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Sci-Fi Entertainment Games

Cryptic Studios Releases New Star Trek Online Details, Trailer 272

Two days ago, an AP interview with Cryptic Studios' Jack Emmert provided new details about Star Trek: Online, which was lost in developmental limbo for quite some time. Today, Cryptic released a game-play trailer and a forty-minute webcast discussing the game.
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Cryptic Studios Releases New Star Trek Online Details, Trailer

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  • For the lazy.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by kunwon1 ( 795332 ) * <dave.j.moore@gmail.com> on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:03AM (#24551797) Homepage
    Details from TFA:
    • You start the game as captain of a small Klingon or Starfleet vessel
    • You can create new races
    • Big galaxy, lot's of space, away missions on planets
    • Timeline is a few generations after Nemesis
    • PVP space battles
    • No release date yet
    • More details will be unveiled on Sunday at a Trek convo in Vegas
    • by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:17AM (#24551851)

      Details from TFA:

      • Big galaxy, lot's of space, away missions on planets

      How many red shirts do you get per ship?

      • by Baricom ( 763970 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:37AM (#24551957)

        The quote at the bottom of Slashdot's page right now is especially appropriate:

        You will be dead within a year.

      • by Adriax ( 746043 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:37AM (#24551961)

        Instead of the standard HP or hit points, health will be gauged by RS, red shirts.

      • by OldManAndTheC++ ( 723450 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @02:05AM (#24552419)

        You have docked with Starbase 23. Would you like to resupply? YES

        Starbase 23 has the following supplies:

        • Dilithium: 5 kilos
        • Photon torpedoes: 12
        • Anti-matter: 0.5 grams
        • Red Shirts: 87

        Please indicate the items and quantity needed...

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by eclectro ( 227083 )

        How many red shirts do you get per ship?

        More importantly, are there any cute borg girls that want to look at the captain's log?

      • Didn't Scotty wear a red shirt? I know the rank of "anymous alien fodder" was red, wasn't scotty chief engineer though? I never quit got my head round the colours and rankings especially as bones and spock both wore blue.

        • Yes, Scotty did wear a red shirt. And Spock and McCoy both wore blue because they were both science officers. The system was red for security/engineering, blue for science, yellow for command. For whatever reason, they flipped yellow and red around starting with TNG, but the system is still the same otherwise.
    • Start as captain? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by suso ( 153703 ) * on Monday August 11, 2008 @08:33AM (#24554233) Journal

      Isn't it going to be a little unrealistic to have a million starships going around? Besides, what do you have to work up to? Admiral, then the game gets REALLY boring. You just sit behind a desk.

      I mean, with games like WoW, its more realistic to have hundreds of people all at the starting point of the game because they are just people and there are lots of people in the world.

      But if everyone starts with their own starship and you have a lot of people playing, its going to end up looking like that TNG episode where Worf quantum leaps several times. "Sir I'm receiving 250,000 hails". (Sorry Wil, I couldn't resist quoting you)

  • by Stickerboy ( 61554 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:04AM (#24551801) Homepage

    Yes, you, too can be the Anonymous Redshirt, for only $14.99 a month!

    • by thatskinnyguy ( 1129515 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:41AM (#24552001)

      Kirk: I'll need 4 people on the away team. Me, Spock, Bones and Ensign Ricky.

      Redshirt in the corner: Oh crap!

      • Re:Marketing Pitch (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Buran ( 150348 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @01:17AM (#24552173)

        I've never figured out why it seems that everyone in the Navy (Starfleet) is an ensign or higher in the Trek universe; Ensign is a commissioned officer rank, not an enlisted rank.

        Yet, most of the stuff that happens on ships gets done by enlisteds, and even officers will listen to an NCO who knows their stuff.

        So, you'd think the random guy would be a private, private first class, sergeant, etc.

        But nope...

        (and I say this as a long-time Trek fan: "huh!?")

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by NiceGeek ( 126629 )

          I can think of at least one exception. Chief O'Brien.

          • by Buran ( 150348 )

            Good point -- had forgotten about him. (and I know the enlisted ranks I cited were Army -- I was thinking at the time of a friend who served there; "Chief" is short for chief petty officer, which IS a Navy rank. Sorry to anyone I may have confused).

