It is time to catch up on the latest from the Star Trek Online MMORPG. First up, Cryptic have finally updated their online "Path to 2409" back story. We also have a video showing off difficulty settings, a video demo of a mission, and more, including asking Cryptic if they are desperate.
Path to 2409 completed
The setting for Star Trek Online is the year 2409, thirty years after Star Trek Nemesis (and twenty-two years after the destruction of Romulus in 2009’s Star Trek). Before the release of the game, Cryptic posted a number of ‘yearly’ log entries to tell the story, but left the story only half full, or at least online. A complete timeline is in the STO tie-in novel "Needs of the Many" and now a full interactive version is available online. CLICK TO CHECK IT OUT.
Path to 2409 interactive timeline at official site
Season One Update Two Live + Difficulty Slider video
Over the weekend Cryptic rolled out their "Season One: Update Two", which added accolades, squad support and more. In addition Cryptic released a video showing off the difficulty setting, which was added in Season One: Update One in May.
Ask Cryptic – Desperate Gamemakers?
Today there is also a new Ask Cryptic, which covers a lot of ground including upcoming features, ships, mini-games, and more. But one player asked a bit of a biting question about Cryptic's recent "welcome back" promotion aimed at bringing back players who dropped the game:
Q: chrystofer: Why are you offering welcome back promos, so early, do you think this makes Star Trek Online seem desperate?
A: No, we don’t think so. We’ve made tons of change and additions to the game since launch. All the STFs, Injury System, Difficulty Slider, Accolade system, tons more as well. These were all made based on feedback and requests from the community and players of the game. We don’t think that letting people know about the changes and trying to get those who might’ve left because we didn’t have a certain feature is desperate. Seem like good business sense. : ).
STOked demo mission and talk user generated content
In the latest episode of the STOked video podcast, the boys do a live demo of the Kuvah’Magh mission. They also brainstorm ideas for user-generated content (an expected future feature for STO).
Free Demo
If you want to give Star Trek Online a go without buying it, you can play a demo of the game for an unlimited amount of time (with some restrictions) and includes the “Stranded in Space” mission. More info and demo download at startrekonline.com/demo
Start Playing
If you want to get into the 25th century and play Star Trek Online it is available at Amazon discounted currently for less than $28 (or $48 for the collectors edition), and that includes a one month subscription.
The difficulty settings should be labeled something like: Pakled brainteaser, Defeat the Ferengi at Dabo, Repel Borg invasion
I regret buying this product.
Best game I have ever played. A must for any star trek fan. Just remember if you leave food in your inventory with tribbles, then the food will mysteriously dissapear and you’ll suddenly have more tribbles.
#3 Mysteriously? :P
Just beam them onto the Klingon ship where they will be no tribble at all!
I love playing this game, among a few others. Sure it can be glitchy and needs tweaking often, but what MMO doesn’t. That’s just part of the game playing journey. To seek out new anomlies and rare ship components, to purchase new micro-loots I may never get to use. To bodly wear a uniform color combo garish enough to invoke facepalm emotes at the shipyard. Ahhh, STO I do love thee.
I definitely love this game, but there’s always room for improvement. Yes, all the additions have made a world of difference in gameplay. However, the one thing I want to see modified is the ranking system. First, it’s way too easy to max out your rank at Read Admiral 5 – how about awarding fewer points per mission as you climb in rank? Second, I suggest re-doing the ranks to the following: Ensign-Lieutenant-Lt.Commander-Commander-Captain-COMMODORE-Rear Admiral-Vice Admiral-Admiral. It’s good to read that ranks will soon include Vice Admiral, but I wouldn’t mind getting “demoted” to Commodore5 if it means more gameplay.
I went back for the free weekend, and the game was less satisfying than before. I spent even more time with glitchy missions (something that wasn’t a problem before) and generally just not enjoying the game.
It’s not bad, it’s just not very good…yet. Once they’ve realized the Trek universe more fully and made missions less cookie cutter, it might be classic. For now, it’s not worth a subscription.
For now…
I took the time (2 1/2 days – ridiculous!) to download the demo. After I logged on, I trugged through about an hour of Star Trek Online. I played through the missions. I found the missions predictable and uneventful. Kill him, move on. Kill him, move on.
