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Star Trek Online Open Beta Starts Today
Today Cryptic Studios will begin the open beta of Star Trek Online, opening their test servers to invitees and anyone who has pre-ordered the game. The beta will run through the 26th, and the game will officially launch on February 2nd; head-start players will be allowed in on January 29th. The game is set in the old universe (not the rebooted one from last year's movie), and takes place roughly 30 years after the events in Star Trek: Nemesis. There are two playable factions to start — the Federation and the Klingon Empire — and more may become available later on. There will be conflict between the two factions, but supposedly all PvP will be "optional and consensual." Players will be able to choose from a variety of ships, and they'll see cameos from familiar characters. Eurogamer has a hands-on preview of the game, and fans of the Trek universe will be pleased to hear that "Cryptic is clearly thinking about Star Trek first and MMO convention second." A number of gameplay trailers are available for viewing, and the official forums have a nice collection of facts.
Klingon: Sir, I propose that we engage in physical combat--with your consent of course.
Federation: Why that would be smashing! Gentlemen's rules apply?
Klingon: Why of course sir, let us stand 5 paces apart and engage in fisticuffs on the count of five.
Federation: And no hitting in the groin or other sensitive areas?
Klingon: I wouldn't dream of it, sir.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
- 18 month development time
- lackluster character animation
- PVP-only Klingon "faction"
- typical tank/dps/healer holy trinity (even in ships for pete's sake)
- subscription fee AND microtransation store
This is a half-ass, generic MMO wrapped in the designs and sounds of a franchise we're prone to get nostalgic about. It's a cheap ploy, and I won't support Cryptic and their shitty games.
Yes, I'm bitter at the terrible mess that was Champions Online. But they have not shown any change as a developer.
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
one side filled with kirk and spock and picard wanna-bes.
and the other filled with the klingon speakers.
so, uh, who is gonna run the internets while you all are gone?
is that IS Champion's Online with Star Trek star ships.
Away team missions comprise of find the shiny objects (like bombs)
Though he does like the star ship combat currently (I would not mind a B5 game like the older Star Trek simulator)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"Where possible, the game will provide non-violent ways to resolve conflicts."
So in other words, this is Picard-style Star Trek. You Kirk-style players can stay logged into Eve.
If you didn't (or don't want to) preorder, you can get a beta key from fileplanet: http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/star-trek-online/
..how will you feel when they tell you -- it wasn't a game!
Or when the old fogey in the space car comes to get you, because you're the best and only you can command the fleet and save the galaxy?
If WoW is getting boring, this will not hold you for more than a month unless you really love Star Trek and must buy this game in collectors edition (twice, so you have one to play and he other to display.)
I can't force myself to log into the game anymore. For one, it gets to be extremely tedious being confined to a small square box until you warp which zones you (with load screen) to a "warp zone" where you fly around and choose what zone you want to "drop out of warp" into. Add that to the extremely lackluster combat of flying circles around the enemy and occasionally turning around to distribute damage to the other shields and you have a really, really lackluster game.
Basically, it's the Champions Online game with ships instead of super heroes. Same engine, same zone structure (with instancing), and the same quest log/quest types. The only thing I can think of right now that they added is a "ship" inventory so you can upgrade shields, phasers, and such with items you will find during battles or apparently "research" by taking rare ores found in sectors to an NPC to process.
Also, Klingons are pretty much 99% PvP based so if you wanted to run a freighter or some other non-combat scenario for The Empire, you'll find yourself without. Land/ship based combat is your typical target and select 1, 2, or 3 to select your weapon/attack. But wow, you can decide if you are in attack mode or speed mode. Woo!
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
- It has been in development for almost 5 years, the team is completely different than Champions
- Character animation looks pretty good to me, but what a minor thing to complain about. It'll get better over time too. I could personally care less if it uses ASCII graphics, as long as the gameplay is solid
- Klingon faction is currently mostly PVP -- they want to add more content later. Big deal! In fact, some players will like this.
- There's a lot more going on than just tank / healer / etc. You can equip modules in any way you want to give your ship a versatile configuration. Seam with team members for away missions. It may not be the most revolutionary game around but, it does do something different. I for one look forward to trying out the strategic space combat.