            • Re:Marketing Pitch (Score:5, Informative)

              by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @04:55AM (#24553067) Homepage Journal

              "Chief" is short for chief petty officer, which IS a Navy rank.

              In mariner terminology, the chief was usually the second in command on a ship, even if outranked by the pilot and mates. The captain and pilot would decide where to sail, but the chief would be in charge of how, including keeping the boat afloat, which took precedence over any orders except scuttling.
              On smaller ships, he could often double as a boatswain, being directly in charge of the seamen. Later, the title was split into Chief Mate and Chief Engineer, with the Mate being an officer, and the Engineer not. Depending on nationality, the chief engineer might still de-facto outrank all officers except the captain, despite not being an officer.

              • Re:Marketing Pitch (Score:5, Informative)

                by srmalloy ( 263556 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @09:24AM (#24554669) Homepage

                In mariner terminology, the chief was usually the second in command on a ship, even if outranked by the pilot and mates. The captain and pilot would decide where to sail, but the chief would be in charge of how, including keeping the boat afloat, which took precedence over any orders except scuttling.

                It is different in civilian and military usage. In the Royal Navy, for example, the Captain was the commander of the ship, but until the development of a professional officer corps, the captain's primary skill was being able to fight his ship -- and originally was in direct command only of the Marine unit aboard the ship; the sailing master was the person who actually directed the sailing of the ship. The sailing master (shortened to master) was a warrant officer, along with the master's mates, and ate in the wardroom with the ship's officers, who were above him in the chain of command; the promotion of warrant officers was under the control of various boards and commissions, not captains, unlike the midshipmen and rates. The sailing master eventually became a commissioned office, becoming the navigation officer.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Chysn ( 898420 )

          > I've never figured out why it seems that everyone
          > in the Navy (Starfleet) is an ensign or higher in
          > the Trek universe

          I think it's because the shows are about the officers, and not about the enlisted schmucks. I think Starfleet Academy is like the US Naval Academy; when you're done with it, you're probably officer material; there are plenty of people on the ships that never did that, but the shows aren't about those people.

          Of course, IANAT, so YMMV.

          • by Buran ( 150348 )

            It's true that the focal characters are indeed officers, but I think the writers could have nodded to the many people out there who are enlisted, in real life and in Trek, by occasionally having the captain ask for someone with an enlisted rank to join an away team, and so on.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Caraig ( 186934 )

          Ehn. Gene R. was an oldtime Air Force zoomie, and from what he once said, his belief matched that of the Air Force as far as space missions went: Officers only aboard spacecraft. Unfortnately, he mixed it with naval ranks and called his Wagontrain-to-the-stars military organization' StarFLEET' (and gave them maritime ranks, natch) instead of, say, 'Star Force' or something more Army/Air Force, so it confuses the heck out of people.

          Over time the powers-that-be have altered things a bit. You start to see e

        • To Achieve rank of Ensign in StarFleet, you'd have to complete StarFleet Academy.

          I'm gonna say that almost everyone that didn't complete StarFleet Academy doesn't game a character name in the credits.

          There was Yeomans in the original series.
          • You actually start out as a Cadet before being promoted to Ensign. It's not shown much in any show except Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

        • http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Starfleet_ranks

          Just didnt see them often, and very seldomly aboard the Enterprise... interesting indeed.

        • Best guess on my part is that Private First Class, and a lot of other Enlisted ranks, SOUND too Military. The Star Trek universe is supposed to be set in some kind of communist Utopia; Can't go having a war in Utopia, can we?

          Remember, the 5 Year MIssion was Exploration, not warmongering.
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by bky1701 ( 979071 )
          I think the general understanding is that only officers are full time members of Starfleet (with some exceptions), and those brought in on a more temporary basis are the rare crewmen that serve some specific task. Which also explains why positions are so much more general than real navy positions (engineering vs. numerous engineering-related ratings). If you are an officer, you've been trained to be able to do to some extent anything in engineering.

