Star Trek Online

[TylerChuit]

So, I had pre-ordered the Collector's Edition of the new Star Trek Online game a few weeks ago.  The official release was yesterday, but they allowed people who pre-ordered to start playing over this past weekend.  

Apart from the servers frequently going down for a few hours at a time, and the insanely long queues that started around Sunday afternoon, and the occasional quest that had no description, or quest that pointed me somewhere that wasn't on the star charts, or quests that didn't give me the reward I selected... apart from that, it was great.

The character creation is super detailed, which I normally am not a fan of (except in City of Heroes, which was the best part of that MMO), but with this one not only lets you make your avatar, but as you level, you accumulate your bridge crew, and you can make them look however you want.  There are your usual Star Trek races, every race that's been featured in the shows, but they also have an "alien" option which lets you create your own bumpy headed officers.

The gameplay is really like 2 games in one.  On one hand, you have your away missions where you beam down to a planet or station, but then you have the space battles blasting Klingon warbirds in nebulae and asteroid fields.  Your crew also adds different special attacks depending on if it is a space battle or away mission.

The ships are customizable as well.  You can not only change the color scheme of your ships, but you can mix and match different model parts to make your own unique ship.  

My pre-order came with the original Enterprise model as a bonus playable ship.  Super cool.  One of the other bonuses I got was a couple of 10-day guest passes... if you guys are interested in trying it out, let me know.  I'll hook you up.  

[Dragon]

Sounds cool. Do you control an entire crew, or just one character of the crew?

[TylerChuit]

In the away missions, your team is filled with your bridge crew you've accumulated, up to 5 members.  If you don't have enough, it gets filled in with red shirts.  You can issue orders to attack specific targets or use their special abilities, but they are NPCs that follow you around. 

In space, you can choose one of each of the three types of your crew (science, engineering and tactical) to man the bridge.  In a battle, this translates to having their special abilities at your command to use as an action.

[tampamac2002]

I'd be interested in playing. However, my computer is about 4 years old, a celeron 1.3
I probably can't handle the graphics even though i have an upgraded graphics card. I think I have 128 or 256mb graphics.
Let me know if it'll work. Or I can just look for myself on the site, I suppose.

mac

[TylerChuit]

I don't think so. It says minimum requirement is 1.8 dual core processors.  Mine is a 2.2 dual and I have to have the settings at medium.



BTW, here is a pic of my character and ship.

[Dragon]

In March I'll have a week between two sessions of classes. If you still have one of those 10-day passes then, I'm interested in checking it out.

[Wyldwing]

Nice Enterprise!!! Let's hear it for the pre-orders!!!

[Dragon]

Thanks again for the Guest Pass, Chris. I got the game installed and I've started playing. I think I lost my Phaser while I was fighting the Borg. I'm not sure if I used it up, or if one of them took it from me. Hopefully I'll get another weapon soon. I like how the starship controls are. Very interesting playing in open 3 dimensional space when most flying games I've played, even ones set in space, have a limit up and down. (Maybe there's a limit in here too, but I just haven't hit the wall yet.)

So... this is an online game. Are there situations, like in WOW, where you go on missions with other players? I've seen a few starships flying around with names like "RickRoll" so I'm assuming that those are real players, but I haven't gotten to anything that appears to be interactive with other people yet.

By the way, where did you get the character and ship image? Is that provided in the game or on the website?

[TylerChuit]

Awesome, glad you got in.  You'll have to messaage me with your uername here, so I can get with you in-game.

I've never lost a phaser, but weapons are pretty easy to come by.  A lot of them drop in away missions.  Loot appears as a gold orb floating near the "unconscious" boddies.   In space missions, they are gold cone-like things. 

Grouping mostly happens automatically early on when you need it.  Every planetary system has its own set of instances and access to them is on a rolling timer, so everyone that goes into a quest system within the same 30 second or so window will be put in the same instance and grouped automatically.  Oh, and when loot drops that is meant for someone else in your group, it is white instead of gold to save you from having to go all the way back over to it.

Although by the time you read this, you'll probably have figured most of that out.

Oh yeah, the images I got were from standard [Print Screen] screencaps pasted from the Windows clipboard to Photoshop.  I'm a bit disappointed that there's no way to toggle the UI yet for a clean screencap like WoW has.

[TylerChuit]

Oh, and I like giving my ships obscure reference names.  My two so far are the USS Indefatigable NCC-741776, and the USS Moss NCC-9725-3

[Dragon]

I have discovered the gold orbs, but never seen a white one yet, so thanks for the heads-up.

I named my ship the U.S.S. Dracorex.

[TylerChuit]

My current ship and crew...

If you compare it to the photo above, you can see the nice improvement of my new graphics card.
I love Photoshop.
 

[Dragon]

Oh yeah. Very nice!

[TylerChuit]

So, you've had your trial time, Dragon, what did you think?

[Dragon]

I liked it. I think it is a good game, just not for me.

There is definitely a cool mixture putting the starship travel and battles into the game. That is probably my favorite part of it all. Aside from that, it seemed similar to WoW, but set in space. I guess that's both good and bad. I believe at this point I have to just relinquish my desire to like this game more than I really do... for that matter, probably any MMORPG. I've tried a few, Neverwinter Nights wasn't quite an MMORPG and, from what I can remember, that's about as close as I got to liking that style. Actually, with that one I think it was just the custom mods that made that one interesting to me. I would say that the pay to play factor is another deterrent, but I think that's just part of it.

I'd rather play a FPS, like Half-Life or Modern Warfare, or a RTS like StarCraft or WarCraft... or some other style game. As I think about the controls of the game, this and World of Warcraft, and EverQuest, (and I'm assuming other MMORPGs have the same style,) it seems like a mix between a FPS and a RTS, but not quite either one. Maybe that's why some people like them. I'm not sure. It's just not for me. The themes are usually quite interesting in these games. I've watched people play City of Heroes and thought it would be awesome, but after getting trial periods to play WoW and Star Trek, I'm guessing that whatever it is about those that I don't quite get into, the other MMORPGs will be the same.