It's all wishful thinking but with as much MMO experience I have this is one of those letters called "PLEASE STAY SUBSCRIBED PAST THE 30 DAYS." 
  
http://www.startrekonline.com/node/1182    

Welcome, you noble purveyors of Federation policy and fierce warlords of the Empire! Welcome one and all!

Wait now... Let's just take a moment to de-cloak, disarm and drop our shields, shall we? This State of the Game is of interest to you all.

So very, very much has happened over the last few weeks! It feels like every single time I began to write a new State of the Game, we'd have to quickly douse live shard fires, juggle major play tests and push critical late night patches. By the time the dousing, juggling and pushing was done, the outline of my State of the Game would be hopelessly out of date.

Given how tirelessly we've been working, if some ethereal, omnipotent resident from the Denorios belt hadn't stepped in and considerately put the breaks on space-time with a bit of temporal wizardry, I might have found myself eternally rewriting this single State of the Game.

Thanks to you, oh great wormhole-y one!

We. Are. Live. And so, supporting you -- yes, you, specifically -- is an effort that consumes us night and day.

Ask any bedraggled MMO developer about launch and they will inevitably assure you that it never, ever gets any easier. Crunch all you like, friend, it only gets harder after the game actually ships. STO is certainly no exception. Supporting a user base as large as ours requires dedication -- no, devotion! Our crew is, thankfully, more than up to the task. We are pushing the workplace warp core to maximum in an effort to better address any and every bug and issue that comes up in-game.

Our objective: Implement as many of the stability and gameplay adjustments you asked for as soon as humanoidly possible (as safe practices allow, of course). To this end, Community has put more effort into moderating the boards and CS has recently staffed up in order to get through your tickets quicker. The idea being, "we can hardly fix what we can't see."

We've also thrown a metric ton of hardware and man hours at getting the server capacity up. Our Network Operations crew has been performing admirably, to say the least. I won't begin to count the times I've heard, "Sorry, Captain! I'm giving it all she's got," come out of their work area, only to be quickly followed by a confident, Scotty-like, "It's done." Beautiful. Almost makes me want to demand them to, "fly her apart, then!" I might just because I know those boys and girls will hold it together in the end, whatever I say.

Bottom line: When -- if -- you see Queues, they should be much shorter and stability will be much better.

Now that the game is out and in your loving hands, we're taking long, hard looks at everything each and every one of you is interested in seeing changed. Cruiser turn rates? Death penalties? More open auto-fire? All those topics and more are being scrutinized by the all-seeing eye of... um, us!

Some of the few things on the way:

• Respec
• Death Penalty
• Difficulty Slider
• More open auto-fire
• Replayable missions
• Improving Memory Alpha
• Fixing those Commodity missions

And there are a bunch more. We’ve heard you and are working on all these issues, but we want to make sure that they come out clean and finished. We hate rushing out features – it inevitably leads to us accidentally breaking things we didn’t have time to test. I dunno – like the Red Matter Capacitor or something…

In order to better accommodate our players during the Head Start weekend, we merged the physical machines dedicated to our Public Test Shard (Tribble) into the live Shard (Holodeck). It has since been difficult to find viable hardware to test new patches on before pushing them out to you.

Well, we've got more hardware now and Tribble will be up pretty soon. Problem solved.

Once Tribble’s up and running (insert whatever tribble joke you’d like to here) – we’ll be able to start releasing those core game adjustments to you guys for deeper testing and feedback.

We're in the final stages of testing the first STF (the five-man raids we internally referred to as "Raidisodes"). STF: Infected is just about ready to release.

You know, I might actually record one of our internal play sessions. The excited cries for more shielding and healing get the blood pumping. Although, once our testers reach the end room and the action really heats up... Well, it's not exactly "family friendly" in there. Definitely going to be an exciting, thrilling mission for our players, though.

After Infected, we'll roll out more STFs. "The Cure", "The Khitomer Accord" and "Into the Hive" are all coming along nicely. We look forward to regularly releasing these and seeing what everyone thinks.

The first major update is receiving a final coat of paint, too.

There's quite a lot of genuinely cool stuff in Update 1: Classy Marketable Name Coming Soon. Expect to see it pushed to the newly revived Tribble Public Test Shard over the next couple weeks.

New Klingon ships? Oh, my yes. And they look...awesome. Re-specs are also coming, of course. All of Cryptic can't wait to see that particular feature out the door. New PvP maps and Fleet Actions are rather nice, too.

Right now, we're planning it. We haven't set the future of STO's content into stone because so much of it will be determined by you, but we're laying out what we'd like to focus on for the next 6 to 12 months.