          This is of course not cannon, but works best of any poss
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by GrayNimic ( 1051532 )
          There have been a handful of enlisted men in the series, but they are rare. They also seem to be in the engineering fields, as the two main examples are O'Brien (Transporter Chief in TNG, and Chief Engineer in DS9) and at least some of the Defiant's engineering crew (in one episode, O'Brien was telling Worf that the engineers he was commanding were enlisted men and hadn't been through Starfleet Academy, and therefore needed to be handled differently than the Officers he's used to dealing with). In TNG, O'
        • There are hundreds (TOS) to over a thousand (TNG) personel on a starfleet ship, yet less than 10 have regular speaking roles on the show(s). I would think that there would be many elisted men/women, with titles like Spaceman, Leading Spaceman (the wet navies had Seaman, Able Seaman, Leading Seaman etc. I think that Miles O'brien (Colm Meany, not the CNN news anchor) was a Chief Petty Officer or something like that (an NCO)

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Buran ( 150348 )

            The size of the crew has less to do with the era when a ship existed and more to do with her size -- you'll see a much smaller crew on a destroyer than you do on a carrier. The TNG Enterprise was a much larger ship (really, two ships held together with latches and explosive bolts and such) so you need a larger crew to man her and, to some extent, many positions are duplicated to some extent in the event the ship splits up into two parts.

            Ships of the line in the 18th century had large crews, too, don't forge

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Shipwack ( 684009 )
          Yeoman Rand is another example...

          I totally agree, though... I've even gotten into discussions with people who insisted that everyone on board Federation ships were officers, which to anyone who has ever served in the military knows is absurd... Who would do all the day to day maintenance? Not to mention how dangerously foolish it is to trust an officer with anything truly important.
          • I've even gotten into discussions with people who insisted that everyone on board Federation ships were officers, which to anyone who has ever served in the military knows is absurd...

            I agree. I don't think that many want them to be too obvious, just the occasional sign of them. As others have noted - there's plenty of extras on a starfleet ship for there to be enlisted.

            Unless they merged the tracks...

            Who would do all the day to day maintenance? Not to mention how dangerously foolish it is to trust an off

          • I've even gotten into discussions with people who insisted that everyone on board Federation ships were officers, which to anyone who has ever served in the military knows is absurd...

            No it isn't. How things work in real life has no bearing on how things work in a fictional universe. More to the point, you were discussing how things are in the fictional universe (where details have been provided for you by the creators), not how you think they would be (the land of speculation). If there hadn't been enlisted personnel shown at various points in the series, it would be perfectly reasonable to say that only commissioned officers are on those ships.

        • I remember reading some of Gene Roddenbery's original memos on this.

          The logic was like this: All the crewmembers are fully qualified astronauts; they are all academy graduates, they are all officers.

          Sorry I can't be more specific than that. I read it along time ago and donated my star trek books to the library a while ago.

  • Star Trek Online Forever?
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )

      Kinda looks like it. I just went to the web site. First thing I wanted to see was the trailer. Not only is the trailer not available as a stream, it's bundled in a zip file. No competent webmaster does stuff like that, and if they haven't hired a webmaster, they're obviously a long, long way from a deployable game.

      The trailer itself is not encouraging. Except for a few brief scenes of people getting phasered and transported, none of it shows actual game play. The rest was just animated eye candy, obviously

      • by Adriax ( 746043 )

        Actually, from previous information, flying around in a ship is a BIG part of the game.

      • by jandrese ( 485 )
        According to the blurb under the videos, they're "100% in-game footage".
      • Informative? (Score:5, Informative)

        by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @02:46AM (#24552637) Journal
        Except that the main site clearly states that the entire movie was created with the ingame engine.

        Unless you have reason to believe they are lying the eye candy is part of the game.

        Thanks for trolling, try again.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 )
          I think the grandparent's point was that there was a lot of "mood panning" and not a lot of game mechanic.

          All footage might be "in game", but it's not necessarily game play.
  • Just replace "Trek" with "Wars" and I'm sold.

    The space combat and personal combat scenarios in "Star Wars" are just too juicy, but, all things considered I'd probably want to actually role play in the Trek universe.

