Warning: A true Star Trek fan and avid World of Warcraft player wrote this.
Dedicated Trekkies expect disappointment. The cancellation of the original series in 1969, the disappointing Next Generation movies, a good part of the Deep Space Nine finale, many aspects of Voyager (Janeway feigning tears in half her scenes), every time someone says that First Contact is the best Star Trek movie — we’ve been through plenty.
And that includes good and bad Star Trek games, of course, but our hopes for Star Trek Online were understandably high. Most Trek fans liked the last movie, but were left to wonder: What happened to the real Star Trek universe? Star Trek Online attempts to answer that question.
Could developer Cryptic Studios do the nigh-impossible — deliver a true Star Trek experience? No doubt they’ve got the graphics department covered; we all know Cryptic has the skill and technology for a top-notch-looking game. But can they make it fun, anywhere near as engaging as that other game by Blizzard, and keep long-time fans happy?
Every player’s ship looks the same, except for those lucky bastards that had $30 more to spend on the Special Edition and are flying around in a Constitution-class Enterprise and wearing their Next Gen and Deep Space Nine uniforms. Not fair. All the available upgrades for your vessel are way too expensive for someone just starting, so every ship looks pretty similar, and away missions don’t give you anything worthwhile early on.
People in STO are amazingly friendly. Ask a question about anything and an answer quickly appears in the message feed. The number of character-creation options are absolutely incredible as well (I may not have the old-series uniform, but at least Cryptic gives me the option to wear a blue-and-gray DS9/Next Generation movie uniform). All of the 30-years-after-Nemesis uniforms (and it has a lot of these) are very cool, and the changes you can make to your character’s appearance are astounding. Along with the popular and well-known races, you can also choose to be a “Neelix,” a total-mystery alien race. Nice touch.
My two days of playing (maybe four to five hours a day) involved taking easy missions that offered little-to-no loot, fixing satellite dishes on the ground and killing enemies in space, just me and my “Number One.” I also picked up a ton of “Biological Samples” and “Radiation Samples” and other seemingly worthless things that won’t currently help me upgrade my personnel, my skills, or my ship, the U.S.S. Fontana.
I thought this game might be a glossy walkthrough of something that was visually Star Trek but little else, that it wouldn’t have gameplay that someone who plays World of Warcraft could recognize or truly adapt to. WoW relies on a simple party dynamic: tank, healer, and damage-per-second — but I had serious doubts that it could translate well to Star Trek, and that Cryptic Studios could be the ones to do it. I may have been wrong.
I’m not 100 percent sold yet — it’s too early in the relationship for that. Let’s just say that the potential for something truly amazing is here. After a couple of days of this, I fought in my first fleet battle (a large-scale space battle that you could never win solo). I found myself not exactly excited about the constant “all weapons” clicking, but I did care about whether I could get through the fight to get the mission bonus and move on to something better. To get past some of it takes real skill and a little teamwork, which is cool. Then I found the excellent Starbase 24 mission — a fleet battle accompanied by an away mission that really put the team dynamic to the test.
But first, my command crew is also growing; being a big Star Trek fan (have we established that yet?), I decided to go against the norm when it came to personnel choices. I always found Dr. Reyga, a Ferengi scientist from the Season 6 Next Gen episode “Suspicions,” fascinating. On a world where profit almost always wins out no matter what, this man went against tradition and culture and followed a path of science. I also love Mackenzie Calhoun and the crew of the U.S.S Excalibur of the New Frontier books (what can I say, I like misfits and underdogs). Therefore, I modeled my crew accordingly: a Bolian engineer (tech and shield repair/dps), a Bajoran security officer (tank/burst damage), and a Klingon Science Officer (healer/dps). I decided to be a Vulcan tactical officer (with a Mirror Universe goatee, of course) — and I was almost immediately promoted to Captain.
The classes take examination, but they’re all good. The best part for someone who likes to play solo is that your NPC away team provides great support. They move quickly, respond to attacks, use short- and long-range weapons, heal you when you need health, and genuinely watch your back. That one accomplishment almost makes the game. Obviously, if I do want to hook up with real-life people or friends, I can create my own landing party.
I have also earned a few abilities: the Vulcan Nerve Pinch, Photon Grenade (a somewhat weak grenade that can cause a knockdown and never runs out — who wants to bet that gets nerfed soon?), and Sniper Shot, which inflicts heavy damage and will very awesomely vaporize an enemy when he’s vulnerable. Ground combat has buffing, rezzing, area-of-effect attacks, critical hits — everything. It wasn’t until that Starbase 24 mission, where I fought an enemy that was difficult but vulnerable, that I truly found myself enjoying this game. It was here that I received my first really decent loot. I could upgrade my ship and maybe add a couple of nacelles. Cool.
So the WoW fan in me is cautiously optimistic, while the Star Trek fan revels in the universe. The time-portal known as the Guardian of Forever from TOS episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” is here. So is the life-consuming Crystalline Entity first introduced in the Next Gen episode “Datalore.” You can visit Deep Space Nine and walk its famous promenade. Q will show up at some point. The Borg are back and are acting strangely. I haven’t even tried a Klingon yet, and it looks like a Klingon Targ Handler might be the STO version of a WoW Warlock/Hunter class.
Nausicaans, Andorians, what’s left of the Romulans and Remans: The list of possible characters and locations you can meet and visit seems endless. After five years of orcs and goblins, mages and warriors, professions and fantasy, this game has a refreshingly solid sci-fi MMO foundation. The question is, can Cryptic build upon it, and can it survive?
The good and bad news is that these types of games have a capability to update indefinitely. The core gameplay and the user interface will most likely change dramatically over the life of the game. Ultima Online, EverQuest, Final Fantasy 11, and WOW grew into amazing, rich universes. The games changed over the years, of course, but they all ended up as playable over the long haul. Titles like Star Wars Galaxies and countless others squandered their source material and are either dying a slow death or are dead.
I am so happy that STO has a chance to be a solid game. It could’ve been so much worse. STO has plenty of areas that need improvement, but my god, it’s a game, not a no-depth tour. That’s something to be thankful for. Good luck, Cryptic. You’ve got me for the time being. Here’s hoping you can find that happy medium of diehards like me and people looking for a solid space-themed MMO. I think they’ve got a shot.