As said above, for me it's not about the money. It's about quality and variety of gameplay and content.
This was discussed. Also: you're complaining about timesinks later, so what the **** is your point? What are you afraid of in the timesinks? Do hobbies scare you or something?
It's a fact that pretty much all MMO's make liberal use of grind/grind based content gating/operant conditioning in order to artificially extend the lifespan of their content.
(Doesn't matter whether it's free to play or pay to play... the point is that grindy content is cheap to develop and keeps players busy.)
Ah, I see. You're a moron.
It is not in the interest of a gaming company to offer free content that is grindy on an MMO, because then you are using up their server cycles and
their money and they get nothing.
More to the point, the only really grindy content in this game I've encountered you have to force on yourself, with either STFs, crafting, or too much exploration. None of these things need be touched. (And honestly the STFs are getting disturbingly ungrindlike with the influx of new and ****ty players who **** things up. Never boring with a team full of rainbowguns.)
The only Cryptic game I do have personal experience with is City of Heroes and while that had several nifty ideas it was also chock full of grind and quite blatant repetition... so there's that.
I think what I originally asked, quite directly, is whether this is any different.
No, you asked whether it was different from other MMOs, not whether it was different from any specific one. So yeah. It's plenty different. It's got a sadly WoW feel on the ground, but at least it looks nicer and the art department wasn't composed of morons who think fighting enemies you can only see the feet and shins of is cool. In space terms, there's nothing like it out there. It's very pretty, it's nicely polished, different ships handle differently and perform different roles, there are some dud abilities (Boarding Party comes to mind) but even then manage to look cool if nothing else.
Plus, you know, Star Trek.
Sadly... you gave me a typical MMO fanboy answer that didn't really tell me anything.
Bull****. I and Mefuste both gave you clear, concise descriptions of the gameplay (it's like Star Trek), you were simply unable or unwilling to make correct use of them.
P.S.: Even the smartest men have been known to take the traditional MMO scam hook line and sinker... and to take quite a while/years to really figure it out. That can't be used as an argument.
If you willingly spent the time and it didn't cost you money, you still have only yourself to blame. Unless hobbies scare you. c.f. my commentary on your first statement.
P.P.S.: 1 month is hardly what would be considered a "long playtime" in MMO circles...
Ah, I see. You're still a moron.
I, and they, were commentating on the Single-Player content available to you if you play. Because though it's an MMO, you can treat it as an SP game with ease. (Unlike, say, EVE.)
It's very, very easy to run out of SP content in a week. Caitlin actually did it. She still hasn't joined a guild and she's rather down on the STF experience, and PVP is actually pretty hard to come by apparently. So you see, in your rush to condemn the MMO aspect of it, you stuck your head up your ass and failed to realize that this a multi-faceted game with aspects that are not massive or multiplayer, and those are arguably the best parts.
Since you hate MMOs with an unreasoning, fierce passion, I guess one stole your girlfriend or something, I offered you a commentary on the game as a single-player experience. You simply weren't smart enough to see that.
P.P.P.S.: So I don't just talk about negative examples: The one MMO style game that I did respect was Guildwars 1, to my knowledge, so far the only game in that genre that allowed you to enjoy 100% of it's content without ever *having* to spend a single minute on grind or repetition. The main premise of that game was that "player Skill should trump time spent playing - always" and I would love to see more MMO style games based on that premise... if STO was like this, I'd download it in a heartbeat... but unless you tell me differently, I'll assume it's just another crappy MMO that happily exploits it's players.
Well, it is, and you can, but this reflects you using it as a single-player game and delibrately not participating in team-based aspects. I suspect your Guild Wars example does the same.
(And of course there's EVE where you can scam your way to infinite wealth without much effort, but hey, you've never played that either I bet.)