    • by jandrese ( 485 ) <kensama@vt.edu> on Monday August 11, 2008 @01:29AM (#24552235) Homepage Journal
      If you want Star Wars there's no need to wait, just sign up for Star Wars Galaxies today. Warning: Gameplay may change suddenly.
      • by drik00 ( 526104 )

        For the love of God, someone mod this as Funny.... the "Informative" on it now pushes us very close to a "ironic singularity"

        J

      • I think he meant... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @06:54AM (#24553679) Journal

        Well, I'm not the GP poster, but I think he meant, like many of use SW fans, a good SW game. Note the keyword there.

        Actually screw that. We just want a Star Wars game. SWG wasn't even that, when you get at the bottom of it.

        SWG from the start was not just incompetently done, but mostly a merchandising exercise. You know, like printing Darth Vader's head on a t-shirt. It doesn't really make it a better t-shirt, nor really SW equipment, it just serves to sell more copies and more expensive.

        SW was launched as little more than a SW-themed DIKU MUD with graphics and lots of empty, generic, fractal-generated terrain, but (here's the important part) without vehicles, starships or Jedi. That tells you from the start how well the dev team and Raph Koster understood either SW or their target market segment. It's been a race against time from there to figure out how to put Jedi in, for example, and went from one clusterfucked abomination to the next clusterfucked abomination as results went.

        And while the big gripe is gameplay, let's not forget that it wasn't very SW either. Their "solutions" to everyone wanting to be a Jedi was worse lore-wise than the problem. They required you to be already an accomplished and skilled adult before anyone trained you as a Jedi. Hello? That was exactly what they tried to avoid: training someone who's already used to taking all the wrong approaches, and has all the wrong reflexes.

        Duly noted, it was the only MMO which allowed a flexible character build. It gets kudos for that, and many people stayed because of that. Many still remember it fondly because of that. But was its only merit.

        And there was nothing particularly SW about that either. You could transplant the same system to a high-fantasy MMO and it would work just the same. Heck, something similar worked in Oblivion.

        The NGE just managed to make it worse, and God knows that's an accomplishment. It's akin to making a rotten corpse even less sexy.

        And again, it became an even more exercise in merchandising. Signature characters are used even more willy-nilly, in places and situations that make no sense for them, like in bad fanfic.

        (Though if it makes anyone feel better, the actual game ignores not just the official lore, but also everything that their own tutorial told you half an hour ago.)

        So, well, I think all of us SW nerds can be excused for wishing for a SW game, not for SWG.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          I've been thinking about starting a new SWRiP MUD, mostly because I miss the piloting system. That thing was excellent.

          I'd like to see X-Wing Alliance in MMO form. Is that too much to ask? :(

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by cthulu_mt ( 1124113 )

      Just replace "Trek" with "Wars" and I'm sold. The space combat and personal combat scenarios in "Star Wars" are just too juicy, but, all things considered I'd probably want to actually role play in the Trek universe.

      Then replace "Star" with "Tek" and you'll have the greatest MMO of all time.

  • by FlyingSquidStudios ( 1031284 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:24AM (#24551875)
    is that you never make an entire planet feel ashamed right after first contact for not adhering to your superior future moral code. I mean that's basically the point of Star Trek.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )

      That's Picard/Janeway Star Trek. Most of us prefer Kirk Star Trek ("Shields Up! Not chess Mr. Spock, poker!").

    • by MindlessAutomata ( 1282944 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:36AM (#24551951)

      Hmmm... Star Trek takes place in a future where mankind has embraced socialism and lives in a utopia....

      Being contacted by smug socialists shaming you because you're not one? Yes, that's certainly new, certainly unheard of.

      • by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @01:11AM (#24552133) Homepage Journal

        Please. Socialism is about distributing wealth equally. Since there's no scarcity (everybody just gets what they need from the nearest replicator) there's no wealth either. Arguably that's Communism, except that government doesn't seem to have withered away. Supposedly all our social problems have gone away because everybody's "more evolved". Except that explanation is scientifically naive: evolution requires natural selection (which we stopped doing when we invented civilization), and doesn't necessarily make individuals morally better. Often the opposite.

