Thirty years have passed since the camp histrionics of Star Trek: Nemesis, the last Star Trek film. Star Trek Online's lead designer Jack Emmert, who also worked on office favourites City of Heroes and Villains, warns that "friends have become enemies and enemies have become friends."
You captain a starship right from the start, but you're not technically a Captain in rank: that's an accolade you'll have to earn, along with bigger ships. When you do earn a new ship, you can customise its nacelles, stanchions and saucer.
The regular cast of your space-faring adventure will be your Bridge Crew, heading up Science, Navigation and Security.
Emmert equates these guys to pets in other MMORPGs: they follow your instructions, but you don't control them directly. Like you, they level up in rank, but you're the one who spends their attribute points, and chooses their skills and equipment.
The rest of your ship is populated by General Crew: expendable red-shirts. These guys are more like a resource: different races confer different bonuses to your ship at large, depending on their natural talents.
You control your ship directly; space combat involves issuing nerdsome orders like "Security to deck 5! Hull breach on deck 6! Divert power to main shields!" Boarding actions are a part of combat, presumably once your shields are down.
Initially there'll be two factions players can belong to: Starfleet or the Klingons. That selection will eventually expand, Emmert promises, to include Romulans and the Dominion. We can only imagine that Starfleet will be the overwhelmingly popular choice, so let's hope player-versus-player combat isn't numbers-dependent.
The choice of races isn't limited to human and Klingon, needless to say: not only can you be a Vulcan, Andorian (antennae), Tellarite (hideous hairy pigmen) or Ferengi (shell ears), you can even design your own race.
Assuming you go with the Star Trekkers themselves, your orders come from Starfleet Central Command, in the form of Tours of Duty: sequential missions that take you to worlds explored or unexplored. Emmert claims his development team have created "A system of infinite exploration. We will be creating new planets, solar systems, civilisations that you as players might be the first to ever see."
Once you arrive at a planet, you get to choose which crew members you want to have beam down with you, and then you're planetside. The surface environments look lovely, and combat here is fast-paced and cover-based.
Emmert gives a few tantalising examples of the game's "dynamic content": the Borg might invade a sector, and you're tasked with taking it back. "Or who knows, the Tholians could get a bit uppity." Exciting!
The idea of walking around your ship, then piloting it manually, getting into a fleet battle, then warping out to some unknown planet and beaming down - it's the bottled dreams of a million geeks. Now that one of the few studios who can accurately boast they've made a fun MMORPG are in charge, optimism seems only logical.
If we can boldy go where no player has gone before, we're sold.
I sincerly hope it is a subscription based, its a well known fact that free mmo's suck, just look at the top mmo's out there are all subscription based, because they get good suport and constant updates to keep the game fresh. I dont want possibly the only chance of seeing a ST mmo to be ruined because of whiners wanting it free.
If you cant afford £10 a month to play a game you'll love then i suggest you quit gaming or maybe stick to flash games or any other free junk thats available anywere on the net. Or get a job/better job.
What a sad and clueless comment that was. Not everyone can afford £120/year to play a game on top of the £40 box fee for each expansion. Some of us, for example, have rent and bills to pay. Subscription models are outdated and unnecessary these days - Guild Wars proved that. The only reason companies keep doing it is because they can. It's a great cash cow.
I've given up on MMOs altogether, not because of the fee but because auto-combat is dull and other than a re-skinning they're all pretty much the same.
What a sad and clueless comment that was. Not everyone can afford £120/year to play a game on top of the £40 box fee for each expansion. Some of us, for example, have rent and bills to pay. Subscription models are outdated and unnecessary these days - Guild Wars proved that. The only reason companies keep doing it is because they can. It's a great cash cow.
I've given up on MMOs altogether, not because of the fee but because auto-combat is dull and other than a re-skinning they're all pretty much the same.
If you cant afford £10 a month then dont spend £40 on the damn game then instead of whining you cant afford it and that you have bills to pay, i have to pay bills yet i can afford £10 a month, its just 1 less takeaway a month.
If they make it subscription free whos going to pay for the server upkeep, pay wages for those that upkeep the servers, whos going to pay people to fix the patches, etc... these are the things that subs provide.
Sigh. It looks quite promising indeed and I'm tempted...but then I am reminded of my reluctance to become entangled with subscription based MMOs. I liked everything I read in the article above; now if only it had been a single player game of massive proportions like BG2 but set in space.
I've been paying and playing 'Eve online' for four years now, and I truly believe a subscription based MMO is the ONLY way to go. But eves main game and updates, expansions are all included in the subscription fee. I would hope that star trek takes a leaf out of CCP's books and does the same. I dont think id be too happy paying a monthly sub AND paying extra for the game itself PLUS extra for any game expansions.
Honestly If u would rather play a game then go out.. are u possible a 40 yr old virgin? or maybe one of those guys that dress up as a star trek character? do you know the calling signs of the species? Man I dont even know the difference between this and battle star galactica
Did I just read some1 say a free mmo is better than a paid one? Then go on and name GW as an example to a great free mmo? Have u played GW and WoW and EQ2 to make a good judgment? Well I have and imo sub mmo are way better. Then again I am one of the select few who thinks EQ2 is better than WoW and also underated in the mmo genre. Lol
seriously ive played just about every type of subscription based mmo out there .. and i cannot wait for this .. if they had made SW galaxies better then id still be there as im a SW nut .. but startrek is 2nd best so to be able to fly around the universe and then beam down to a planet to kill stuff is going to be great CANNOT WAIT. and i hope they do make is subscription based so there are regular updates and expansions ill gladly pay for them .. and yes i play guild wars all the time its a good game but no where near as much scope as the subscription based games
Pay 2 play is by far the best format if you want 2 play a quality game for a long time without the servers shutting down due 2 lack of funding. And besides theres more then enough free mmos out there (although sci mmos are alittle thin onthe ground p2p or free).
Ive been a eve online player for the last year and half and i dont mind paying the monthly sub charge aslong as i get a quality game which will be still around 5 years from now. I do hope star trek online takes a leaf out of ccps book (eve) and doesnt charge for the disk or updates (eve gets atleast 2 major updates per year at no extra chare). Any other method of charging would damage the game imo, free 2 play would give us a sub standard game which wont be around in a couple of years time. Guildwars method where u only pay for the cd and updates isnt too bad but would damage the content of the game due to everything been instanced to keep server costs low. Micro transactions would be totally terrable and would leave a game where skill isnt the winning factor only how much cash u can pump into the game to buy all the best items.
Eve has a great system of been able to pay for the monthly subscribtion with ingame money but this works well mainly due 2 eve's rock solid ecomeny and might possible wreak other games if its ingame ecomeny isnt as good (eve has real life wall street traders playing like my friend and ccp even has a proffesional ecomanist on its pay roll)
Personally i hope star trek online has trail play so i can give i a look as it would have to be a really great game 2 pull me away from eve and the time ive invested into it, Although i really loved playing as a klingon captin in the old klingon academy game years back
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