New Star Trek MMOG Announced 302
jabagi writes "Perpetual Entertainment and Viacom decided to produce a Star Trek MMOG. Not many details yet, but beta will be available in 2006, and the game will be launched in 2007. Here is
the discussion on gamespy."
It's taken this long? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also another given would be an all Star Trek cable channel.
Not that I'm a huge fan, but I'm just pointing out "givens" where Paramount could squeeze yet another dollar out of the Trek world.
Oh God (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Better than the text adventure? (Score:3, Interesting)
check out the job requirements on perpetual's site (Score:5, Interesting)
# BS in Computer Science or equivalent.
# Must have extensive experience working in a senior programming role on a commercial game development team.
# Strong familiarity with PC development using C++.
# Familiarity with Linux programming.
# Experience developing networked game applications, preferably client-server.
# Has developed and documented technical designs.
# Has a love of gaming.
They make MMORPG's from anything... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm, to me this doesn't sounds like a game well suited for being a MMORPG. A Lord of the Rings MMORPG does, but not one where you command a (note: a) ship in a vast galaxy. Galaxies are mostly empty. How much socialization will be going on then? How immersive will the atmosphere be?
Will it consist of OMGLOLBBQ we met a Bird of Prey, kill them! OK, done, let's move on, then OMGLOL we must go look at the Borg Cubes? Possibly -- which makes me wonder why this is a MMORPG. Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time seeing how a game like this will make you go "WOW, what a vast cool world" if you'd be mostly just playing in a starship.
When even Star Wars Galaxies (which I think had better potential since SW is traditionally also a lot about the planets -- actual worlds) ended up pretty bad, I don't see how this game will not end up as just a cash cow attempt backed up by a powerful well-known label with no special spirit and immersiveness about it.
Re:check out the job requirements on perpetual's s (Score:5, Interesting)
# Familiarity with Linux programming.
At a rough guess I would say that this translates into a Windows client front-end (perhaps linux as well but less likely) and a Linux server backend (more than likely) for its stability and reliability.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Elite Force I & II and Star Trek Armada I & II
There. You now have four.
Re:Aagh. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have two predictions: (Score:3, Interesting)
2) This game does make it out of beta and gets slaughtered by EQ and DAOC.
I like Star Trek and all, but the MMORPG market isn't exactly the easiest one to work in.
Star Trek MMORPG wish-list (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Don't over-emphasise the combat on planet surfaces. Galaxies made this mistake big-time, to the extent that this was basically the only thing in the game on release. Traditional, Everquest-style MMORPG combat, be it PvE or PvP has been done to death by virtually every MMORPG around. I don't personally see anybody beating FFXI's system for this at any time in the immediate future; it's way ahead of the competition in terms of depth and polish. Better to play to the license's strengths and focus on other areas.
2) From what I've seen, the Universe lends itself pretty well towards a sensible PvP arrangement. The Trek universe always struck me as quite rigidly controlled and policed, albeit with darker fringes. Just make it so that the "core worlds" are non-PvP (or PvP harshly punished by NPCs) and the outer fringes are less restricted. I hear EVE Online already has a vaguely similar system.
3) I want to be able to buy, crew and run a ship with my friends. I'm not saying "I want to be Captain of the Enterprise", but rather that I want to be able to be a crew-member on an independently operating ship, with "real people" as my crew-mates. Maybe they could let people progress through skill-trees in... say... navigation, gunnery, sensor use etc and make it so that you need a balance of skills to run a ship. Obviously, as you make more cash, you should be able to get better ships, as well as bigger ships, which might require a larger crew. There should be the option for very high level players of being able to develop your character and your crew towards running either a battlecruiser or a supertanker. I don't want the game to be dominated by people running around in 1-player fighters or, worse still, 1 player battlecruisers. Boarding operations during ship-to-ship combat could be a fun alternative to planet-side combat.
4) Please, for the love of god, take a fairly distant approach to the license. Put the usual planets and races in there, by all means. Tie it generally to a point in the time-line. But don't get into a situation where you're saying "we can't do this because it doesn't fit wit this stage of the timeline". Galaxies has suffered because of the inevitable tensions created by making the Jedi the most desired class during a time-span where there are only supposed to be a couple of Jedi.
If they don't screw up, it could be a good game. (Score:5, Interesting)
Crafting would allow the construction of weapons, ship gear, maybe even androids. Lot of possibilites.
There could be trading between different civilizations, exploration missions given to the public (that will turn bad of course with baddies to kill). Ownership could be in the form of space ships. One could trade legally or illegaly. Plenty of choices.
Not to mention, the countless spying agencies could be used as an excuse for PvP. Or archeological dig races or whatnot.
They have lot of good material from wich a good MMOG could be made. Let's hope they avoid the pitfalls of SWG: the total lack of Star Wars feel. They already have the templates for the classes, no need to re-invent the wheel:
Tank - Security guys (Worf).
Ranger - User of phasers (Picard).
Cleric - Medics (Crusher).
Wizard/Mage - Betazoids or other telepaths (Troy).
