Supermallet

Despite being a longtime opponent of MMO's, I've decided to give Star Trek Online a chance. The game takes place about 30 years after Nemesis. While the game is not bringing in characters/ships from the Abrams film, it does recognize the events that took place in the Prime Timeline (the destruction of Romulus, the disappearance of Spock). At this point, the Klingon Empire has once again become expansionist, forcing a conflict with the Federation. Due to the destruction of their homeworld and a civil war with Remus, the Romulan Empire is now allies with the Federation, as are the Caradassians after the Dominion War.

You start in the Federation for tutorial missions, and then you can choose to remain in the Federation or roll a new character (of similar rank/experience to yours) in the Klingon empire. You start as an Ensign for the tutorial missions, then are promoted to Lieutenant once you get into the main gameplay. Each player gets to control their own ship, so each player is a captain, even if they haven't yet reached that rank. You can get all the way to the rank of Admiral. You can customize your ships (you get access to more powerful ships as you gain experience and rank), and there are three different types: Cruisers (all forms of the Enterprise fall into this category), Science Vessels, and Escorts (a la The Defiant). The Klingons get their own class of ships, of course.

The Federation gameplay features both PvE and PvP. PvE missions tend to take the form of exploration missions, while PvP is against Klingons in the neutral zone. Klingon gameplay revolves around PvP, both against the Federation or between different Klingon houses.

There are several different versions of the game available. The basic game costs $50, and comes with no extra content. There's a Collector's Edition that runs for $80 and comes with both in-game and physical content (including Deep Space Nine uniforms), and a digital deluxe edition available from several online retailers (including Direct2Drive and Steam) that is $60 and includes a bevy of in-game content (in my mind, the best bang for the buck). Different retailers are offering different pre-order bonuses as well, including the TOS NCC-1701 as a playable ship and a reclaimed Borg to act as a bridge officer. I pre-ordered the digital deluxe edition from Direct2Drive, which came with a pre-order bonus of a special shield for your character.

The website is here: http://www.startrekonline.com/

A video about starship battles:

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Anyone else picking this up?

chuckd21

I'm a total non-MMO person too, but I am strangely compelled to get this. Still debating. I might be swayed if and when I see the specs. If it'll play on my laptop, I can play it at work, which will lean me heavily towards yes.

mhg83

Is this coming out for ps3 or xbox 360 in the near future? This and Old Republic both look awesome.

Boba Fett

I heard at least a 360 version was in the works and has been for a few years.

Too bad they didn't make you fight from a bridge view and people in your party would be responsible for various actions.

Supermallet

They do have a bridge view and who you put in which station does have an effect on how your ship runs. You can get ship upgrades, which affects your ship in general, and then you have multiple stations (Cruisers are centered around engineering stations, Science Vessels around science stations, and Escorts around tactical), and you can slot bridge crew into them. Each crew member also has their own skills and specialities, and interact with the ship in different ways, giving you different boosts and abilities.

Edit: I'm not sure you can use the bridge view during a battle, though.

buckee1

The platform trek games seemed to have sucked pretty hard IMO but, I'd be willing to give this one a chance on PS3 or the 360. Can't see myself playing this otherwise.

CaptStormy

In Feb/March I hope to get a new PC just so I can play this game.

Kunane954

xmiyux

I really hate the idea of paying monthly for MMOs and i know i would totally become obsessed with that style of gameplay.

That being said, this game has a siren call and i am really trying to not cave.

Eric D.

I've never been interested in a MMO before, but the monthly fees kill this for me as well. Hopefully a decent version of it will come to the 360.

Supermallet

Even if it comes out on a console, it will still have monthly fees. Final Fantasy XI had (has?) monthly fees on the 360.

flashburn

Meh, I played the Beta for about an hour or so, enough to play through most of the tutorial. Granted, I've played just about every MMO in existence and I'm not a huge Star Trek fan (but I have seen most of the movies), but I thought it was very average.

It's from the same company that makes City of Heroes/Villians and Champions Online and when playing your character, it plays almost exactly the same as Champions Online and is definitely using the same engine. I was most looking forward to the Ship combat/exploration as I am a fan of Eve Online, but wow, again, very similar to Champions Online. Everything is highly instanced and segmented. Also a 2D Map for exploring space? Are they serious? I've never played a Space game where Space itself felt so small. Granted I wasn't expecting Eve levels of complexity in its Space exploration, but there really didn't even seem to be any exploration what so ever.

Anyway, I didn't really give it a long enough chance to really review it, but personally there wasn't enough there for me to bother with any further. Just my opinion, and I'm sure there will be people that don't feel the same way.

Travis McClain

To date, the only Star Trek video game I've ever played and truly enjoyed was the 25th Anniversary game, which I had for the NES and Gameboy. I felt that did a pretty good job of capturing the original series, and while the graphics weren't overwhelming by any stretch, I thought the play structure was pretty fun. This game interests me, but not enough that I think I'll buy into it.

Wolf359

This is what worries me. I tried Champions and really disliked it. EVERY single person having their own starship has got to be weird. I can just imagine how ridiculous and crowded space looks with several hundred ships sitting around.

Chew

You would think somebody named "Wolf359" would know exactly what a large number of ships in one location would look like.

Wolf359

^^

lordwow

I played about 5 hours of the beta. It was... more than enough.

chuckd21

I need a beta key.

Supermallet

I've been playing the beta. It's very buggy, but the good news is that Cryptic is responding quickly with patches, so hopefully it will get smoothed out quickly. When it's working well it plays fairly decently, I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

gimmepilotwings

Gold should be enough. No way I pick up this game and pay the monthly fees.

Tracer Bullet

MMOs are different. You're talking about tens of thousands of people playing on multiple servers simultaneously in a persistent world. Plus, the servers are maintained by the game developer.

flashburn

Not to mention they are constantly improving/evolving games. Someone needs to pay for that kind of development.

lordwow

As I stated before (while I was still under NDA... whoops), I didn't find it all that enjoyable. A lot of space was crowded, it was often difficult to find objectives in some places, and the 2D planet map is among the most absurd things I've ever seen.

I was hoping for more of a bridge commander experience, but they decided everyone wanted to be the captain, I think it wasn't the best idea still.

dgc

More beta keys:

http://www.mmorpg.com/giveaways.cfm/...-Giveaway.html

xmiyux

Thanks! I snagged one. I am excited to at least give this a trial run.

CaptStormy

OK I started the Online Beta. Is it me or does the game feel like it can get repetitve kinda fast. I understand it is Beta but I was curious what other people's thoughts were.