        I'd call it Roddenberianism, which is defined as a system that makes everybody happy, but which nobody can tell you exactly how it works.

        • by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @01:21AM (#24552195) Journal

          Supposedly all our social problems have gone away because everybody's "more evolved"

          You may laugh, but that's exactly what many of the early Russian communists thought would happen.

        • by node 3 ( 115640 )

          evolution requires natural selection

          No, it doesn't. All it requires is some form of selection.

          which we stopped doing when we invented civilization

          Untrue as well.

          • +1 Technically Correct.

            Unfortunately, recent selection pressure in Western societies - particularly Europe, and most particularly in the UK - trend towards rewarding early-and-often breeding amongst those least fit to contribute to society. We're creating a new ruling elite from the dregs. It'll be interesting to see how long those of us who produce can go on supporting the consumers.

        • Well let's see, the replicator makes anything you could ever possibly need, so there's a good chunk of utopia right there.

        • by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 11, 2008 @01:56AM (#24552371)

          *ahem* Libertarian Socialist here.

          Socialism is about distributing wealth equally

          No, it's not. The bait-and-switch redefining of socialism was done by the Bolsheviks to seal their hold on power, and accepted by the western power elite for the same reason.
            Socialism is about people being in control of their own labor, by owning and controlling the means of production themselves.

            o If you have a set of tools and use that set yourself to make furniture which you sell, that's socialism.
            o If you hire someone else to make the furniture, and you take the money and give him back enough to live on, but not enough to buy his own tools, you have capitalism. *
            o If you have a set of tools and let your friends, neighbors, relatives, or whomever you trust borrow them to make furniture when you're not doing it, that's communism.
            o If you give your tools to the government so they can share them more fairly, that's state communism. It's also naive, since the government will quickly be occupied by people who are not going to share squat once they get their hands on everyone's stuff. (see: Soviet Russia, China, various other state "communist" nations.)

            Distributing wealth fairly (not necessarily equally) is a communist ideal.

          Supposedly all our social problems have gone away because everybody's "more evolved".

          In Star Trek's defense, they seem to postulate that psychiatry will make advances towards reliable treatment of abnormal behavior in the future. Someone who feels compelled to own more than he can possibly use is treated as normal, even desirable in modern consumerist society, but I'd say he's got a borderline hoarding disorder. There's not a lot of difference between a guy who spends every waking hour trying to find ways to increase the numbers in his bank account and the old lady who has 40 cats, IMO. (I recall a psychiatrist about ten years ago who had worked with a number of Donald Trump Fortune-500 types, who said the most striking thing about them was that they had no "inner lives," that is, they didn't go for walks in the park or kick back listening to music for an afternoon like normal people. They were utterly driven. They'd get up in the morning and immediately start making phone calls, because that was all they did.)
            If a hypothetical future psychiatry treats and cures such individuals, then a society designed to minimize their negative impact via pricing signals and other market forces becomes unnecessary. (Not that I believe it will, but it's possible.)

            * You might wonder why it works out so that the employee doesn't figure out some way to get the money to go into business for himself. It's due to the design of the unfree market -- capitalism can only function under certain unnatural economic conditions. The first thing that's done in a third world country when the WTO and World Bank come in to "modernize" their economy is to have the government rig the market in such a way as to create those conditions. This involves robbing people of self-sufficiency and driving them into desperation so they will accept a bad deal as the "best alternative available," as the sweatshop apologists love to say. Kevin Carson has some detailed analysis of this stuff over at mutualist.blogspot.com which I highly recommend.

            - mantar

        • Cultural evolution does not require biological evolution. That's why racism in the US was acceptable 50 years ago to the "establishment" and is, at least officially, no longer acceptable.

          Further, there is no reason to assume that other cultural imperfections cannot be overcome. In my view, consumerism can be replaced with a hybrid of socialist intent and capitalist mechanism. Energy resources can be shared through diplomacy and shared research for replacements rather than becoming the source of conflict and

        • by Urkki ( 668283 )

          Except that explanation is scientifically naive: evolution requires natural selection (which we stopped doing when we invented civilization), and doesn't necessarily make individuals morally better. Often the opposite.