Some other class - The techie people (Laforge)
They got a very rich universe.
Re:Preview of game play (Score:3, Interesting)
No MMOG will easily get rid of the idiots though, because if they pay, the company involved doesn't wan't to get rid of them. Maybe a MMOG with a
Suddenly all those players really do become rabble that you neither care about or even really hear. Of course it may get pretty lonely.
Starship Crew (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems it would require much more cooperation than is normally required by the typical clan on other games.
It would also be interesting aboard Klingon ships if one could advance in rank simply by beating one's superior officer. Hopefully they will allow this sort of flexibility.
I think this one has potential.
Re:Who cares? (Score:2, Interesting)
I think there was another point and click ST game, but I don't remember the name right now.
Re:set phasers to dumb (Score:1, Interesting)
Look at EQ2, featuring voice on almost all NPCs for the first time ever in a MMORPG.
Voice... talking on npc's. That's where we are.
MMORPGs have a LONG way to go. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Feeling left out (Score:2, Interesting)
I think that these MMOG do more harm than good for gaming - they cause the acceptance of subscription based software (can't play off-line - Can't play unless you play). And they spell the death of many genres of games that really can't be made into MMOG.
Me? I shut off Doom 3 for a bit and have playing X-Com for the past week - To tell you the truth - I'm having a hell of a lot more fun playing X-Com.
Great potential - most likely wasted (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a game where everyone started out as characters in the ENT (or even ST:FC) era. Imagine them having adventures that took them into the 23rd, then 24th centuries (changing characters as necessary
Imagine players having the opportunity to shape history by partaking in or deciding the outcomes of, key events like the Federation/Klingon wars, Wolf 359, first contact with Cardassians, discovery of the transporter or deflector etc.
Imagine playing the character responsible for introducing TOS-style uniforms into the game, or the character who discovered transwarp, or the character who introduced the Akira-class ship into the fleet, or the character who was responsible for holding AR-558 before Sisko's arrival or
Eventually, sure, the future history would outstrip the "documented" canon but that wouldn't happen for a few years and the servers could either be re-set or the history extended. (Server launches could be staggered so that there would be a choice of eras for people to play in, for those who were determined to stick to one timeline.)
But given that MMORPG game design is based on the principle of maintaining the status quo while only giving the illusion of advancement and change, this isn't going to happen.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no clue what it's called, but when I was a kid, there was a local tv channel that hosted "video games" that you could play by touchtone phone after dialing the game number.
Only one person could play at a time, BUT all the games were crappy except a Star Trek game, and it was pretty easy to play late at night or very early in the morning.
It was turn-based, and the ships, stars, starbases, etc, were represented by a letter on a square grid, ie E for the Enterprise, K for a klingon ship, * for a star...
It was a very fun and decent game for the times.
Re:Great potential - most likely wasted (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally I would actually like to be apart of a MMORPG that develops its own plot, (kinda of like Matrix Online), and I would think that this could help out other series that where not popular (at least in the eyes of TV Executives) who could garner more cash to become profitable agian so they can be brought back to TV (Firefly comes to mind, who wouldn't jump at the oppertunity to put together there own rag tag bunch of Sernitiy-ique crew, and fly around the galaxy??? Though I think there would be way too much compition for Kaylee among the geeks in such a MMORPG
Its probably way to idealistic to hope that an MMORPG could be used to help fund a series that otherwise would not be able to air on TV. I know a lot of people, with semi recent cancling of Farscape and Firefly, have expressed interest in some for of alternate funding for a series that may have a strong following, but not as strong as TV executives would like.
Re:If they don't screw up, it could be a good game (Score:3, Interesting)
For me, the problem with swg wasn't the lack of ambiance, rather, it was the lack of any meaningful content in a static world. All NPC missions boiled down to kill this, or escort that. The civil war mean't nothing. You could literally kill 10,000 rebels but it would make no difference. Everything felt generic. Worlds were huge with nothing in them. The profession based character system sucked cause you capped out after a short amount of time. So you mingled with different classes which turned out to be "grind 100 components" or "kill 50 worts". My personal favorite aspect of the game was group hunting but that died with solo groups (aka - people grouping for higher mission payouts, but doing it by themselves) At the end of the day, all that SWG boiled down to was PvP clusterfuck with Jedi being the trump card. Everyone wants Jedi so they can kick everyone else's ass. Sony knows this. It's all they ever advertise.
</rant>
here's a challenge for the designers... (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted you aren't very familiar with Star Trek, nor am I. But, your post reminded me of something that will pose a unique challenge to this game---
Obviously, as you make more cash, you should be able to get better ships
In ST:Next Generation, there are a few episodes where they talk about how human society has developed in tandem with technology to the point that resources are no longer a problem. As a result, there isn't a place for money or wealth as a motivation for human characters in the series. I wonder if the game could be similarly inspired such that players aren't trying to simply horde dubloons or whatever.
