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The Daily Grind: Do you play the MMO lockbox game?
The infamous marketing phenomenon known as the lockbox has been the subject of much disdain since F2P took over the MMO market because lockboxes are perceived by players to be an annoying lottery mechanic, but they don't seem to be going away. Studios like Cryptic have gone on record as saying they're incredibly profitable, and that means lots of players do buy them (or the keys to open them, as the case may be). Or do they? The top-supplied item on the Guild Wars 2 auction house is the locked Black Lion Chest. As of this screencap last week, almost 7,000,000 lockboxes are sitting on the market unbought, waiting for someone with a purchased or looted key to come along and crack them open. Add to that number the 50 or so sitting idle in my bank! That's a lot of dropped lockboxes that failed to entice someone to whip out his wallet and pay for a key. Are you among the resistant players, or do you play the MMO lockbox game? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Captain's Log: Star Trek Online celebrates 25 years of The Next Generation
Star Trek Online's Season Six is in full swing! My fleet is extremely close to reaching tier one of its new fleet starbase (in all three categories), and people seem to be having a pretty good time as they team up to take on fleet missions to earn the merits the starbase is starving for. I have to admit, our Ventrilo channel hasn't been this busy in a long time. Rarely do I log in to see fewer than 20 names active in the channel. This week we were told that a new version of the infamous lock box is being released. Part of the announcement also addressed the fact that Cryptic Studios has decided to make some tweaks to the Lobi store. The Foundry has been kept offline since the Season Six launch and remains shut down. Capping off the week, Star Trek Online began a weekend-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of the first airing of Star Trek: The Next Generation! Join me after the jump to learn a little bit more about it.
Star Trek Online shows off the new Tholian Lock Box
Fair warning for those of you who hate the Star Trek Online lock boxes: There's no good news for you in this post. Those of you who do like the system (or at least aren't actively unfond of it) will be glad to know that the release of Season 6 is bringing along a new box, complete with new rewards. That includes four new ships (the Tholian Orb Weaver and three mirror universe versions of existing ships) along with new cross-faction consoles and new duty officers. Players can also be rewarded with new purple-quality Phased Tetryon weapons or Fleet Credits to accelerate progress on fleet starbase projects. The lock box also contains a wider variety of crystals, ensuring that even if you don't get the drop you want, you can at least get something of worth. While the rewards won't please any fans of the game who dislike the existing box system, there's at least a variety of nice prizes within the box.
Captain's Log: It always floods after a drought in STO
Over the course of the last week, Star Trek Online fans have been swimming in the flood of information that has been released regarding several missions and features of the game that are expected to be released either just before or as part of Season Six. We still have no formal release date for Season Six, nor have we been given any hint as to when we will see it appear on the STO test server, Tribble. Yet several announcements have been posted by Cryptic on the STO website, some of which have rejuvenated the deflated playerbase. Fleets were given even more information on the anticipated release of the fleet advancement system; Foundry authors have been celebrating the tool's first significant patch in over a year; endgame players got some good news about two new five-person team missions, and a couple of promotions have made at least a few players smile. Join me as I attempt to analyze all the new information!
Star Trek Online dev unconcerned with losing global playability for the sake of lock boxes [Updated]
Lock boxes in Star Trek Online -- love them or leave them, right? Well, now it may be more of an issue of Cryptic's leaving you if your country has an issue with them. When a discussion on the Jupiter Force forums noted that certain countries may have legal issues with lock boxes in the game, STO developer @borticus chimed in that the "most likely course of action here, if any is taken, is that STO becomes unplayable" in that country. When the conversation turned toward the loss of revenue from losing said countries, @borticus replied that probably less revenue would be lost from losing a country than abandoning lock boxes. Could lock boxes be making enough of a profit that losing an entire country's playerbase is a worthy trade off? It sounds like it. Anyone hoping that lock boxes were a temporary fad may want to stop holding his breath. [Update: Borticus has a response for our low-standard website's reporting of something he said in public.] [Thanks to "Some Guy" for the tip!]
Star Trek Online unpacks Cardassian mystery boxes
While last December's red gift boxes proved controversial in the Star Trek Online community, Cryptic has stated that they were incredibly profitable and that it will continue to produce similar "treasure chest" items that require real-world money to acquire. True to its word, the studio will release a new batch of Cardassian Lock Boxes this Thursday as standard, free drops -- but opening them is going to cost you. The lock boxes contain one random reward inside that ranges from insanely rare (in this case, a Cardassian Galor-class starship) to trivially common (such as consumables) and everything in-between. While the boxes will be attained and traded like any other in-game loot, they can only be opened with a special Master Key purchased in the C-Store. Master Keys will go on sale for 100 CP apiece or 10 for 900 CP. Other potential prizes in the Cardassian Lock Boxes include Tribbles, Hortas, shuttles, Deep Space Nine costumes, and duty officer packs.
Moritz Waldemeyer's keyhole surgery box tests your nerves
Okay, so let's get on the same page here: Operation. Now that we're all focused on that goofy looking guy flat on a table before we all lost our innocence in this Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, let us introduce you to Moritz Waldemeyer's crafty little box. Simply dubbed keyhole surgery, the device is more or less a 3D version of the aforementioned board game, designed to see just how steady you can hold the key and complete the puzzle without brushing up against the wall. We get this idea this is one of those "easier said than done" thingamajigs, wouldn't you agree?[Via Unplggd]
