the normal servers are not in favor of such activities. If it is launched later in the game’s lifetime, then it would put the players who wish to use the program in a tough position, since they must decide whether or not to sacrifice their reputation, game time, items, friends, and other personal accomplishments they have made on their native server in order to switch or transfer over to an exchange server.

In conclusion, using an exchange server will benefit Perpetual and STO in that it will bring in non-fan players with incentives to make money, it will curb the amount of illegal trading that happens on the web, and it will keep STO up to par with an increasingly popular trend in the MMO industry.