First Impressions: Star Trek Online
By maryvarn on January 26th, 2010Posted In: First Impressions,NPC Blog,Polls
First Impressions is a regular feature in which Mary shares her -surprise! – first impressions of a game she’s been playing while she should have been making comics.
World of Warcraft was the only MMO I’ve ever played – until this weekend. I’ve been anticipating the launch of STO for a while, and even guested on an STO Radio podcast in the fall. But I completely dropped the ball about getting a preorder in so I could play the open beta, which ends today. I frantically ordered and downloaded the digital deluxe version from Steam on Friday night, and got a few hours of play time in this weekend. Why the rush? Well I’m interested in the lifetime subscription preorder deal, which expires Feb 1st, the day before the game officially launches. It’s $239 for the ability to play as long as the game is around, and includes two more character slots (STO is stingy with those – only 2 to start with!), and – the real kicker – playable liberated Borg. Of course, there’s no guarantee that they won’t offer the Borg as an available species later on. But it certainly is tempting, especially if the game has staying power. Playing for 2 years would mean a monthly price of $10 instead of the $15 they’ll charge for a normal month-to-month subscription.
But does it have staying power? Unfortunately I really wasn’t able to assess that in my first few hours of play. I can tell you I want to play more. A lot more. I might as well tell you up front, I’m a fan of the franchise. Trekkie, Trekker, whatever they call it these days. I admit I haven’t seen every episode of every series – except The Next Generation. Data, Captain Picard, goofy beardy Riker – I’m all about it. I watched every episode as it came out with my family and best junior high school bud, and then again on reruns. And even though I admit that the last movie featuring the TNG crew was pretty terrible, it still moved me to tears. I’m telling you this because I really have no idea if someone new to the franchise will appreciate this game. In fact, I’m kind of skeptical they will. (But what do I know? Check out Kyle Horner’s Non-Trekkie Guide to STO on Massively.)
I started the game with a series of quick tutorial missions that taught me how to move around, shoot my enemies, use kits (which seem to be belts that give you fun new abilities), and deal with space combat. A lot of it was basically, “Go over there and press ‘F’,” since that’s the key to interact with things like consoles or devices. But it was quick and fun and was telling a story, and I didn’t mind that I basically just had to press ‘F,’ or sometimes ’1,’ ’2,’ ’3′ to shoot some Borg baddies. It was a great preview to what I hope will be good story content.
The real fun for me started with the space combat. When I first heard this would be a huge part of the game, I was skeptical. To me Star Trek is about the characters and exploration. Not so much on the shooting stuff. But wow. I’m blown away. Cryptic really managed to capture the Trekiness of starship tactics. It’s all about allocating power between different parts of the ship, balancing your four shields for maximum defense, and exploiting your enemies’ weaknesses. There’s a lot I have to learn about it, but so far it feels like I’m making similar decisions the crew of the Enterprise were forced to make. And topped off with a space battle soundtrack, I’m living the show.
Another aspect I’m loving is the skill customization. Again, I’m barely scratching the surface of the game, but it seems like you can really fine tune your character, your bridge officers, and your ship with all kinds of weapons, skills, kits, and the character traits you choose at the outset of the game.
As for my gripes, there’s an overall lack of the epic treatment I expect from an IP like this one. Not any cut scenes to speak of, except a brief voice over from Leonard Nimoy as I arrived in sector space. Maybe they’ll spice it up after release, or maybe I haven’t gotten far enough. When I arrived in the Sol space station, I was running around trying to find an admiral’s office to get orders, and discovered a bank and an auction house (the exchange). I realized that this station serves the same function as a city in WoW. But it’s kind of…boring. When I first set my little gnome foot in Ironforge, I oohed and aahed. Maybe it’s unfair of me to compare a space station to an ancient mining Dwarf city, but I was disappointed just the same.
Also, I hate bumping into people. I vastly prefer the WoW way of being able to run through other characters. I don’t care if it doesn’t make any reality-based sense. It’s convenient. How do other MMOs handle that?
