Geekshow

Star Trek Online Details Coming Sunday

An MMO Star Trek game has been in works for at least a year or two. A company by the name of Perpetual Entertainment held the rights to the title. I followed along with a sense of mild interest. A killer space MMO would be something that would appeal to me beyond all of the Fantasy based MMOs. In fact, my favorite MMO was City of Heroes. While it eventually got boring, and it’s problems eventually about drove me insane, it was still something that could hold my attention much longer than the typical fantasy based title.

However, while Perpetual held the licenses for a Star Trek MMO, we never got more than really ambitious promises and a few pieces of concept art. Everything that the company said about their forthcoming title sounded good. Too good, in fact. Players would be set to work on a ship in which every station could be controlled. One player could play a navigation helm, while the other manned the weapons. Still another could be the communications officer. And if you didn’t have the people to operate the ship, an AI officer would take over those stations. Sounds pretty hard to program, right? So, it came as no surprise to me when after waiting so long to hear something about the game, it was suddenly canceled.

Out of nowhere came Cryptic Studios. Yes, the same Cryptic Studios that made the previously mentioned City of Heroes. The same Cryptic Studios that sold off City of Heroes, began working with Marvel and Microsoft on a Marvel MMO for the 360, and when Microsoft suddenly decided MMOs don’t work on the console they became the developers on a new Superhero MMO based on the Champions pen and paper RPG system. It turns out that the former baby developer now has the funds to snap up the Champions franchise (They now own the Champions name, system, etc.) and grab the Star Trek license. That’s likely the result of making bank from selling the mostly successful City of Heroes to the publisher of the game, NCSoft.

So what, you may ask? Another day, another developer. Well, I’m here to tell you that Cryptic is talented group of developers. Jack Emmert knows what he’s doing, and he surrounds himself with like minded individuals. Developers that go out of their way to make a quality product, talk to the subscribers of their game about their vision, and really leave their heart and soul in their game. It is because of that vision that I can no longer stomach a Sony Online Entertainment MMO. With it’s shoddy animations, and buggy gameplay, SOE games (Such as Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest, and the upcoming DC Universe Online) don’t hold a candle to Cryptic’s quality work.

That’s not to say that Cryptic doesn’t have it’s own problems. One of the reasons I ended up leaving City of Heroes is that the "give the gamers what the need, not what they want" motto became more of a an excuse for being stubborn about critical elements of the game (Like the difficulty vs reward system, for instance). Often, suggestions that were made in the Beta phases of the game were fought for long periods of time before the developers finally would realize that they were good ideas and implement them. That constant frustration of seeing a system that could be so much more finally got to me, and I left the game.

However, Star Trek Online gives users a new reason to be excited. A title from a quality developer that has learned a lot of hard lessons, believes in delivering a faithful experience, and is possibly one of the only developers that "gets it" from the fan perspective. One of the first articles up concerning Star Trek Online talked about how many of the developers grew up watching the many versions of Star Trek. That alone is what it is going to take to make a game that actually works.

Speaking of actually working, the game does. That’s right, after months and months of hearing pipe dreams from Perpetual Entertainment, we actually have a working Star Trek MMO. And this comes only a week after first hearing about the title. Cryptic already has a functioning game, and they did that all on their own. They received no assets from the now defunct Perpetual (Because apparently they didn’t have much at all).

The best part of hearing about the game, is that we will be able to see some actual gameplay footage this Sunday. Cryptic is having an event is Las Vegas this Sunday at 1:30 PST. But for those of us that will not be able to attend, they are also broadcasting the event on their website, StarTrekOnline.com. We will be able to check out for ourselves how the game is set in the future from the last movie, and how players will be able to begin the game as a captain of a small Starfleet or Klingon ship.

I’ll be watching, and hoping for some more juicy details. I have a lot more faith in this title behind the capable hands of Cryptic. Here’s hoping that I am not disappointed. If you are craving more details, check out STO’s website, or read the article that the Associated Press has put out concerning some of the features of the game.