• Who are the Undine and what drives them?
• How can we better exploit the Genesis System to create even more compelling content?
• Where can we boldly go next? Where shall we take exploratory missions, as there's so much potential there?
• Which faction should be playable next? Romulan? Cardassian? Pakled? Dominion? Horta? Okay, not so much the Pakleds.

And that’s not even the start of it! Ship interiors, more bridges, crew quarters, First Officers, Fleet advancement... You have subscribed to a service that delivers a universe unending, and we shall see that universe populated with compelling content or, by the Prophets, we will die trying.

Some people get that. Some people don't. We're here for those that do.

Throughout development, we guessed Star Trek Online might be polarizing. Some people don't get it and some people simply don't like it... But, others fall in love with their ships and captains and bridge officers. Those are the ones who can't live without beaming down to strange, new planets and participating in lively stories.

We guessed this and still we made a conscious decision to not water things down and go "mass market". Frankly, I think that's perfectly OK. Because, no matter what, there will be one single thing, now and forever, that drives everything we do: you.

We have a very healthy -- and healthily testy -- core community that gets it. And there's nothing we look forward to more than working together to make STO better.

Sad part is, you may not even know it. Far as I can tell, there're no hidden cameras and mics scattered about Cryptic's office. So, how would you know that we refer to our community almost as if it were an absent developer?

"Well, The Users think that we need to do more non-combat."

"Guys, I'm sorry to interrupt, but The Players really want ground auto-attack back. Drop what we're doing."

"We already know what you think about a death penalty, Craig – but The Community really thinks it's a good idea and their opinion is more valid than yours because they probably don't own goats."

It’s a little unnerving -- sometimes feels like we work with a giant multi-headed feedback monster that simultaneously loves and hates us. It whips even as it hugs! It rages even as it cries! And it fumes even when it's happy. It's unnerving, yes, but pretty freakin' rad, too.

What you guys post and say and do in-game and on the forums is the biggest factor we consider when making our decisions.

I am sorry if it ever appears that we're not listening to you or trying to make the game better. Because that is pretty much all we ever do.

-Zn 

Sounds like an MMO just launched, isn't something like this standard issue within the first month or two?

Very weak, wimpy, and ineffectual tone to that whole thing.
 
He's saying nice things that people should probably hear, but the WAY he's doing it is so............I dunno......flaccid?. It's like when somebody gives you a really soft, girly handshake. You know the kind I mean. The kind that just feels weird and puny. He's talking like that. It's not a good strategy.

I dunnow.. I kinda like a more direct response to the feedback given.. 
I'll save my opinion till I see the deliverance of what he's writing. I mean, so long they don't suddenly start charging for new content packs (cosmetic stuff not included, I don't mind micro transactions for cosmetics that doesn't affect my progress in the game), I can only really see this game getting better. I find the core to be strong, they just need to pull really fucking hard to flesh out everything around it. And that's probably what worries me... that's a lot of stuff..

That's very well put together - Reassurance is nice (Particularly to people actually playing the game.)

I love the part where he mentions core systems that should be ready for launch as some sort of carrot on a stick to keep your subscription. Ya, no.

I had no problem with what is being planned in this new State of the Game, the inclusion of a death penalty tho is a pretty hot topic based on the 'ficial forums. The yay's and the nay's of something more than just watching a 20 second timer.

Oh my god! 
In all my my years of playing different MMO's from when they launched this is like the... 10th time this is happening! 
Shocking!  

 "Screw you guys! I'm going home!"

That's the attitude that Cryptic's "content designer" has decided to present to the community that is paying their bills. 

 Straight from Atari's Corporate website and Cryptic's own.

Originally Posted by ZootCadillac I'd just like to add that for those unused to reading financial reports that all figures are usually in in millions ( Euros in this case, Infogrames being a French company ) and that all figures appearing in parenthesis (brackets ) are negative numbers.

Reading this letter made me feel like I was six again. The grown ups trying to con you into doing things you don't want to do with empty promises and A LOT of fluff. 
 
All it did was make me feel even better about not buying STO.

Seems a bit defensive but otherwise ok. 
 
Personally, I think the worst thing developers can do is start treating their 'hardcore' forum audience as though they represent their whole audience.  As often as not, listening to their feedback and implementing their suggestions results in a worse game experience for the vast majority of players who don't spend 18 hours a day playing the game / on the forum.  That said, the only people that will ever read this update will be the hardcore forum types anyway, so patting them on the head to make them feel important, before going right back to totally ignoring them, is probably the best way to handle these things.
 
