Well. I just skimmed over the latest "Ask Cryptic" for May 2011...and two questions, and their answers from Cryptic, caught my eye.

The Cryptic representative answering the questions is Mr. Dan Stahl. The link to "Ask Cryptic May 2011" is here: http://www.startrekonline.com/node/2424

Here are the two questions:

The way I sort of interpret this is that progress (i.e. new ships, etc) for the KDF faction is directly tied to the KDF faction population....and the other thing I get out of this is that, as has been rumored in some other threads and which has always been sort of dismissed in the past is that there may well be a main plot element that will bring the KDF and Federation factions back together in Alliance.

I don't mean to put words in anybody's mouth...but there it is in print.

Ah well. Perhaps I should not have expected anything less. I guess that eventually we will indeed find out. Time will tell.....

Actually, the tone of the messages from Cryptic have been reflecting this for awhile now. They are careful to assure us we are important, but at the same time you can't fault them for investing their development resources in areas of the game where the most players will benefit. The irony here is that if they had delivered a more functional faction at launch, the population would enjoy a far larger number of players than it does today.

However, I do not believe the KDF faction would have ever been able to field equal numbers, even if the faction was perfect at launch. All multi-faction Trek games have always had Federation players outnumbering the other factions. If you think about the focus of the series, this makes sense anyway since we spent the most time with the Federation in all the series and the story was originally intended to be a non-threatening platform for the exploration of current societal values.

I can't help that reading that left a sour taste in my mouth as a Klingon player primarly. Even the open PVP zone of Ker'rat has been seeing a Rise in Federation players, but a lacking of Klingons in the zone.

Of course there are other reasons for Ker'rat, how ever regarding the statement, I don't know if I'm satasified that they are going to "keep an eye" on the population numbers and use that to determine if the KDF gets anything new in the future. You'd think that maybe the KDF might get more people if they add more tools and options to the KDF side beyond this new Tutorial and lower level mission arcs.

I unfortunatley see a long term goal of them folding us back into the federation, once again bound to the constrictions of the prime directive and cliche federation gameplay.

In another year instead of unique faction specific content we will all be at the mercy of cannon nazis and forced to click through dialogue trees of trite moral dillemas and complete ethical mind numbing boredom.

I could be wrong but it feels like the vocal federation players are crying for an end to the war and to impose their version of startrek on the rest of us, while the people that want to play Klingons are going to have to find somewhere else to do it.

We just don't have the population to justify our own faction anymore, and that bloc of fed players that hates the war, hates seeing Klingons asking for content and hates anything in star trek that isn't peace and morality overcoming everything is going to keep pushing for us to get folded into one faction.

Then they will promptly all start flying KDF carriers.

The problem I see with this is that they tie it to the KDF population. And the KDF population will likely keep dwindling so long as they ignore the KDF population, and they will ignore the KDF population more if it dwindles, on and on and on. The issue here isn't that the KDF doesn't have a strong player base but that the KDF faction doesn't have a strong base for which to mount a player base.

It's a catch 22 no doubt.

I swear if they fold us into the federation though i am going to start a resistance sabotage movement that will make the maquis look like toddlers with squirt guns.