          As long as children inherit the DNA from their parents (not necessarily fully true in a society with widespread, pervasive genetic engineering of all children), and as long as different people have different reproductive success, biological evolution will work on humans at full force.

          Only the selection criteria will be more complex than "likelyhood of being killed by X". Remember, it's not really about who lives, it's about who has children (that will have more children (that will have more children (that..

        • Except that explanation is scientifically naive: evolution requires natural selection (which we stopped doing when we invented civilization), and doesn't necessarily make individuals morally better.

          You have to remember the augments, WWIII and a miniature dark age happened before first contact and the formation of the federation.

          After that, while the genetic evolution might have been minor, social evolution happened. At least in Kirk's time, not being able to 'fix' somebody's antisocial tendencies was rare.

        • by AP31R0N ( 723649 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:22PM (#24556853)

          It works because envy and greed and want are largely eliminated. The elimination of those wouldn't be communism or socialism. Such systems would be rendered obsolete. There would be little desire to (re)distribute something if everyone has it. People who want for little are generally easy going. People who have hope for something better are usually well behaved. Maybe you didn't watch enough of the show to learn how it worked.

          Socialism is not about distributing wealth equally, even on paper. Please read up on what socialism IS before you talk about socialism. Germany, often described as socialist (though all countries are socialist to one degree or another {roads, public schools, cops}), does not try to make everyone equal. They just try to make sure that the disparity between the top and bottom isn't terrible. If you're sick in Germany, you go to the doctor. In the US, that's a privilege extended to those with (certain) jobs (not all jobs include benefits). Yet, it is still possible for someone through the sweat of their brow to become wealthy. Capitalism and socialism work beautifully together. But that's not what is going on in ST.

          Communism, socialism, capitalism and so are moot when there's no point in being greedy, or there is less to "need". Why charge so much for medicine that certain people can't afford it, if there is no scarcity of medicine?

          The social problems weren't described as evolution in the biological sense, they might have referred to it cultural evolution. The federation didn't have as many internal troubles as say, the Klingons. The federation didn't have as much external problems until something on the outside pushed in.

          "But but but how did they get there?", you blubber, pretending to not understand. Time, pain and technology. Time and pain taught that version of Earth that the cause of much of their problems was want and greed. The former is mostly the result of the latter. Pain of wars and crime eventually taught them these lessons. Technology makes civilization possible. It also makes morality feasible. In an every man for themselves struggle to survive, moral decisions are a luxury. i can worry about whether is it right or wrong to kill you and take your land if i'm starving. Where people perceive that they have hope for something better, they are less likely to take stupid risks, or feel that it is ok to take from others.

          The illusion of scarcity, or the sense that 'whoever dies with the most toys wins' drives most of the misery we see in the world. If i could get a Porsche from a replicator today, and get a Ferrari tomorrow, i would care far less about 'getting ahead'. i could put my time and effort into better things. Or do things and not worry about what it pays. It's the old "what would you do if you won the lottery?". i'd paint, write, travel, develop games, teach kids computers. i wouldn't be sitting in a cube farm working on TPS reports.

          What would you do if someone came along and paid off your mortgage? Or your landlord said you could live rent free? Such an event would effectively double my income. i could take a lower paying job that would give me more satisfaction. Or i could spend that extra money to take art and language classes. i could buy lego sets and give them to kids so they could have fun and learn spacial and engineering skills.

          If you find such a world hard to swallow, imagine how today's world would look to someone from 200 years ago. Marriages are for love? Blacks aren't farm equipment? Women leading nations? Widespread literacy? Conquest of weaker nations seen as bad? Some people of that time might see those as bad things, but i think their pretty groovy, and so would the people benefiting from those social evolutions.

      • by node 3 ( 115640 )

        I've yet to see a post calling someone smug that, itself, hasn't come across as smug.

      • Star Trek takes place in a future where mankind has embraced socialism and lives in a utopia....

