Star Trek: Online

[WadeFKnight 0]

So the head start for those of us who pre-ordered the game kicked off today at 1:00, and I waited eagerly for the servers to come up. After about half an hour of waiting in line while all the other eager trekkies tried to log on, I finally got myself into the game and made a character. I ended up making a rather redneck looking Trill, with a handlebar mustache and spiky greased up hair, and was immediately thrown into a heated battle with the Borg.

 

I'll have to cover a few points here, in order to keep this somewhat organized, and so I'll start with one of the most important to me: canon.

 

I was a bit concerned while I sat, downloading the game, pondering how much Cryptic Studios had managed to slaughter the canon. Of course, some of you had heard that there was an ongoing war with the Klingons, but aside from that not much of the story was laid out to those who hadn't played the game. I found myself imagining the entire state of the galaxy being completely skewed, such as Ferengi's being vicious warriors while the Nausicans served Mai-Tai's on Risa. I was quite pleased to find that this wasn't the case. Ferengi are weasley traders, roaming the galaxy selling guns and such, Orion's are green and can often be found pirating mining stations or freighters, and the world is pretty much as it should be. What kind of did bother me was the major.. "additions" they made to the story, such as the Romulan home world being annihilated in some massive supernova, and the Klingons deciding to wage all out war on the Gorn and there-soon-after the Federation. I mean, I know they had to create some huge conflict to make PvP justifiable, but come on! Did you have to kill the Romulans? I wanted to fly a d'Deridex!

 

Which leads me to my next topic, commanding your ship. Well, technically I'm going to talk about gameplay, but commanding your ship is the real meat of this game. The combat is intuitive and challenging, and you'll find yourself redirecting power to shields and weapons and engines all through the fight as you battle Klingon Birds of Prey and Orion pirate ships. Now when I say combat is challenging, I mean it has one hell of a learning curve. There are about a thousand different variables that go into your battles that can seem almost overwhelming, even to a hardcore gamer such as myself. You have to position your ship so that your strongest shields are towards the enemy while also baring down on your opponent's weaker side, all while mashing buttons and keeping on eye on your power levels and shield stability. And if you bite off more than you can chew? Nope, you can't just warp yourself out of harms way, you take the beating and then you respawn. Luckily, the game's death system is rather forgiving, and you can get yourself right back into the fight just ten seconds after the matter/antimatter containment in your warp core fails and your ship is reduced to celestial flotsam. Once you get the hang of piloting your ship, however, combat is extremely interesting and quite fun, especially when you and about twenty other friendly star ships take on Klingon fleet of 100 warships.

 

But sitting on your bridge ordering phaser fire and shield power redirection isn't all there is to it. Every once and awhile you'll get yourself a mission that involves assembling an away team and beaming down to the surface of a planet. This is where things start getting a little more tedious. Ground combat feels more or less like an afterthought than a real gameplay mechanic. Planet/Starbase environments are rather bland, and combat is really just a matter of click and press the 1 and 2 keys on your keyboard repeatedly until your foe meets his untimely disintegration. A little bit of strategy is added by the flanking bonus, which allows you sneak behind your opponents and shoot them in the back to deal bonus damage, a tactic the Klingons probably find quite revolting. Occasionally, however you'll find yourself beaming down to a planet to investigate some strange readings, or missing scientists who probably just forgot to mention in their logs that they were headed for Risa for some R&R. These were the types of missions that I was really looking forward to, and subsequently the missions by which I was most disappointed. Scanning is just a matter of walking up to some sparkly thing and pressing a button, and the information you receive is usually something generic, or results in you getting some random artifact that up to this point I haven't found any use for. On top of that, the game doesn't really give you any sort of indication of what you're looking for, so you end up running around in circles in some featureless cave with an abundance of bio-luminescent fungi until you finally stumble upon what you're looking for.

 

But really, it all comes down to one thing: value. A video game is an investment, just like buying a car, a house, or t-shirts bearing humorous science stuff from ThinkGeek.com. When you open your wallet, you want to make sure that what you're shelling out your hard earned greenbacks for is going to bring you lots of long-lived happiness and joy. While Star Trek: Online is a fun game that lets to fly around and shoot phasers at things whilst playing as your favorite Roddenberry race, I honestly have to say STO is not worth the 75 greenbacks your going to take out of your gas budget or your kid's college fund. That's 75 dollars, for the game and two months of delicious photon torpedo spreads. But if you're really feeling like a bit of a splurge, you can buy the lifetime membership package for $239. Now some of you may remember an old MMORPG before the days of World of Warcraft called Earth and Beyond. E&B was much the same game as STO, without the major Franchise rights. After about a year and a half of the servers being up, the game was canceled and many die-hard Earth and Beyond fans went away cold and alone back into the real world. Now some of you who know me know that I have a bit of a cynical approach towards things, but what you might mistake for cynicism is actually realism. And my realistic projection of Star Trek: Online's future is that it is destined to fail, much like Earth and Beyond, and the Dune MMO, and just about any other MMO that isn't Everquest or World of Warcraft.

 

So, my final verdict as of now is that while STO is fun (and possibly very addicting) it's not a sound investment, especially for those of you starting the new semester and who haven't purchased your text books yet. But, I will say this, if you have the extra money to throw around by all means, go pick it up and try out the free trial. If you find you don't like it, you can always sell it to the kid next door who never does his homework. And let me just say Star Trek: Online is no match for the immersiveness of STSF, and is a very poor substitute.

 

If any of you out there are already playing the game, or do plan on getting it, come find me! I'll start up a fleet, and we can go find ourselves some smelly Klingons to wipe out. My in game name is Turris@UNSanctionedHero.

Edited January 30, 2010 by WadeFKnight

[AndrewLyon 0]

After being burned by Legacy and a few other Trek titles, it's hard to sell me on yet another one.

[Crash Calestorm 0]

I'm opting out on this Trek incarnation in favor of Mass Effect 2...and I won't have to sell my first born in order to play ME2 and keep up with any ongoing online server fees.

 

While I'd love to see a Star Trek MMO blow the gaming world out of the water, I agree that STO isn't WoW or Evercrack: these MMO's are indeed the proverbial lightning in a bottle of the online gaming world.

 

For those of you who do grab a copy of STO, y'all have fun warping about the galaxy.

[Leila Kalomi 0]

75 dollars isn't worth it to me. I'm waiting for Stargate Worlds to come out so I can see the reviews on that.