Star Trek Online is finally ready to go, and launch is imminent. The webcast countdown timer is at 1 day, 23 hours, and right around 50 minutes right now. With a just in time release for Gencon Cryptic Studios Jack Emmert, Chief Creative Officer had this to say:

"You'll venture through space exploring new civilizations and life-forms," said Emmert. "You'll also beam down to planets and have adventures inside your ship. It's a galactic-wide game. There's going to be tons of space to investigate. We have a great system for exploration, which will allow for almost infinite possibilities."

In a sweepstakes ending on August 17th Five lucky winners will receive a free copy of Star Trek Online along with a lifetime subscription to STO.

To enter, all you have to do is register as a member of the Star Trek Online community by 11:59 p.m. PDT on August 17, 2008, and click the sweepstakes link. The winners will be chosen at random on or about August 25, 2008, and will be notified by e-mail and/or overnight mail on or about August 28.

Sweepstakes Registration link
http://www.startrekonline.com/sweepstakes

Star Trek Online Official Website link
http://www.startrekonline.com/

Warp Speed... Engage!

For the record, Just to let you know how old this Captain is, the first time GameDaddy played the Star Trek MMO was in 1980 on a PdP workstation linked to a VAX 11/750 at Digital Equipment Corporation, Woot!

I think the graphics have improved considerably since those days of yore, except maybe on Klingon Birds of Prey!

Eh.  I lost interest back before the acquisition when as a last ditch effort they claimed to have remade the game into WoW in Space.

A buy out by Cryptic at this point is just kicking a dead horse.  After what Jack "Statesman" Emmert pulled in CoH, I'd rather eat rusty nails than give money for a Cryptic game basically ever.  

Fuck that guy.

Quote from:  J ArcaneAfter what Jack "Statesman" Emmert pulled in CoH, I'd rather eat rusty nails than give money for a Cryptic game basically ever.  

What did he do with City of Heroes?

Quote from: GameDaddy;233657What did he do with City of Heroes?

Jack decided that people were getting through the content too quickly, so he set about systematically nerfing the ever loving bejeezus out of every class in the game, effectively turning what had been a high-action game of superheroes where mowing through fistfuls of thugs was the order of the day, into a low-powered grindfest where more than two mobs would almost certainly spell death.

He completely fucked up the game, and it took NCSoft essentially buying the game from Cryptic and taking over development to finally start putting the game back to rights again.  

He's a consummate ass, and a shitty game designer, and I'll have no part in any of his products.

Quote from: J Arcane;233659Jack decided that people were getting through the content too quickly, so he set about systematically nerfing the ever loving bejeezus out of every class in the game, effectively turning what had been a high-action game of superheroes where mowing through fistfuls of thugs was the order of the day, into a low-powered grindfest where more than two mobs would almost certainly spell death.

He completely fucked up the game, and it took NCSoft essentially buying the game from Cryptic and taking over development to finally start putting the game back to rights again.  

He's a consummate ass, and a shitty game designer, and I'll have no part in any of his products.

Hheh... Funny that! He'a a Guest of Honor this year at GenCon, and will be demoing the new Champions and maybe Star Trek as well? Anyway...  

And didn't he take over development of City of Heroes in the first place after the NCSoft Dev crew totally Epic-Failed and ran back to NCSoft squaeling like lost chillins'? If I remember correctly being ancient and all..., , City of Heroes was one of those groundbreaking games that allowed MMORPG players to play bad guys for the first time. That alone makes him worthy, does it not?

Plus, Who does he have with him on the design teams these days?

Reference:
http://www.massively.com/2008/06/24/jack-emmert-named-as-gencon-industry-guest-of-honor/

I'm having a hard time imagining an economy, experience or fiduciary.  I mean, sure, you can switch it over to prestige or something to get 'promoted' to a new rank (level) where you have access to better weapons or whatever to buy with Federation Credits.  But how much can you upgrade a phaser?  What kind of armour can you get?  What about the folks that want to play Borg?  How many ships will not be named some variant of "Enterprise"?

I dunno, I have a bad feeling that even in the hands of the best developers available, it has some genre limitations that are working against it.

Quote from: StormBringer;233678I'm having a hard time imagining an economy, experience or fiduciary.  I mean, sure, you can switch it over to prestige or something to get 'promoted' to a new rank (level) where you have access to better weapons or whatever to buy with Federation Credits.  But how much can you upgrade a phaser?  What kind of armour can you get?  What about the folks that want to play Borg?  How many ships will not be named some variant of "Enterprise"?

