Acceptable rate of information and hype?

A lot of people automatically assume that MMO's are money printing machines ever since World of Warcraft came along. Sadly this isn't the case and in reality World of Warcraft is probably the only MMO that comes close to being a money printer.

Obviously the first thing that comes to mind when you wonder why an MMO isn't successful is that the game itself is crap which is true probably 7 or 8 times out of 10, but there is one other thing is rarely looked at. Hype and information flow.

I'm using Star Trek Online and Cryptic Studios as my example of the negative side here but it has to be noted that they have listened to the community and are getting better on this but not quite there just yet.

MMO's generally have quite a long development life due to the size of them so the time from when they announced to when they are actually released is a long time. The only way to keep people interested during the development cycle is to release information which usually show up online in the form of interviews, screenshots and trailers.

What is the acceptable rate of new information? Cryptic Studios I would class as being on the bad side as I said earlier because we don't get a lot of new information about their games. Star Trek Online has been in their hands since January 2008, they announced they were working on the game with a trailer in August and since then they have released roughly 20 screenshots and a few interviews and a trailer showing off the character creator. 1 year and 7 months into development and that's all they have to show.

You might think that I might be being a little harsh but unfortunately this is the norm for Cryptic. Champions Online is to be released in the next few months and they don't have many screenshots or trailers for that either.

I think the main problem is a lot of companies believe that since its a good game in their eyes or because its already a famous franchise that they might not need as much publicity as other companies. This isn't true at all.

I've been a Trekkie since I was about 5 years old, played pretty much all the Star Trek games I could get my hands on and even I'm starting to lose faith in STO. I'm an operator in the official #STO IRC channel and I notice it a lot there too. People are sick of talking about the same information we've pretty much known since the game was announced. One thing would change that.

A gameplay trailer showing off the latest build of the game would boost my interest in STO and would probably give us another 2-3 months worth of debating, arguing, killing each other over which would keep the community happy.

I think for an MMO to be successful a gameplay trailer showing something new needs to be shown 2-3 months at a time with screenshots and interviews filling the gaps between them. Cryptic have been great by having dev chats in the IRC channel and the OCR's do chat every once in a while but as nice as that is, solid visual information and hype is what is needed to keep a game alive while its being developed.

Do you agree with me? Think I've left something out or just think I'm full of crap? Leave a comment to let me know!