        Who says it's a utopia? From what I remember there was very little time spent looking at civilian life. Sure everybody had their needs covered, but there was strict military and government control. Not everybody had their own starship, science projects could be hijacked for military purposes, and on a few occasions regular folk were allowed to die because some treaty said they weren't allowed to live on their

  • by Mike610544 ( 578872 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:30AM (#24551927)
    From what they haven't said about avoiding current MMO problems I picture it like this:

    NPC: Bring me 17 Tribble Scrotums.
    Player: Ok, here you go.
    NPC: Kill the renegade Klingon warlord.
    Player: Done.
    ... 49 levels later ...
    NPC: Invade the Borg ship and destroy it's power source.
    Player: Mission accomplished!
    NPC: uhh ... now just keep doing that again and again for increasingly diminishing rewards ....
    Player: but didn't I already ...
    NPC: SILENCE! Invade the Borg ship and ...
    • by Adriax ( 746043 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:47AM (#24552023)

      PC: 50 man borg cube raid fleet starting, need 37 more!

      Fleet commander: %$#@!! Who aggroed the drone nest!?! That's Negative 50 BKP!!!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Kingrames ( 858416 )

      Worse than that, the biggest problem is that all the green alien chicks are gonna be played by dudes.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Buran ( 150348 )

        Hey, I want to play this game and I'm really female in real life (down, boys!), but just for you, I'm not gonna play an Orion, if it turns out to be possible. :p

  • Platforms (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 11, 2008 @12:39AM (#24551981)

    Emmert said "Star Trek Online" would definitely be available for Windows PC and perhaps Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.

    Translation: your choice of Microsoft, Microsoft or rootkit-installing Sony.

    I'll pass on all 3 options, thanks.

    • Why? Name me an MMORPG that exists on the PC that could ever hope to fit inside the tiny amount of memory consoles have. Exactly, just one Final Fantasy. Ever seen that game? It is clear why it runs on consoles, the world is rather "smallish".

      If you look at other games like WoW or Lotro or Everquest etc etc with each update the potential memory requirements just goes up and up.

      Console games tend to get around the tiny memory on the hardware by having highly predicatable scenes where the designer limits wh

  • Makes me want to play netrek again. Where's my BerkRicksMoo client? Wonder if there are any Vanilla servers even still running.

    What are you looking at? Get off my lawn!

  • I hope others here also used to play the old Duris MUD. I did through multiple wipes, the brief excursion to Basternae, back to Duris, etc.

    Duris had a few elements done right.

    - Full pkill and ploot.
    - Fast and easy leveling.
    - Useful gear easily obtainable (necessary for full ploot).
    - Two distinct sides in combat with each other.

    And the truly unique thing that made Duris what it was:

    - One side is slightly more powerful than the other, but is far more difficult to level, live, etc, naturally keeping the popul

  • Space... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RobertM1968 ( 951074 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @01:06AM (#24552113) Homepage Journal

    I really loved some of the early Star Trek TOS games (like Judgement Rites) since they actually had a decent storyline. I would have loved to see something like Starfleet Academy ship-level control, integrated with a true story based scenario like Judgement Rites...

    But lately, the Trek game offerings seem to be lacking in that respect. So much so that I've stopped playing Star Trek games, and started to help Star Trek episodes instead...

    The place I work... (the Bridge of the TOS Enterprise) [startrekphase2media.com]

    If this game ends up being decent, then I guess I need to find time for both... I love video games too much not to.

    • by fm6 ( 162816 )

      I started to watch that. I couldn't get past the first five minutes. Would somebody please tell James Cawley that all that head motion looks really, really phony?

      Also, his barber really needs to find a new line of work.

      • LoL... his hair is that way because he works as an Elvis impersonator (one of the best) as his "day job".

        Have you checked out the latest episodes? "World Enough and Time" got nominated for a Hugo (and though we didnt win, we were the first "fan film" nominated). I thought the last two were great... joined the team after I saw "To Serve All My Days" - and the next 3 (which are in Post Production) I think are even better than the rest.

  • I would play this game just to be a jive talking womanizing Vulcan.
  • Isn't this all a little premature? He went into how shocking it was that he said it was going to be less than three years, but can't tell us more than that...

    • by Caraig ( 186934 )

      We should be glad it'll take more than two years. Can you imagine the piece of dreck they'd shovel out if they were trying to time it for the release of Abrams' Trek?

