Continuation from last week’s 2010 Year of the Space MMO
STO or Star Trek Online has had a bit of torrid conception since its announcement in 2004. The original game developers, Perpetual Entertainment, went bust back in 2008 after which the mighty Cryptic Studios, creators of Champions Online, stepped in and bought the whole project lock stock and barrel. With the Cryptic team behind the project, things began to get moving once again and a renewed sense of enthusiasm and hope filtered down through the MMO community.
In a nut shell Star Trek Online takes place in the year 2409 during a period of intense warfare between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. In the game players get to choose their faction, choose a race and then they get to explore the Star Trek universe in a variety of different class ships. Not only do you get to customize your ships and progress up the rankings, but you also get to choose your bridge crew, go on 3rd person perspective away missions and engage with enemies and scenarios throughout the galaxy.
Although the graphics looks a bit old and clunky, the gameplay looks measured, but intense. Doing a u-turn with a starship whilst battling three Klingon warbirds is not an easy task, and the gameplay clearly reflects that – definitely no circle strafing in this game. Cryptic have tried to stay true to the Trek fanbase so it’s bound to be a winner, unless the engine is dramatically bad. Possibly the best thing about the game so far is its open beta style release and the galaxy generator Cryptic have designed to inject and develop new content.
Another brave move that Cryptic are attempting to introduce is the differing styles of leveling between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. As you can imagine peace, exploration and rescue missions are completely in character with Federation faction, but not so much with the Klingon Empire. Instead, as a Klingon you get to kill and collect your way through the universe – I suspect that honour and family/house missions will also be a main feature of Klingon progression. Of course this doesn’t mean that the Federation is just going to be a group of flower wearing peace-loving beatniks, in-fact far from it; Federation progression will have the same amount of killing and pew-pew as the Klingon faction, just in a slightly different format.
Whether it will be a success remains to be seen. Star Trek online goes live for open beta on the 5th Feb. Live long and prosper…
*Update*
A few things have come to my attention this weekend. Firstly a large number of pre-orders provide players with access to the last few weeks of beta. This beta supposedly goes live on the 12th Jan, pre-order outlets have sent out key codes this weekend and it’s now just a matter of waiting for Cryptic to release the beta download client.
Secondly, it appears that there will be no EU specific server. Instead, EU players will be forced to play through the US servers located on the Eastern seaboard. There are rumours flying around the forums that there is only going to be one server. This server I presume will have several realms and zones might even be instanced depending upon the amount of players – bad times ?
Thirdly, the issue of faction populations has started to trouble me. I’m starting to wonder just how balanced it’s going to be. I can see the majority of people going Federation and that could turn the universe into an extremely boring ghost-land.
[...] Star Trek Online [...]