I have been pondering now for a while about purchasing "Star Trek Online" but I would like to know more about the game before I make that commitment. First of all what can you do in the game? From what I have been able to find you can either do 3rd person view space battles or the same with ground battles, but what else can be done? Can you walk around the ship you are on? Visiting different parts (line in Star Wars Galaxies)? Please fill me in as if it is just space battles and ground battles then i dont really see much point in purchasing myself. Are there areas in the game where you can interact with other players (Space Stations and so on)? Anyways let me know any information would be greatly appreciated.
At the moment Space and Gound are a big part of the game. But there already are several non combat areas. The bridge of your ship, several space stations, including DS9 and K7. Also the planets Vulcan, Andoria and Risa. The devs plan to expand on those with more areas on your ship for example.
People (like me) who have played MMORGs before rate it as below average. It doesn't have much depth at present nor does it have much of an endgame. If it were any other property I would predict closure in a year or so. But since it has the Trek brand it may survive longer. I would look at the option to try it before buying. They have sent out buddy keys I would assume they will have other free trials coming up.
Get a buddy key, best way to find out That's it. The missions vary, sometimes there isn't combat and you just go around scanning stuff or talking to people. In the supermajority of situations you encounter hostiles that need to be blown up. No. At least, not yet. It's likely coming. But even if you could it's mostly scenery. You can interact with other players, but there's no need to. The entire game can be soloed to RA. I've soloed it. I made a few friends along the way, but mostly I would just pug mission with whoever happened to be there doing them, or solo them if nobody was there. The vast majority of the game is blow #$%#$ up. If you dont enjoy that, dont do it. I enjoy flying around blowing stuff up. It's mindless and relaxing, which is kind of what I want out of a game right now. However, it's not something I feel very justified paying a subscription fee for (since I can get mindless arcadey flight by buying a game like HAWX and not pay a sub) so I will prob just let the sub lapse. The best part of the game (by far) is the questlines. You're pretty much doing quest chains the whole time you level up. The story is interesting - at least to me. You get to see what happened to the Hobus System and why, you travel through time, you travel to the mirror universe, you travel into the Bajoran Wormhole, meet and greet Undine infiltrators, and at one point you have a little chat with a prophet. Almost all of that, however, involves blowing up whoever gets in the way. I haven't reached the STF's yet. They're kind of like heroics in wow, except supposedly hard... or perhaps simply frustrating and long. Can't say yet. I read somewhere they're discussing repeatable stories, which would kind of be like doing a levelling 5 man on heroic mode once you hit the cap. Hopefully the rewards will scale too. In which case, there will prob be fun stuff to do, because I redid crack in the mirror for a friend and that was a blast. A difficulty slider will help too, because by the time you hit RA, most baseline PvE isnt a challenge. It might be good in a couple months once they have a difficulty slider and repeatable missions etc.
^Yeah, repeatable stories are coming by the end of the month. The STF's are fun and they're adding one about every 2-3 weeks, which isn't too bad. I'm not even tired of Infected yet.
Then I guess you haven't played many MMOs at launch. EverQuest had to come up with the concept of and endgame for the post EQ MMOs to emulate and that took 2 years. WoW's 'endgame' at 2 month's post launch was non-existent (Onyxia came to live about 3 months post WoW launch) - and Molten Core took a LOT longer to get fully itimized. People claim WoW had 'depth' too - but sorry, 14 character classes <> 'depth' per se. IMO - STO has a sufficient level of 'depth' with the way BO skills work - and the game is currently BETTER then WoW was 2 months out with regard to gear variety (there's a lot available for star ships). STO is adding content VERY quicly - and expanding the Klingon faction so that in a few nmonths (July/August) it will be a full faction ala Horde/Alliance). IMO given the time and budget differences (WoW had a bigger budget, more Development time available; and niow has a vitually un limited Dev budget); I think STO did okay (not great) at launch - but the STO Dev Teams work to get both QoL features and new content into the game has been nothing short of amazing. This game is MUCH better than Age of Conan or Warhammer Online were at launch - and also beats the heck out of Spreadsheets in Space/Gankfest (aka EVE Online which I played for a year). Can't personally compare it to Star Wars Galaxies fairly though as I only closed betaed SWG for 3 months, and never subscribed at launch DUE TO the terrible excuse SOE had for a Dev Team on SWG. As for STO; I bought a lifetime because of the potential I saw with the base game, and Cryptic hasn't disssapointed. Yes, they've made some mistakes but name one MMO developer (even the almighty Blizzard) who hasn't. As folks have said, if you can get a buddy key - that's the best way to evaluate for yourself; but overall, if you're one of those who wants a wide variety of content - you might want to hold off until the 'Season 2' update (currently slated for the July/August timeframe) - which is very content focused, and will expand the Klingon faction pvE (Player vs Enviroment) content even more, and by then it should be a full fledged faction with the same advancement options the Feds have now (and both factions content will continue to expand). Lastly, in the end 'depth' is in the eye of the beholder. To this day, WoW's supposed 'depth' never grabbed me; and I had a 3 year stict on that game (2 years hardcore Raiding - our Guild had Onyxia and MC on Farm status; and was getting to the third dragon in Black-Wing Lair when Burning Crusade hit and changed WoW large scale raiding a LOT. I quit about 3 months after the BC expansion).
