I have never been able to really get into MMO’s. My wife and I (Next Jen) have tried many MMO’s Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes, and Everquest 2 to just name a few. None of these have ever made me need to play them. Some of you are probably screaming at me “Well you should try out WOW.” You would be correct. Although my philosophy is why get addicted to crystal meth if I see what it does to peoples lives. So I have avoided WOW like a plague even though I know I would like it.

Now, I have been a casual Star Trek fan since Star Trek III. I remember going to the theatre with my father and loving it. So I have seen all the moves and TV shows, but I do not dress up or go to the conventions. 

So when I heard that the makers of City of Heroes (which I liked but didn’t love) took the reins on making a Star Trek MMO it piqued my interest. Then it seemed the time flew by and they announced the open beta. Just like other betas they gave you a taste of what to expect but they really are just testing the servers and are looking for bugs.  

The beta peaked my interest enough to pre-order the collectors edition (big mistake since I never use the items I got) and got into the game 4 days before the game was released. Now I would like to say for someone who has not experienced MMO’s very much I did not mind the downtime on launch weekend. I understood that the engineers grossly underestimated the amount of people that would play this game on launch. They said that they expected 100,000-300,000 people, but what the got was closer to a million. So many people got waiting times to get into the actual game they just paid for. To the engineers I give credit since the network problems were fixed very quickly.

The game takes place roughly 30-50 years after the latest Star Trek movie. When the Romulan world gets destroyed and Spock gets pulled into the past the present world he just left does not get destroyed. To them Spock and the Nerada just disappeared into a blackhole never to be seen again. In Spock’s voiceover at the begin he say’s (voiced by Leonard Nimoy) “Time does not stop for 1 man". 30 years after the movie the Alpha quadrant is in chaos. The Klingons have declared war on the federation. The Romulans are angry at the loss of their homeworld and are ready to cross the neutral zone. Now the Borg have emerged and are attacking a colony. So it does not look good for the peace loving federation.  This is where the tutorial takes place, during the Borg attack on the colony. 

To me this is the best tutorial I have experienced. You are put in the middle of battle and are taught how to do things as you go. Young Spock, Zach Quinto, voices the tutorial. It gives you an idea of all the types of missions you will be going on in the future. There are 2 types of missions ground and space combat. Both are well flushed out and to me flow wonderfully from one to the other. I will give you an example of one of these later in the review.

You can make three types of officer’s in the federation’s side. There are Security/Officers (Kirk/Red Shirts), Science officers (Medical/Spock), and then there is Engineers (Scotty). Now there are a lot of tools in the character creation screen.You can be many of the founding Federation races or you can make up your own alien race. The sky is the limit because they’re many adjustments and features you have control over. 

During the tutorial the Borg killed all the officers aboard ship during an attack. You are the lone officer left and are now in charge of the starship. During the tutorial you rescue stranded Starfleet members of derelict or destroyed ships, warp to destroy Borg scout spheres, and attack damaged Borg cubes with other tutorial members. Once the tutorial is complete you warp out to earth orbit and an Admiral give you official command of the ship. 

Now from here on out the games leveling system is familiar and yet unique as well. You start out as Lieutenant Grade 1. During mission you progress up to Lieutenant Grade 10.  Once this is reached you go to Lieutenant Commander. Which would be Level 11 in most MMO’s. Then when you go through Lt. Commander 1-10 you get promoted to Commander Grade 1, which would be level 21.  

At each new officer level you get an upgraded ship class. This means more weapon slots, stronger armor, more places for officer (more on that next), and more inventory space. There are 3 types of ships Cruisers (the tankers), Escorts (Defiance class), and Science Vessel’s (Healers). Each ship class has it’s own benefits which would be another article on it’s own.
 

Just like with any Starfleet series you get a bridge crew. Now you can hand select them or just hire them through completing specific missions. Each ship can only handle a certain amount of bridge officers. This is where the game starts to get unique. When you to ground combat missions (or away mission) the bridge crew comes with you. I actually enjoy ground combat because you get to mix it up with your crew. In fact in one very intense ground combat mission with 5 of my officers we were attacking some Romulans who had created some nasty weapons we had to destroy. During the fire fight the bridge crew ran to me and encircled me. They seemed to be protecting their commander. I am sorry but I totally geeked out at that moment. So this is another layer that adds to my enjoyment of this game. The crew also levels with you. When you kill something you get crew points. These points are spent on leveling up the skills of your crew. You can also promote your crewmembers, which give them access to higher tier powers. 

Missions is where the game comes into it’s own. In general mission can be classified as Ground combat or space missions as I have said before. But it is not uncommon for an example for an admiral to send you to investigate reports of the Klingon’s presence in a particular system. Once you warp in you are told by the admiral to patrol the planets orbit and destroy any Klingon patrols. Once you spend 20-30 minutes doing this and you think it is over you are told the Klingons have beamed down raiding parties and are killing the planets inhabitants, which means you have to beam down with your officers and start ground combat. This is more of a familiar MMO fighting style.Once you finish this part of the mission your ship calls you and tells you a group of Klingon ships has warped in and they need you on the ship, where you beam up and fight off the fleet.

The story missions is another strong point. I actually care about these missions. The main story arc missions they have are masterpieces that would put some great TV episodes of Star Trek to shame. There is one mission that is called “The City on the edge of Forever” that is really what made me fall in love with this MMO. It takes elements from all of the shows including the original series and crafts them into one fantastic mission. If you are even the slightest Star Trek fan this game is a must play just for the reverence these writers view the material.

I am familiar with raids, but I have never done them. There is a mission here against The Crystalline Entity. Star Trek fans will not this from a Star Trek The Next Generation episode.  This is the Entity that destroyed Data’s homeworld and that his brother Lore helped out. Well you have to fight a new Entity and you have to work with at least 15 other ships to do it.  Well I tried this mission early in my career and could never do it so I gave up. I decided to wait until I was commander to try it again whereI tried for 8 hours to kill this thing. There was a specific method to doing this and if 1 person didn’t listen the plan failed and you had to start over again. I finally got with a group of about 20 ships and within 5 minutes we killed it. I for one did not want to waste 8 hours of my time. That did not make me happy, but also does not mean other people will experience the same issue. The developers might fix this one sometime in the future as well.

The visuals in this game are breath taking. The people at Cryptic realized space is not empty. It is full of gas and asteroids and etc. Now I would like to make a point. A lot of the planets seem to be surrounded by a ring of asteroids.  If this were to happen around real planets the planet would be constantly bombarded with impacts making the surface uninhabitable. That was my only reality check of this article I promise.   

Overall this game not only is great at the beginning, but also has amazing potential for the future. Cryptic has already announced that in the future you will be able to explore your ship (only the bridge is accessible now) and there will be more endgame content.

I originally was just going to pick this game up and use it as filler until Star Wars Old republic comes out. Kudos goes to Cryptic because now I will be conflicted and might even consider playing both. 
 
Rating: 9.4 out of 10.