I dunno, I have a bad feeling that even in the hands of the best developers available, it has some genre limitations that are working against it.

The original STO showed a rather great understanding of this issue, in that really, much of the issues you cite would only be an issue in a traditional style of MMO, so they simply went for a totally different tack.

Had it been able to get out there, I think we would've seen a truly unique game at least, though I wondered whether it would be successful.

Quote from: StormBringer;233678I dunno, I have a bad feeling that even in the hands of the best developers available, it has some genre limitations that are working against it.

I don't know yet. If it's anything at all like the original Star Trek MMO I played at DEC back in the 80's, complete with 21st century graphics, it'll be Teh Bomb!

Star Trek has always had something working against it. The original was canceled after just two seasons, and there have been more than twenty Star Trek RPG's made, and almost as many video games.

Personally, I just look forward to flying a Klingon Battlecruiser and well... you know... %$#*&% my way through the Federation Fleet, leaving a trail of wreckage and debris behind that make the Borg look like the bunch of namby-pamby sissies they are.

We'll see. I sure hope there's a Star Trek Online Demo active at GenCon. Then I'll find out. And finally on Emmert. He saved Champions too! Bought it from the original owners when they were going down the tubes, then resold it to them (At least the RPG part) so they could continue to produce that game. That was the first Supers RPG I ever played.

Stay tuned for further details to follow...

P.S. It could be I'm just motivated too. Was over at Rhapsody last week and downloaded the Star Trek: Klingon Attack song played by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and was debating whether to put together a Star Trek RPG gaming session. I downloaded over 125 Trek songs and cool sound effects.

Quote from: J Arcane;233681The original STO showed a rather great understanding of this issue, in that really, much of the issues you cite would only be an issue in a traditional style of MMO, so they simply went for a totally different tack.

Had it been able to get out there, I think we would've seen a truly unique game at least, though I wondered whether it would be successful.

You will have to send me a link to this 'original STO' of which you speak.  Unless I can find it in your newsletter.

I don't think the issues I mentioned are insurmountable, but as you note, the solutions are pretty far from what the mainstream MMO player may be used to.  Leveling up is not a foreign concept for about 90% of the console/PC gamers out there, so gaining experience/prestige wouldn't be too much of a stretch.  The economy, however, will be stuck somewhere between 'normal economy, but not Trek-like' or 'Trek economy, but not normal'.  Of course, straying too much from one will get people up in arms, but I would assume a designer would cleave to the former to attract players.

QuoteYou will have to send me a link to this 'original STO' of which you speak. Unless I can find it in your newsletter.

The original game as described was probably most similar to those roleplay servers you find for Elite Force.  The basic idea was pretty much to simulate life on a Starfleet ship, with the PCs as crew members, and each ship basically like a really big player group.  The focus was basically on working together as a team accomplishing missions, and not so much on the usual level/gear grind.

It was an intriguing promise, and could've been damn cool if you had a good crew together.

Quote from: J Arcane;233699The original game as described was probably most similar to those roleplay servers you find for Elite Force.  The basic idea was pretty much to simulate life on a Starfleet ship, with the PCs as crew members, and each ship basically like a really big player group.  The focus was basically on working together as a team accomplishing missions, and not so much on the usual level/gear grind...

It was an intriguing promise, and could've been damn cool if you had a good crew together.

Hmm. yes. Perpetual Entertainment. The original vaporware idea was really good, I mean, just about everyone would like being part of a unique Star Trek Starship crew. Emmert said their was nothing he could salvage from the Perpetual software design efforts. That company had crashed and burned before Emmert came on the scene.

Quote from: GameDaddy;233705Hmm. yes. Perpetual Entertainment. The original vaporware idea was really good, I mean, just about everyone would like being part of a unique Star Trek Starship crew. Emmert said their was nothing he could salvage from the Perpetual software design efforts. That company had crashed and burned before Emmert came on the scene.

Part of the problem was, before the end, Perpetual went nuts and split and sold bits and pieces of it to different places, and as a last ditch effort to make the game marketable, they completely dumped the original concept in favor of a rather roughly slapped together concept that was basically WoW in Space, except with the players as ships a la EVE.  

Of course, Emmert's also an egotistical asshole, so I also wouldn't be surprised if by "nothing he could salvage" he meant "nothing his little pea brain could appreciate"

Maybe you'll find this as funny as I myself do:

http://alittlegrey.livejournal.com/