- It's only microtransaction in the same way that WoW is. You can buy items that don't really affect the gameplay.
- Initial reviews and impressions are much more positive than with Cryptic's previous offerings.
.
Who knows, maybe it will suck, maybe it won't. We don't know yet.
You don't. http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/star-trek-online/
I only played this past weekend after I got a beta key, but I have to agree. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a Star Trek MMORPG, if your expectations were entirely unambitious. The bridge officers change things up a little, but mostly in a cosmetic way. Gameplay is fundamentally unchanged from the model EQ and WoW set over the past decade. It's sadly typical MMO quest grind, and not half as polished as WoW. The interface, for example, is sluggish, poorly designed, and buggy.
Maybe if you're a big Star Trek fan, it'll still be fun. But if you've had your fill of typical MMOs that do nothing interesting with the whole massively multiplayer thing, I'd steer clear.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
To be honest, I found the combat at least a bit more engaging than WoW ever was, also with the last closed beta patch they significantly increased the difficulty level which made it more fun for me.
I think the game has a chance, especially if they improve it as they have been and add Bridges for warp travel instead of the silly warp sector.
An "open" beta means that you have the means by which to join the beta without them selecting you. It doesn't mean that it's necessarily free. It is as opposed to a "closed" beta which means that you can only join by their specific invitation, and that it is entirely likely that no matter how badly you want to join or how much money you have to spend (well, barring buying the entire company), you won't be able to get in.
If you have learned anything from the open source movement, it should be that "open" != "free." You can be charged for open source software, just as not all software that is free (as in beer) is open source.
Star Wars: The Old Republic will crush this game. SW:ToR won't be out until October, but it will be the final nail in the coffin for this game.
I read last night that it's been delayed until Spring 2011.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
There's a small "No thanks" option on the bottom. Click on it and no subscription is needed.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
Every time I turn my PvP status to "on" my shirt turns red... What's the deal?
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
I'm trying to figure out why people are continually surprised when non-Windows MMO clients are not available. You want to have a high percentage chance of being able to play a non-console, non-browser based game, get a Windows machine. End of story.
It's been in development for 5 years, the new Star Trek has only existed for about 2 and didn't really exist until earlier this year. It's a matter of timing in the development cycle.
And it's Next Generation so there is no analog for the new universe, yet, of course.
From Super Star Trek
"The short-range scan gives you a considerable amount of information about the quadrant your starship is in. A short-range scan is best described by an example."
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 * . . . . R . . . . Stardate 2516.3
2 . . . E . . . . . . Condition RED
3 . . . . . * . B . . Position 5 - 1, 2 - 4
4 . . . S . . . . . . Life Support DAMAGED, Reserves=2.30
5 . . . . . . . K . . Warp Factor 5.0
6 . K . . . . . * . . Energy 2176.24
7 . . . . . P . . . . Torpedoes 3
8 . . . . * . . . . . Shields UP, 42% 1050.0 units
9 . * . . * . . . C . Klingons Left 12
10 . . . . . . . . . . Time Left 3.72
"You may abandon the Enterprise if necessary. If there is still a starbase in the galaxy, you will be sent there and put in charge of a weaker ship, the Faerie Queene.
The Faerie Queene cannot be abandoned.""
That is where all the continuity is. Along with the most of the Trek universe. And where all the fan-base's nostalgia is.
The "New Trek" will probably fare like Spiderman just did.
Couple of movies, then a change of management, then another reboot.
And that cycle will go on until it finally dawns on the "runners of the franchise" that Star Trek is a TV series franchise, not a movie franchise.
Until we get another 7-season series, all this in between is just a break. A commercial one.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
No Linux Version? Even Quake I has a Linux Version!
EQ (and I assume star trek) was a good solid source of hookups.
Join a guild which is serious but "fun" (not a guild full of swearing assholes).
Pick a good looking avatar.
Flirt.
Go to your guild parties and any conventions for the game.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I've had sex, I'd like to try playing this now.