Priority One:  Stat-track ground PvE and use it to implement something approximating balance -  every existing ground mechanic is going to waste because the difficulty is simply too low to worry about them.
Priority Two:  Get a fully fleshed out second playable race done ASAP -  every existing PvP mechanic is going to waste because there is nobody to play against.
 
'Death Penalties' are old-hat and imo a mistake - if I feel like I'm moving backwards in an MMO I will immediately stop playing.  You should always be rewarding your players, not punishing them.  What they need is a 'Staying Alive Bonus' that accrues a multiplier over time / missions:  
 

• Survive a mission (or kill somebody in PvP), get a '2% bonus to XP' Buff (or rare drop rate or whatever) - AKA Survival Bonus Stage 1.
• Survive another (or kill somebody in PvP), another 2% - and so on, stacked up to a maximum of say 10% - AKA Survival Bonus Stage 5
• Death = drop down one Survival Bonus stage, but never below the regular 0% baseline
  

Because every MMO launched with end-game content and worked flawlessly right?  STO is far from polished or even finished to be frank, but the amount of people who somehow thought it was going to be the one MMO to release at any stage beyond every other MMO is wishful thinking.  It's also been pretty clear from past products that this is not an MMO like WoW, it's Cryptic's take on the genre, which is what I call MMO Light.  Every MMO has this happen at the end of trial marker, it's where you are going to lose a lot of people and see where the player base evens out at.  It's not a sign of the game being bad or the fans being sheep, people will leave a game that just didn't click with them, it's why you have a free month up front.  
 
I've been enjoying my time with the game, I didn't exploit the system to be an Admiral in a day - many of whom are now the people crying about the lack of content - and I have enjoyed the game that it is.  The post was mentioning what has been the usual topics on the forums, and he plainly said they were looking at them to see what people wanted.  You take it as promising everything, while the word promise isn't used once.  They are directly acknowledging that they see what the community is concerned about.  I can't wait for the trial period to end so the community can finally build up with people that want to play instead of logging on to complain.  There are people that log into the STO forums with "account canceled" as thier sig, but they still feel that they need to post, it's that mentality that drives many of these haters that can't just say it's not for them and move on.

why are you always shitting all over this game?
 
you said you canceled your sub why cant you just move on and not care?

" @Buzzkill said: you sound like an over-invested fanboy. Go play your "real" mmo, with your "real" friends, and let people enjoy this game however they like. Why waste so much time shitting on something that is intended to be positive when it affects you in NO WAY. "

" why are you always shitting all over this game?  you said you canceled your sub why cant you just move on and not care? "

"

yawn ...
another poorly crafted negative spin  thread

move on buzzkill, you're just proving you have too much time on your hands. 
 
 

"

"
 
 

@RiddleBrother said:

" @Buzzkill said: you sound like an over-invested fanboy. Go play your "real" mmo, with your "real" friends, and let people enjoy this game however they like. Why waste so much time shitting on something that is intended to be positive when it affects you in NO WAY. "

ROFL talk about somebody who doesn't read before posting. Get a good look folks at a real troll. Calling me an "over invested fanboy" just broke my "Give Ashit 'o' meter."  
 
 
@VicRattlehead said:

" why are you always shitting all over this game?  you said you canceled your sub why cant you just move on and not care? "

Good question. If you had a clue and read more, you would come to realize I've stated several times I liked certain parts of the game, and if the game got better I would re-subscribe. Now my goal is clearly to point out the flaws so they can improve upon them or else I'll never subscribe. The circle is complete. "

"Good question. If you had a clue and read more, you would come to realize I've stated several times I liked certain parts of the game, and if the game got better I would re-subscribe. Now my goal is clearly to point out the flaws so they can improve upon them or else I'll never subscribe. The circle is complete. "

No STO dev will come over here looking for wisdom on their project, yet you're battering at it as though you're getting paid an 80-hour/week wage for it. "

I don't understand why people keep hating on STO, I quite like it.
 Maybe beacuse it is my first MMO or that I am a Star Trek fan.

" I don't understand why people keep hating on STO, I quite like it.  Maybe beacuse it is my first MMO."

" Reading this letter made me feel like I was six again. The grown ups trying to con you into doing things you don't want to do with empty promises and A LOT of fluff.   All it did was make me feel even better about not buying STO. "

I was told this game is not an MMO. Okay I must not understand what an MMO is then.  The game does have a  very large enviroment to play in  (some might say massive), I have been playing with a lot of people in the same game (might call that Multiplayer) and I do have to have an internet connection to play (not a ubisoft one though). So I guess I am mistaken. 
 
On a another note.... COME ON MELBOURNE (Big A league game today.)