Re:stab at this (Score:4, Interesting)
The best thing for an MMORPG that you care about is to find some mechannic that makes the game interesting, but makes it very very difficult to powergame and bowl over other players. It's bad enough in a system where you don't have PvP. It's even worse when someone can waltz up and shellack you for no reason whatsoever. You spend hours and hours learning the ropes, getting reasonably good at the game, dying embarrassingly to a number of mobs, all for what? To be killed by some leet-speak-babbling, profanity-spewing, whiny little PGer who probably hasn't graduated from junior high yet? How long are you really going to want to spend on a game where some 1337 d00d can and will PK you?
World of Warcraft had a good thing with the enforced rest. It's just a shame that the people who only wanted to level up and be the uber-PKinators raised such a huge stink about it that Blizzard had to remove it form the Beta.
A Trek MMORPG would need something good to allow it to compete with the slew of MMORPGs out there. Unfortunately the Trek franchise lends itself to reasonably good role-playing for the most part; at it's very best it can be rousing sci-fi action with moral and ethical questions thrown in. But, I don't think it'll do too well as a MMORPG where the goal of most of the players is to level up, become "uber", beat all the named monsters and get the rare drops, and rub other peoples' faces in it.
This has the potential... (Score:2, Interesting)
slap a new gui on tradewars and call 'er done (Score:2, Interesting)
#1 bbs door (boy, that's a word i ain't
used in a while) of all time in my book. ^_-
a webpage ever made it past beta. not sure.
http://www.classic-games.com/tradewars/
-g
First step, remove PVP. (Score:2, Interesting)
However I don't believe the haxor speech is prevalent in MMOGs but I do see it a lot on MMOG message boards, especially those that are PVP.
Re:Better than the text adventure? (Score:1, Interesting)
The fact that it's there at all.
I've been on TOS Trekmuse since 1992. Back in the day, you'd have 50-100 people at any given time, divided amongst empires, interacting in a variety of political, social, economic and of course, militaristic ways.
The lack of bells and whistles and giant graphical clients meant players had to put more of their own imagination into the game. (And at this time, processor power was just reaching that threshhold where you could run a multi-user space simulation 'in the background'). That reflected in very entertaining game play for the most part.
The advent of photorealistic FPS games with network play cut into the MUD/MUSH/MUSE scene hard. RTS games followed. For some reason, simulation games haven't quite caught the same momentum as the other genres yet, but there are examples out there, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time. Consequently, I've watched the player levels of TOS Trekmuse dwindle every year. And I can't count the number of MU* that have simply ceased to exist as players move on to other things.
That being said, if you're willing to invest some time and creativity, TOS Trekmuse can be a very rewarding gameplay experience. I know every there is looking at this sudden influx of interest from this /. post as an opportunity to grow the playerbase. There's a critical mass of players that make games like this really take off, and they're not far off from that number.
So I too would like to invite you all to check it out, ask around and see if it's a diversion you'd enjoy putting your time into.
Also, for the Unix/Linux users, I highly recommend using the tinyfugue (tf) client vs. raw telnet. You can find tf in most distributions, or at http://tf.tcp.com/~hawkeye/tf/ [tcp.com]
Re:Preview of game play (Score:3, Interesting)
I've never been able to work out the numbers though. Say I hired you fulltime, to do dungeonmaster duty on such a game. Just what sort of salary/wages should you earn, if you do the job well?
Also, assuming you had some kickass tools (multiple monitor setup, and custom apps that let you keep track of many players at once), just what do you think is possible?
A few ideas... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, what does that mean? "Your" ship could be one you own or one you work on as part of it's crew. Though, I do not believe there should be an absolute requirement for all stations to be manned by real players. The crew could be a mix of NPCs and players. You're home point would be your personal quarters. When you log in you could "relieve" the NPC that was running your station and when you log out the NPC relieves you. That way, you ship can still function when only a few of your buddies are available. Or better yet, let the captain do some grunt work and get the ship to a certain point before you log on. :) You could run the ship with just one person, but not well. Through abilities your character can eventually do the job better than the NPCs.
What about captain? Do we just let anybody be a captain? On civilian ships, sure....why not?? However, if you want to be a Captain in Starfleet.....that's another matter. It definately needs a ranking system of some sort, at least for the military ships. Obviously, it would be different between the empires. I think any Klingon can gain command of a ship simply defeating the current captain in one-on-one hand-to-hand combat.
However, there are some serious things to decide. What do you do when your ship is destoryed? Oh, you just respawn the ship at the last starbase? Are you and your crewmantes cloned? And in point 4, what part of the timeline is the game set in? Here is where you run into problems if you allow ships to explore the galaxy. Eventually, it will all be explored. Or one empire will be destroyed or something like that. If the system is inflexable, the players actions do not matter, then why bother making a MMO game when a single player game will suffice? Like Starfleet Academy. (BTW, Starfleet Academy was a great game. I'd like to see a new version of that with updated graphics, more multiplayer support, more interactive environments in space. Nebula, solar flares, asteroids. Maybe some kind of "away mission" support.) Anyway, there are a bunch of dangers that could easily make a StarTrek MMO game stink. I wish them Good Luck.