The real surprise is why more companies develop Windows only MMOs. For a single player game, or even an online FPS I can understand a company wanting to save money by targeting only the largest market, but the economics for MMOs are different. For an MMO you want a group of people to all go out and buy a copy each - that's how MMOs get successful. Right now there are established groups in (for example) WOW who are looking at different MMOs to play. Even if only a small fraction of their users are on Macs, STOnline is not going to be an option for them since they would have to leave people behind.
I can't understand it myself. MMOs seldom push any graphical boundaries and have modest system requirements - you would think that making a cross-platform client would be easy enough. WOW is still fantastically successful, and part of that is due to their forethought in development.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
"You're a lot hairier than your avatar..."
"That's because I'm a wookie."
Trekkie points and makes the body-snatchers alarm scream.
If I wanted to play space games with the pewpew ships I would reenable my EVE account in one of the 10,000 e-mails I get from CCP telling me that their new expansions is amazing but hasn't solved the lag problem.
gg
~Mekkah
Actually, I've never griefed anyone, but I've been baited into fights a number of times. Most griefing is suicide ganking when you're in empire. But what Eve has taught me is that while games can be amusing or entertaining, they'll never be thrilling and exciting without a real risk of loss.
And if Klingons have to ask permission to fight, it's a game for pussies. A Star Trek game deserves better. It deserves rich, deep content, beautiful graphics, and absolutely cut-throat space. Otherwise you're left with something that's ultimately empty and meaningless. And while I have no problem with pointless, controlled gameplay on something like WoW where you can run around and do the 5 things you're allowed to do all you like, it pains me to see it done to Star Trek.
Yes, I get that when you crunch the dollars and cents, making WoW in space and slapping the Star Trek name on it seems profitable, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
If you're not going to support PvP well in a Star Trek game, make it single-player. Otherwise it's little more than a jag-off love fest with no real excitement. Yes, PvE is easier. Just like making people grind fishing in a lake every day is easy. Just like making people fly dragons around in circles for hours is easy. Just like making someone run dozens of FedEx quests is easy. Just like making someone fight the same boring thing over and over and over is easy. There are lots of easy things to do in a game and most of them stink.
And what I'm attacking is the apparent disclosure that Klingons will be asking permission to get into a fight. What's their new motto? Today is a good day to request permission to argue in strong terms?
WoW is fine. EQ is fine. They're not my cup of tea, but plenty of people enjoy them. What pisses me off is that they're doing it with Star Trek. A well done Star Trek MMO would pull me away from Eve in a heartbeat. Years of training and I'd cancel all three accounts tomorrow if there were a really great Star Trek MMO. Instead, what's announced is beta testing for Klingons asking permission to fight. It's a pussy game and until it grows a pair, it will continue to be a pussy game.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Picard: I want suggestions.
Worf: Lets kill everyone and everything!
Picard: Capital idea, make it so.
The eurogamer preview makes it clear, this MMO is for people that thought Enterprise was a great series, finally space boobies and big battles instead of all the soul searching and boring talking...
If you want your Star Trek to be "The city on the edge of forever" (If I have to explain, I must kill you) or "The measure of a man", then just forget it. There are no moral questions in this game. No Sci-fi to question the nature of humankind.
Even adventure trek like "Starship mine" (Picard does "Die hard") which would translate well to a "Deus Ex/Thief/System shock" style gameplay is beyond this game.
"Yesterday's Enterprise" or even "The inner light", story telling you can forget as well.
So what is left? Simplistic combat and being overrun by thousands of Wesley's. This has about as much to do with Star Trek as "Star Trek: Elite Force". And at least that was based on an element of Voyager (google "worsed voyager episode" common answer? Every single one of them.)
If you think the best of Trek was when Janeway tried to do Ripley (badly) then this might be the game for you.
For non trek fans, you will like this if you liked Champions Online in which case I am suprised you managed to read this far without shortcircuiting your keyboard with your drool.
For trekkies, it is an amusing romp and a bit of fun to hear and see all those sounds again, but it is like having sex with a hooker, the sex ain't worth the eternal regret and feelings of self-loathing.