So…..I still haven’t decided if I’m going to take the plunge on the lifetime subscription. I’m about 67% in favor of doing it right now. I’ll let you know what I decide. In the meantime, look! It’s a poll! Vote up. And if you’re interested in starting the game, it looks like Massively has been doing some nice coverage and guides. Adam Holisky from WoW.com even started a Star Trek Online: 101 feature.
I really really liked Star Trek, still my parents decided against a tv so I watched elsewhere. Anyway I wasn’t that big fan that watched all of the episodes, but I guess I watched around half of them. As I said, I really liked Star Trek. I preordered STO as well, and it indeed is fun for a while, I even play with friends from time to time … BUT (and here it comes) all of us are under the impression, that there isn’t really much to do when you finally hit max-level. We do play games very … well … efficiently so I had my third ship (ensign->lieutnant->lieutnant commander->commander (3)), and now it’s like reaching lvl 45 in WoW, it’s that time where you notice that everything repeats itself, quests follow the same scheme all over … of course, the story goes on … but I really cannot imagine what happens, when I hit max-level.
I will definitely not purchase a life subscription, I guess I’ll even play the game way shorter than hellgate london (which is getting revived … Zombie?!). But that’s my opinion of course.
And finally things that have to be said: I like the webcomics, I don’t like the new style yet. (Before it had a warm touch of … hrm … blue bubble gum, now it’s just another blog, sry ._. )
Sorry you don’t like the new site design.
Been playing the beta, won’t be getting a lifetime subscription because I can’t afford it. I would if I could though. That option was missing from your poll =(
I grew up with Next Generation, like you, but recently I watched all of the episodes of the original series after borrowing them from a friend. Awesome, I’ve gotta say. I’m really looking forward to learning as much as I can about this game and how its skills and stats function. And I really hope that it doesn’t fail like Champions did. It has a lot of potential, and the space battles are amazing.
Sorry, I’m new to this poll thing. I’ll try to be more thoughtful about the answer options in the future. But I think answering “I’ve been playing beta. Not sure about a lifetime subscription.” would cover it.
Hello, I’m trying to get a lifetime subscription, but have problems with Paypal and no credit card. If it doesn’t work, I’m going crazy like a Klingon who’s locked into a room with quadrotriticale and a bunch of tribbles.
So far the game was great, there was only one episodic mission that really annoyed me because it made my character look dumber than a brick. 
But the rest was great, and the game probably will become even better over time. The worst thing about STO is Cryptic’s information policy. For example you start the tutorial with a phaser and get a phaser rifle later for the second weapon slot. Yesterday, one day before the beta ends I read in the forum that they have a martial arts combo system for unarmed strikes…. And the funny thing is that I skilled martial arts all the time while thinking rifle butt, palm strike and the things you get from martial arts kits were everything I could do with it.
You actually bump into the other characters…? In the main MMO I play (and every other one I have), you just run straight through. Curious as to how lag factors into that.
Asheron’s Call had solid enemies (You could pass through friendly players). It was actually very weird to me that you ran through everything in World of Warcraft. I thought it was more interesting in Asheron’s Call, because crowded places were actually crowded. If a space was packed with monsters, you cut through them. You did not run into their center to AoE, or simply run through/past them. You could create literal shield walls too, of melee characters in a hallway or small space protecting the caster’s behind them. It had some interesting effects in PvP too, though not enormous.
Most MMOs use the “non-solid players” method, but as noted above, STO isn’t the only one which doesn’t. The big problem is actually not lag, the problem is griefers. At least one game I’ve played (I, um, don’t actually remember which one) which had solid chars had problems with people blocking exits or crowding around merchants/vendors so you couldn’t get to them, and so forth. Parking on top of the quest giver and going AFK. Stuff like that. People are jerks.
If I had the time and energy and money for another MMO, it would be this one.
Northrend, if I had the $240 for a lifetime subscription, I’d get one. But there’s no way right now.
