One of my personal life goals was to be in a beta for a game. Yes, I shoot high on my goals. Among the others is teaching myself to play the lute/ocarina/fiddle to help my D&D characterizations when I play a bard, and writing game reviews for a website. So when I was asked to play the Star Trek Online beta for a bit, I was thrilled. I love Star Trek (owing this to a long term of unemployment combined with Star Trek marathons on daytime TV) and I love MMOs. The problem with the current MMO landscape, however, is that many cannot compare to World of Warcraft, the virtual Walmart that dominates over all of the other, smaller local niche stores.
And from my time playing STO, I can say one thing – this game has the potential to compete with WoW. The quests are episodic, like the show, so you have a quest chain all relating to one issue. My first non-tutorial quest: my Vulcan Science Officer, Virot, saw myself traveling with my crew to a disabled cruiser attacked and overrun by Orion thugs. After dispatching the raiders’ fleet around the ship, I beamed aboard with my Tactical Officer and some redshirts to clear out the Orion boarding party.
After clearing out the boarding party, it was revealed that the warp core on the ship was close to overloading, so I quickly beamed the surviving crewmen aboard my ship, the USS Divergence, and defended the dangerous ship from more Orions, to give the captain time to get things together onboard. Just as the ship reached critical mass, I beamed the captain onboard the Divergence and cleared the blast area. Were you excited reading that? Because I was writing it. The quest chain took an hour, but it’s so fast-paced and exciting that it felt like ten minutes.
Ship combat looks to be tons of fun, too, flying about enemy ships and tactfully phasering down shields and torpedoing their hulls is exciting, and sets the tone of the quests perfectly. It also requires a little strategy, turning the ship different directions to avoid the hull being torpedoed. It’s fun and interesting.
Strategy also comes into play in ground combat – you can set your individual NPC Officers to different spots to create flanking and ambushes and things.
Let’s just say that in February, there might be a sizable buzz from the Star Trek and gamer community, because this game can hit all the right spots for so many. Check it out when it launches, I promise you that it will rock, and Star Trek knowledge is not required. See you in sector space!
by 
January 15, 2010 at 7:29 am
Nice,definately see you in sector space in my vor’cha
January 15, 2010 at 1:43 pm
terrible review
January 15, 2010 at 10:40 pm
as a beta player off sto and and x wow player for over 4 years …all i can say is WoW ? now what was that game again.
January 16, 2010 at 3:35 am
Playing here in Open Beta. Sorry but this game does not have the potential to compete with WoW. Just check out the forums for that.
January 16, 2010 at 5:42 pm
I have to agree, I’ve been playing the beta and just unlocked the Klingon’s! Love my Cloaking Device! And the Lifetime Subscription option is great I’m totally going for that option!
January 16, 2010 at 10:45 pm
I agree this game has the stuff to seriously challenge any of the big MMO’s
I just finished a team mission with my RL friend (we live 300mi apart) and we both beamed down as a way team in the game,it was great.
January 17, 2010 at 2:39 am
the game is very buggy and everybody gets the same useless items. there is no endgame too. sto does not have a direction. 5/10, game is dead after 3 months.
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January 17, 2010 at 7:50 am
Warcraft beater??? Probably not. I don’t say this as a fan of warcraft, but as a realistic player of sto. I accept that the game is still in open beta and that the finished article will be a largge expansion on what i’m playing now, but it is all very linear for me. so far i’ve found that as klingon i have loads of pvp fun but nothing much in the line of decent ‘quests’ and as federation it’s all missions and so far no pvp. As i said this is still beta testing and will probably be resolved when they open up fully. It’s also fair to say that multiplayer missions are good fun, but early on everybody is essentially in the same ships and co-op play is largely just a case of staying together and firing weapons. For one who spent 4 yrs playing EVE with it’s massive 300 ship space battles and it’s single instance rather than a whole load of seperate ones it seems a little disjointed. Personally i’ve had a few niggling issuees with random disconnects, but i’m sure they will become less frequent given time.
As i said , i don’t believe this game has a chance at knocking WOW off the top spot, but it does have a certain niche following and a good mix of space/ground combat and missions which is refreshing to see. I’d rate the game in it’s current state at a solid 7/10 reservedly seeing as that there is currently a lvl cap at lvl 16 and there is much more to come once the full game is opened up
January 17, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Playing here in Open Beta. Sorry but this game does not have the potential to compete with WoW. Just check out the forums for that. <- now this type of comment does not even for one bit make any sense. check out the forums? dude are u serious most forums just whine about everything. and seriously give this game five years like WoW and it will top that game in a heartbeat. most ppl are not considering the fact that WoW started out with a bunch of glitches and bugs i closed and open beta for the game and played for five years. i can say for one thing even STO Dev team in on the job better than that of WoW dev team. I give this game two thumbs up for the great job they are trying so damn hard to do. And by the way WoW is just repeating itself for anyone who played pre bc
January 18, 2010 at 12:41 pm
Yeah, this game is great and can sure compete with WoW!
January 18, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Ok I’ve just gotta say a few things.
Beta = unfinished.
The game, is unfinished. Yes, its near release, but the version of the game we’re playing = beta
Secondarily, I remember when WOW came out- it was buggy as hell. This one will be too.
If you expect it, its less forum whining for all to see.
Goes with the territory with a new MMO release.
I also played Eve from 2003- for about 4 years.
Back then- big fleet battles killed the nodes we were in. It was a lag fest. We spent more time watching a game like a power point slide deck than we actually spent playing it.
I guess one way to put it, the things I didnt like about Eve- was the tediousness. Mining asteroids.. carrying said ore back to station. Refining, trying to find a blueprint. Trying to find a manufacturing station, training up manufacturing skills, manufacturing ship. grrr…
For many- that’s the game.
For me, it was about being in a space ship blowing things up. (no I dont have ADHD, but I know what’s fun for me)
That’s precisely what STO is about- blowing things up, going down to a planet as an away team, and blowing things up (something you could never do in Eve.)
Basically things that agitated me about Eve are gone, the things I enjoyed are there- (done in a different way of course).
Just my 2 cents