I even tried to fly my ship into the atmosphere (ha ha!) and “banged” up against it (wha?!). I did the same thing with the space station and my starship bounced like a basketball off it (ha ha!). The realism wasn’t there for me. At least have my ship take on heavy damage or explode or something. In the end, I had spent 2 1/2 days downloading what took me an hour to trudge through. I promptly uninstalled it, thankful that I didn’t shell out $50 or more for it. Moving on.
STO suffers from the same problem that ALL Trek games suffer: video games are good at combat and strategy, which can be computed relatively easily. Star Trek, however, is about exploration, mystery, and character, which are all either extremely difficult or completely and eternally impossible to compute on a Turing machine. A great Trek game would require every mission to be heavily scripted, with a huge amount of branching dialogue, options, and stories, and would probably require active roleplayers in every instance. Totally impractical.
This, incidentally, is why all the best Trek games were made in the early 1990’s: at that point, exciting combat was not yet fantabulously easy to simulate on a computer, and so it cost about the same to make a great Trek adventure game as it did to make a great Star Wars combat game. We got gifts like 25th Anniversary and Borg on the PC, and somewhat less excellent offerings like Echoes From The Past on the Genesis.
I played ST:O’s demo (it took 3 days to download! INSANE! Give us a torrent, Cryptic!). It was as good as I think it can be. They gave us the feeling of a Trek universe. There were some cool sets. Good use of the Trek combat setpieces. Decent MMO mechanics. In particular, the playerbase I encountered was far classier than the folks I’ve seen on WoW or even EVE Online. But STO is still all about the shooting and the exploding, and it has to be, because that’s what computers are good at, so it will NEVER feel like Star Trek.
Sigh.
On the bright side, online RPG’s like the ones at http://www.bravofleet.com or http://www.ussexcelsior.com are much less graphics-heavy, but far more involved, Trek-like interactive experiences than anything we’ve seen in Trek video games, ever. They have their own deficiencies, but they are often very fun.
I spent 30+ hours on tuis game and found it enjoyable. I’m not in to MMOs at all but this was very entertaining considering the universe it is set in. There are some flaws but I really appreciate the attention to detail that was put in to the game. It’s filled with so many references to the shows and books even.
I wish I had the dedication to stick with it for a couple years but there are so many games and I have to budget what little game time I have wisely… especially with the new Fallout coming in the fall. Eventually I may renew and go again but maybe not. Either way I’ve got my money’s worth already.
For those of you on the fence, I know how you feel but just go for it. If you can’t find it used, then go with amazon. 30 bucks plus 12 bucks or whatever for a 1 month subscription plus the extra free month that it comes with is not a bad deal for what you get. Most newer pc games are $50 anyway and how many of those do you play longer than 2 months anyway?
Here’s hoping the USS Xander’s Fury 2 will fly again.
I’m at the maximum level and have done all the missions, what is there left to do? it’s just dull now
No one here is follow Star trek excalibur?Its currently being made by a couple of talented fans. They are taking what they learn from modding in bridge commander and building a game engine from ground up.
Just look at the star ships
http://www.stexcalibur.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=14&Itemid=31
I love the site, love the game and love the Trek!
This game had so much potential pre-launch and has even more now we’re up and running… i can only imagine what the game will look like in years to come… perhaps we’ll be running around firing our phasers in something like a holodeck? probably not, but the more ‘trek’ this game feels the better.
llap
see you out there…!
Downloaded the demo, played the tutorial, was bored by the Borg action, surprised by the horrible graphic and low quality models and textures. Played for one hour, deinstalled it and thanked God that I did not waste a single $$$ on this crap.
I love Star Trek Online im a lifetime subscriber and dont regret it for a second. I spend a ton of my spare time playing this game. I even run a large fleet in the game “Starfleet’s Elite” that makes the game alot more fun. I cant wait to see whats to come for STO.
I think someone like Bioware should make an ST RPG ala Mass Effect or Dragon Age for XBOX and PS3.
Focus on story, character development and exploration and you’ll have a true ST game!
STO is just another MMO game that doesn’t stand out. Pass.
The 1.2 patch has glammed up the game and the amount of time killing mobs has been reduced, but it’s still the same repetitive space & ground combat.
The game was interesting for a month or two. But I grew bored and stop my sub. I’ll give it six months or so and go back and see what it is like.