If you do give it a try, make sure you have the best of trek on a playlist ready to sooth your ravaged mind. Just so that you won't think Trek is "blow everything up". I recommend "The measure of a man", not a blaster fired, no ships blowing up, just Star Trek as it was meant to be.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Garak is one of the greatest characters in Trekdom, and you are denying yourself the pleasure of experiencing his slimyness. That is all.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's no surprise. Windows has, at most, 3 different flavors to develop for, and 90%+ of the install base. From a business decision, "we'll think about other clients later" makes a lot of sense.
My impressions from playing the game:
Your Character: You start off as a junior officer in the position of ship's captain. Your character can be Tactical (tank/dps), Engineering(utility) or Science(buff/heal), and this largely determines your ground combat role, but your space captaining is seperate. Standard races are included as packages for character look, but you can do all sorts of things to your appearance and I've seen some strange things/people in spacedock. You also can customize your uniform to a degree. XP are invested in skills, which give you powers.
Bridge Officers: BO's are pets on a planet, and powers in space. They level up and can be given specific training. You can get new BO's in the same way you can get gear, buy, mission reward and so on. Not all BO's have the same capabilities. They come in three general flavors, Tactical, Engineering, Science, with similar functions to the PC versions. In space, BO’s allow you to do special things with your ship, like fancy photon torpedo spreads and emergency power to shields. BO’s may be equipped with gear just like your main character.
Your Ship: You can customize your ship’s look a good deal. Depending on your preference you can have a Miranda from WoK, something more TNG, or mix and match because you really just like the way those particular nacelles look. There’s also gear for your ship. You can install that disruptor array on your Fed ship if you like.
Ground combat: It’s okay, but not great. However, if you’re ST fan the words “phaser rifles” will probably do it for you. The little phaser has a stun attack. Also, the default unarmed attack seems to be that palm-strike-to-nose thing.
Space Combat: It’s ship combat, not fighter combat. Firing arcs, weapon charge, shield regeneration. Battling a single comparable ship is not intended to be quick in this game. You’re intended to fight an enemy that will try to shelter it’s weak shields and you’re expected to do the same. Many fights are against more numerous small opponents (the Orions deploy fighters), and the management of your weapons and powers is where your time is spent. It’s not about movement, it’s about management. This appeals to me for ship combat of this type.
Quests: The training mission above is what it is, newb training. I never really felt like I was taking on the Borg, but rather like I was helping out after the fight, then joining the big ships to push them out.
The other missions seem much more like ST episodes. Travel to a system that's having a labor disptue as the Fed representative. Discover pirates in the system and clear them out. Beam down to resolve the differences. While the diplomatic options are too simplified and need serious work, I think they've done a good job of replicating the ST episode in game. Things begin "Stardate bla...we are escorting so and so to a Vulcan monastery..." and end with the ship warping out of system or the crew beaming off planet.
It feels like the game will have a story, with missions that are a part of it.
Kirk vs. Picard: Definitely more Kirk. Myabe you could call it “Enterprise-E Picard”. In the Sol area there are public quests that involve Klingon incursions, and I killed a whole lot of Klingons in that Vulcan monastery. Sure, you’re expected to talk to people. Angry Federation workers are an example of people to whom one is expected to be diplomatic. The pirates in orbit you’re expected to explode. It’s a post-Dominion War post-Wolf 359 Federation.
GOOD: It’s Star Trek. Travel around. Meet new folks. Talk to some. Blow up Klingons. Uncover strange anomalies. Meet the alien of the week (probably a PC). Beam in, beam out. Go to warp. Cue music. I also like the ship combat.
BAD: Load screens. Too many load screens. It’s a major failure of the game. Combat pacing and dynamism needs work, but the load screens are a much bigger hurdle. Also, t
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
It makes sense for every type of application, except MMOs. For every one person who can't play your game, you may lose 5 other sales that you would have made from friends.
To take another example: imagine what Facebook (or slashdot for that matter) would be like if it only worked on IE. Sure it would get a lot of sign ups, but a large minority would use something else and pull their friends with them.
I am shocked that in 2010 WOW is still the only major MMO that seems to understand this.
sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
You get a lot less of that in Eve Online mainly because the skillpoint system allows for enormous variability. What's more, someone who's been playing a week could easily kill someone who's been playing for years in the right circumstances. Stick you in a destroyer, them in a frigate, you can probably kill them off pretty easily.
