Star Trek Online at Ten Ton Hammer

After the initial launch time flood of box sales begins to dwindle, it's inevitable that a company will look for ways to boost sales. In the rush to show off the mad skills of their sales team though, a company can go too far in their offered incentives. Knocking $10 off the sales tag for a few days is fine, but tossing an extra 60 days of free playtime on top of that? That’s just insane.

Limited time double bonus! Buy Star Trek Online Collector's Edition before 9pm PST on Wed March 3rd and get FREE SHIPPING (* lower 48 states only) and extra 60 days free!

At a cursory glance, it sounds like a great idea. Offering new players an extra 60 days of free play (for a total of three months) to buy Star Trek Online before a predetermined hour on March 3rd? Who wouldn't jump at the chance to buy, especially if the person in question was already interested in the game? Absolutely brilliant!

Brilliant that is, right up until the point you realize that you just told the hundreds of thousands of players that supported you through beta and the first month of the game being live to go screw themselves. I have no doubt that no one at Cryptic (even the marketing gurus) had that intention when this plan was formulated. Unfortunately, as evidenced by the wild fire running rampant on the official forums right now, that aforementioned community certainly feels like they did.

What do you think? Is the community over reacting?