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Captain's Log: Three months of Star Trek Online
Welcome, one and all, to another edition of Captain's Log, our weekly column on everyone's favorite Star Trek MMO, Star Trek Online. I'm afraid I must renege once again on my promise to tackle the Klingon beginner experience. But I forgot that Cryptic Studios' latest MMO will be 3 months old this Sunday! That's right! STO launched a whopping three months ago, on Feb. 2, 2010. Why, it feels like just yesterday that my newly created Bajoran Science Officer took his first laggy footsteps on Earth Starbase in search of Commander Sulu. As we are wont to do with our favorite games here at Massively, let's look back at STO's first few months and take stock of its past, present and future.
Captain's Log: The advisory council and fan service in Star Trek Online
Hard to port! Disruptors on full! Fire the tachyon beam! Oh, hello again. Welcome back to Captain's Log, Massively's weekly -- y'know what, hang on. These Cardassians are being a real pain in the toukas. Yes, Ensign, some torpedoes would be fabulous right about now. And you wonder why I haven't promoted you. Sorry about that. This is Captain's Log, where I administer your weekly dose of Star Trek Online news, analysis and meaningless conjecture every Thursday. At least until the Massively overlords relegate me to the spice mines of Kessel. Oh, wait... After discussing Season One and the joy of Fleet Actions, I have two items on this week's agenda. First, I thought I'd introduce myself! It's silly to read the Captain's Log without knowing who the captain is, right? After that I'll discuss STO's hot topic du jour, the Advisory Council, and whether fan service will kill or save Cryptic's spacefaring MMO.
Star Trek Online: wouldn't you like to be a Klingon too?
Craig Zinkievich covered a great deal of new information about Star Trek Online in his interview with Eurogamer yesterday, including the burning question "Can I play a Klingon? I want to wield a Bat'leth!" Well, you can. It turns out that Cryptic has put a great deal of thought into this, offering full character advancement as a Klingon and a "drastically different" playing experience.Klingon gameplay is initially locked, requiring some time to open it, but Zinkievich says it's "not deep in the game." Once unlocked, the Klingon faction will be less story driven than the Federation story line. "The content that they will be experiencing is a lot more focused on PvP -- fighting the Federation, fighting House versus House within the Klingon empire. So it is a full-on character with advancement, with items, with bridge officers as well," says Zinkievich.While the overall Klingon arc in the game is that of a "bad guy," there will be chances for the Klingon and Federation sides to work together, as well as some good Klingons in the federation. "You can't really make a Star Trek game these days without allowing people to live out their Worf fantasy," said Zinkievich.He goes into further detail in the full interview.
Famous Star Trek faces won't appear in Star Trek Online
Make no Bones about it, folks -- memorable faces from the Star Trek universe won't be making an appearance in Cryptic's upcoming final frontier MMO, Star Trek Online. In a recent interview with MTV Multiplayer, STO executive producer Craig Zinkievich explained that the game takes place "in the future where the majority of the known characters have passed on." Except for the ones that are robots, or holograms, or ghosts. Or all three!Don't think that Cryptic's issued themselves a license to kill canon -- Zinkievich (a shoe-in for Joystiq's Surname of the Year award) claims that the STO dev team has been in talks with folks who've been involved in the franchise to make sure they don't cut any corners, or crush any anticipation-filled Trekkie hearts. We've submitted our own terrifyingly erotic fan fiction to their think tank -- hopefully, it'll make it into the final product.