Why would someone who's been playing for years be flying in a frigate? Maybe they're just moving through to somewhere and don't want to risk a pricey ship. Maybe they're low on isk and are just doing tackling for others. Maybe they're testing something. Maybe they don't have better ships in the area and the local market has bad prices on most things. Either way, it's not just theoretically possible for a new player to kill an old player in Eve; it's downright practical.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
"Further, I hope it completely and utterly fails so we have some opportunity for a game that lives up to the Star Trek name."
Oh, man. I have this image of you flopping around on the floor, screaming and spitting, kicking your legs, pitching a fit like the best 1st grade fit-pitcher that ever lived.
Seriously, dude. You hope the game fails so they YOU get what YOU want?
Please, do us a favor. Go back to the Eve forums. Right now. Go log in. Please...you're in the wrong forum.
Yes but you are deliberately ignoring the point - that one Linux-only or Mac-only user is an acceptable loss. The odds are good that those five people they could have reached out to have Windows and are already playing it. And if they're not, then they have more Windows friends playing it. Linux and Mac combined are less than 10% of the population and in many instances, their users don't play games game (Photoshop jockeys) or also own a Windows machine, or have a Windows partition to boot into. Hell thanks to stuff like Wine and Parallels, the geeks will do your work for you in making it run on those alternative platforms. To say nothing of the fact that these platforms typically don't have sales for squat.
Large minorities don't pull people with them. You think Facebook didn't have competition? You think Twitter didn't have competition? WoW had tons of competition.
WoW won because it was really popular and good. Not because it had non-Windows clients.
Schnapple
Many PvP games come and go because the developers and managers treat the PvP part of the game like PvE; as if it's something to manipulated to suit their vision of what it should be. "Someone isn't using tool A to do task B? Break everything else they're doing with it until they use it to do task B! They stopped using tool A? Oh well. Oh, they're using vehicle B to do what? No, no, no, they're supposed to use vehicle at site B to solve that problem! Make it so they can't use vehicle B outside site B!"
This continues until people get tired of watching every strategy they develop and every new idea they have crushed by the will of devs living atop Mount Olympus.
What actually needs to happen is that when people are going a new route with tools, equipment, spells, etc, unless it completely unbalances gameplay to the point of absurdity, the devs and managers must change their idea of what those things should be doing and bring development forward based on the innovations of the playerbase. In other words, reward creative thinking and encourage players to outsmart you. That makes it their game that you develop instead of your world that they have the privilege of entering. The latter is a whole lot less inviting or fun.
This is a huge part of Eve Online's continued success. While they'll make big changes once in a while (titans, nano ships, etc), most of the changes are either tiny tweaks to existing stuff or new developments. The primary focus is moving forward rather than playing re-balance nerf bat whac-a-mole. Different ships and different equipment have different strengths and weaknesses. Rather than trying to simplify everything down to where nearly perfect balance is possible, they simply continue to expand things such that while your version of the ship might be better today, new equipment, skills, tactics, etc could easily make my version of the ship more powerful tomorrow.
And I think that's a much smarter way to move things ahead. Rather than dumbing it down so your developers can push numbers into an Excel spreadsheet, keep adding complexity and challenging players to find new variations and combinations that re-balance things. That keeps players interested, thinking, and invested. Keep simplifying things for the benefit of your devs and all you get is a game that isn't worth playing.
PvP that's worth playing is and should be hard as Hell to develop. Simply provide the players the tools to balance things on their own and stop trying to manufacture some utopian Atlantis of perfect PvP balance. It's not worth the effort because central planning works as well in a game as it did in the Soviet Union.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
EVE Online has an officially supported Mac client and unofficially supports running the Windows client through Wine (they distributed a Cedega-wrapped Linux client for a while, but it was actually lower quality than just using Wine and the Windows client, both of which are free downloads and don't place any extra cost on CCP).
I'm sure there's at least one other non-trivial MMO that has made an effort to be cross-platform, even if I can't think of one. EVE certainly wasn't at launch, and I think it was largely due to the fact that a section of the forums had already become unofficial support for people running the game via Wine that they released the non-Windows official client(s).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...