Do not waste your money on STO please, it only encourages “Wacky” Jack E. to make more craptastic games. In all fairness the ship combat is kinda fun. However the ship combat, while still using the champions engine, plays like a stripped down version of Pirates of the Burning Sea. Getting a lifetime sub for STO as opposed to a 1 year sub is a real waste considering the game(much like champions and most recent sub based mmos) will last for at most 18 months before they decide to cut their losses and terminate the game
Age of Conan has solid players, although there is a Crouch move that you can do, which slows your movement but allows you to pass through/under other players and NPCs. It isn’t a big problem in the game, and adds to more of the gritty realism (like gore and partial nudity) that differentiates AoC from more tween-friendly games like WoW.
A friend of mine used to tell a story about I believe Everquest, which also had solid players. One of the character classes could Charm animals, so they used to routinely summon hundreds of sheep and park them in front of the bank. Toons would try and wade through the sheep herd, but they could barely move so it took forever. Meanwhile, invisible rogues in the middle of the herd would pick their pockets…
Lord of the Rings Online also has a lifetime subscription option, which is still available post-launch.
I guess I am just more harsh than everyone else – I was VERY excited for this MMO and preordered the deluxe version. I am a Mac user and installed BootCamp on my machine for the first time (after installing a larger hard drive to accommodate another OS) and waited for the beta launch.
My impressions are this: The game is slow and complicated.
Space battles are hard to control and mostly consist of hitting 1, spacebar, 2. while turning your ship slowly so your shields don’t deplete on the side that you’re being fired on. You fly incredibly slowly except in the warp space.
There are too many options for upgrades, food, leveling – as a newbie to the game it’s just overwhelming. I thought that I’d be making my character a medical officer, but it seems that I got a science officer later that did the medical stuff for me. I have no idea what’s important – like, do I want resistances to Psionic telepathy? How often am I going to encounter that?
The ground battles are also weird and frustrating. There are so many baddies and again, you just hit 1, 2, 3, until they’re dead.
I also hated bumping into things. That was really annoying.
Randomly you get thrown into groups for missions, some don’t make sense to be grouped for (escort the transport ship – nothing even attacked us). You don’t know you’re going to be in a group, there’s no “raid marks” to coordinate the attack (when all three ships are called “Orion vessel” it’s kinda hard to know what to attack).
I don’t know what I was expecting, but I guess between school and WoW, I didn’t enjoy it enough to decide to play it. I canceled my preorder.
I will likely buy it again in the summer once they’ve worked out a lot of the kinks and it plays more like an established MMO. But you can bet I will not be spending $200 on a lifetime membership for something that I don’t see why it has to be an MMO (can’t I fly around and land on planets and be told a story in a normal game? Give me a ST: RPG for $50 and call it a day) and will likely not get sucked into anywhere near as much as other games like WoW, Civilization, Final Fantasy, or the Sims did.
I’m not impressed by STO. The main problem I have with it is the lack of polish. The level of quality and reliability has been raised very high by Blizzard. If a company can’t provide a game without the same level of speed, reliability, and polish at launch it’s not worth my time.
I also tried Warhammer Online and that game has the exact same problem that STO has. I went back for a week to Warhammer and the lag is still there along with the lack of polish I have come to expect after playing WoW.
I was excited about it as well until I played the beta. I pre-ordered the game and canceled the order after playing the game and exploring the content. I might be missing some spectacular end game stuff but if I am I’m sure I’ll hear about it through the grapevine.
Love the space combat, very much a Star Trek feel to it. I flew an Escort in the beta, and it was a blast. I hear Science ships are a load of fun, and Cruisers are a solid wall of phaser banks and shield arrays.
Ground combat was my least fun part, because the enemies were bullet sponges, I had to blast a klingon like 15 times with my phaser rifle before he went down. Just my opinion, but shouldn’t phasers be a little more powerful than a pellet gun?
Would never play it, if you want a real space MMO go play EVE Online.
WoW…that trailer was even better when I was listening to Towers of the teeth… It really was epic… Ugh..Now I want to try out Lord of the Rings Online (hint*hint)