Champions Online Free Weekend Clusterfudge

I've been wanting to play Champions Online so I can relive some of my more glorious pre-teen fantasies fighting evil as a costumed hero. But while the game looks pretty and all, all the complaints have largely kept me away.

I don't really follow the game, so it came as a pleasant surprise the past Thor's day when I noticed CO on my Steam games list with the note: Free Weekend. Hot damn, I thought to myself, but considering it is Halloween and I have family obligations and a thousand other distractions I decided to wait and see if I could scratch up a few extra hours on Sunday.

Well, coming back now to see how things are going looks like I dodged a massive frustration bullet - apparently few people are able to actually download the patch to experience the trial.

So what is the deal with Cryptic? It seems like a ball got dropped somewhere in the relatively short life of CO and nobody is willing to deal with it. I have no idea, but if I had to guess I would say it looks like they are throwing CO under the bus to focus on Star Trek Online. Of course, if CO is how they run a game why in the world would I bother with STO?