  • Ur-Quan Masters (Score:3, Informative)

    by dominique_cimafranca ( 978645 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @01:51AM (#24552351) Homepage

    Slightly off-topic but I just discovered Ur-Quan Masters, an old Star Trek-like RPG game that's pretty decent. Massive world to explore, engaging storyline. Open-source, too.

    It's a little old, but worth a look. http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

  • by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @03:07AM (#24552703) Journal

    The license trap is simple, HOW do you make an MMO game feel like the movies/book.

    To bodly go where no man has gone before? Eh, this is a MMORPG. Not only has everyone already been there, you probably have to que for the boss.

    Just how many Galaxy class starships are there going to be? How many horny vulcans and carebear klingon players are going to be running around?

    How do you make space combat feel like naval engagements rather then sluggish fighters most Star Trek games have so far chosen to emulate?

    It can be done, the original Star Trek RPG games were proper Star Trek (25th anniversary and Judgement Rites) but later games just wore Star Trek as a skin mod. But MMORPG have had a hard time with it so far.

    Star Wars Galaxies had lots of bugs to be sure but the major gripe was that it just wasn't Star Wars. For me the real killer was that Storm Troopers were insanely hard to kill while of course in the movies they die if you sneeze at them. I am also fairly sure Luke Skywalker never spend time beating up bunnies to get his knife skill up to scratch or mastered a dozen proffesions before becoming a Jedi. For that matter Han Solo wouldn't have been stopped and searched and nobody treated my noble character as a princess. Nobody ran away from my earlier Wookie either.

    Matrix Online was a dud, never played it so can't say if it was like the movies.

    Am playing Lord of the Rings Online and again, one of the things that make the game a bit of a hit and miss is that you just don't feel like one of the heroes from the book. Did Boromir constantly drop his weapon when fighting the orcs? Get knocked out every 30 seconds? Cower in fear? Fear, oh dear that was a stupid idea. You get Hope in safe areas where you don't need it but during the most tricky fights, hope is hard to come by and easily tripped. Oh yes, that makes me feel like a hero, slash half my health have me popping hope tokens on a 1hr cool down and spend most of the time cowering unable to move. Who is the hero NOW? PvP is even worse as monster players start at the highest level but a bit weaker but with killing other players gain ranks. Your average creep is now significantly more powerful then a freep. Yes, Lord of the Rings Online where the forces of darkness did not dare to move until they obtained a significant numerical advancement and sees small forces defeated by half a dozen free people has orcs/wargs/spiders that are more powerful then elves, by the truckload. Whoo!

    It is tempting to ride on an existing license but hard to live up to the expectations people have of that license. So far from watching this game and knowing the previous games the company has done I see no reason but to expect this to be one of the biggest disappointments in MMORPG history. Yes City of Heroes was a success and a nice twist on the genre BUT it is hardly a good basis for a Star Trek MMORPG.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      I am also fairly sure Luke Skywalker never spend time beating up bunnies to get his knife skill up to scratch or mastered a dozen proffesions before becoming a Jedi.

      No, but he does mention that he used to bullseye womp rats, so apparently at some point in his life he did spend time grinding womp rats to up his aiming skills...

  • RED FLAG! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by neokushan ( 932374 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @07:09AM (#24553767)

    Players will also be able to battle against other vessels in laser-blasting, missile-firing deep space scuffles reminiscent of "The Wrath of Khan" and the Dominion War in "Deep Space Nine."

    Yes, because those lasers and missiles were the key weapons in both of those events.
    If they don't know that phasers and torpedoes are two completely different things, I don't expect them to understand the various intricacies of the franchise.
    Oh well, a crap star trek game? At least it wont be disappointing, it's what we've come to expect.

  • I don't care who's captining the ship I want to re-route power from main engineering so fire a stream of einstinean particle from the buzzard collectors, or remodulate the ships power to be 180 deg out of phase (aka, sour the milk).
  • by NeuroManson ( 214835 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @11:58AM (#24556565) Homepage

    You start the game with default clothing, basic black slacks and a red shirt. Then you spend half the game trying to earn a different color shirt. Just like all the others, except more desperately.

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