This game is so true to the Star Trek universe — it’s as if you’re a part of the series! Like the episode where Kirk encountered multiple fleets of Klingons flying unawares in a group just above the planet surface, and then BLAM-O!! ..attacks without so much as a how-ya-do. Or when Pickard and his team on the Enterprise-E bulldozed through dozens of mindless Borg, concerned only with picking up the mess later. Or when Janeway and her intrepid crew encountered a fleet of Nausicans flying unawares in a group just above the planet surface, and then… can anyone remind me which episode that was??
Just like any new Star Trek series That was released, I believe the game needs to find its way and we need to give it time. It is a good game, but it does lack many things that I believe will eventually make this game fantastic. I am a lifetime subscriber and love that I can go back anytime and play. With Season 2 coming out next month and more diplomacy episodes planned, I think this will come more and more into its own. It is unfortunate it couldn’t be fantastic out of the gate, but I have confidence it will improve and become better.
13,
I’ve been following Excalibur since its inception. It really is so much better than anything any design studio could ever dream of. Cryptic can bite their specularly highlighted, shadowing, 2048×2048 asses.
Though I did play STO during the Beta and found it fairly enjoyable. I just don’t have the cash to keep playing it.
Excalibur will not the socks off of any previous game. And we now know, thanks to Mythbusters, that knocking socks off is, in fact, possible. It just takes 1000 times the force of a boxer to do it.
Cryptic is an MMO mill; it is their stated business practice to churn out new MMOs quickly in order to sell boxes and make their cash that way. I regret not doing my research before buying STO, because even at a casual pace I managed to actually finish the game inside of three weeks.
STO has some bright spots, and you can tell that there are people who worked on the game that do love Star Trek, but with the way Cryptic operates this game never really had a chance at delivering on it’s promises. For one thing, the game is so heavily instanced you never even really feel like you’re crusing around the Star Trek universe.
Overall I emplore anyone considering buying this game to avoid it, it’s simply not worth it and most of the “new content” they’ve added is cosmetic crap you have to buy from them in their Store in addition to their monthly fee.
@23 (and others)
Overall I emplore anyone considering buying this game to go get it and at least try it before listening to all the negative’s.
Here’s what I see in the game:
A totally customized ship and crew, very interesting Star Trek episodes to play, a very fun and customizable ship combat system, a community of people who like to play. And more content being added all the time, and it’s growing and changing.
It’s way too fun for me, I don’t know what all these other trolls are playing.
#20
Janeway never encountered Nausicaans :) Wrong part of the Galaxy.
@10
Good analysis on the difficulties adapting Star Trek to a video game.
Personally, I happen to LIKE shooting, tactics, etc., and I like it even more in a ship with two nacelles and photons blasting. Yeah, I like shoot ’em ups and I like Star Trek, and STO sits pretty much in the venn diagram where those two intersect.
I don’t ever expect a video game to simulate an episode of Star Trek. Star Trek is about plot, character, drama and ideas. I expect a video game to be a video game, and if it’s dressed up in a pretty accurate Star Trek uniform, I’m overjoyed.
It’s not like people who play “Call of Duty” go around bitching that “World War II wasn’t really like that, man!”
That having been said, I still feel like STO is a little rough around the edges. It feels messy in a way that I hope will get sorted out just as World of Warcraft hammered out its rough edges.
Oh, and release a Mac version, for cryin’ out loud! Steam is on OSX, now, and I’m tired of Windows Boot Camp wreaking havoc with my system.
I got the game in January. I am whelmed. Not over-whelmed, not under-whelmed, just whelmed.
It is pretty repetitive. There are a couple of missions that stand out, but the most are warp in – kill the aliens – beam down – kill the aliens – activate the flashing things – beam/warp out. I’ve tried the crafting and end up making stuff that my rank has already outgrown. I have not yet tried the outreach program, but it looks like crafting all over again.
Original Trek had a rich element of humor. I find none in the game. Original Trek had a fair bit of sexual innuendo. I have found only one mission with even a remotely sexual theme. The sexiest part of the game is my bridge officers and the stances I have them take when at rest.
It would be nice if the dialogs were actually spoken by an actor.
It would be nice if there was some problem solving, like the old text-based adventure games required.
It would be nice if the MMO part of the game was more accessible. Often, I can play for an entire evening and not encounter another human player. I used to play Sims Online for HOURS because of the human interaction – not because I liked carving garden gnomes. I admit I have not explored the fleet option yet, but it occurs to me that the players are there, it should not require some special effort to engage them.
I can live with the glitchy graphics. While the game has an extensive “universe”, it seems to lack interesting substance.