I have never played an MMO before, so my questions may sound funny... Can you just Explore planets for a while, or do you always have to be on missions? By explore, I mean to beam down with a landing party, and just look around to see if there is anything interesting on this random M-class planet of this random Star system, use your ship's scanners or your personal tricorders etc... Or is there not that much freedom in the game to do all that? If not, can you at least visit other known planets, like Kronos, Vulcan, or Ferenginor? Also, can you play as Borg, or Species 8472, or some of the other fractions, or only as a Federation captain? I would just LOVE to be an Undine and take a stroll around the Galaxy!
Right now you can play as many races including klingons, betazoids, trill, ferengi, humans, vulcans, orians, andorians, and many more. Right now there are two factions, the klingons and the federation. There are plans in the works for the Cardassian and Romulan empires to be playable at some point too. This is the third MMO I have played at launch and I am actually very impressed with how fast they are creating new content.
Wrong. Played Everquest starting with Beta 3 and WoW at launch, they still had more of an endgame at launch than STO does now.
Unless you visit a known safe spot (best example is Andoria Prime) you have to be on a mission. Some of those missions will involve strolling around scanning stuff. You can leave the mission area to some degree and go for a walk but you will eventually hit an invisible wall. They are working on exploration/first contact missions that hopefully will be what you want them to be. But they're not there yet. Dont think you can visit Qo'nos yet (as Federation; you start there as Klingon, but can't get "outside"). Vulcan, not sure. Ferenginar is definately not reachable. There are a couple of missing sectors. You would think in an mmo you'd be able to be a tourist but honestly that's not the case.
Currently, the game consists of two components; the space part, and the ground part. In space, your ship is your avatar; you fly your ship around in a third-person view. Communication with other players is done via a chat window, similar to pretty much every other MMORPG in the world. There are multiple chat channels, and you can create custom ones for your friends. Those chat channels span the entire game, both factions, and even other Cryptic games (so if you have friends who are playing as Klingons, or in another fleet, or playing on the Test server, or even playing Champions Online, you can share a channel with them) You have the ability to customize the appearance of your ship somewhat, combining parts from several classes into your ship's appearance, but only within the same general "class" of ship so it doesn't look crazy. For instance, you can put different nacelles on your Galaxy Class Exploration Cruiser if you want. They are adding new "ship costume" pieces all the time. Most are available via small microtransaction payments that unlock them for your entire account (pay once, all your ships and all your characters can use the pieces), and more free ones are planned as well. (Generally the box of parts for a new ship cost about a buck and a half to three bucks.) Your ground avatar has much more customization, but again it's from a box of parts so their uniform still looks like some era of Starfleet uniform. The ground game is much like most MMORPG combat, appearing real-time but resembling turn-based in that the cooldowns on abilities restrict how often you can use them. When you're on a "PvE" mission, which is to say competing against computer-controlled opponents on a mission, you can bring up to four of your Bridge Officers with you to fill out your party, or bring your friends with you in any combination of up to five people per "party". Your Bridger Officers, or "Boffs", are NPCs who follow you around attempting to do useful things with their skills. You train their skills using points you get on missions, so you control what they specialize in, and you have a limited ability to give them directions in combat to change their priority of action or control their use of special abilities. The only part of your ship you can wander around in currently is your bridge, which is a social area not a way to control your ship. Expanded ship interiors for the rest of the ship, and reasons to be in those areas, are in the works, some of it to load later this year.
There are touristy areas. Currently, they include several starbases, including (but not limited to) Earth Spacedock, Deep Space Nine, and K7 for the Federation side, and the Great Hall of Qo'nos for the Klingons. There is a neutral station on which both can interact, Drozana. For Lifetime sub holders, there is a second neutral station, the Captain's Table. There are a few planets you can visit without a mission currently, including Risa and Andoria. Many more are planned. At the moment the only planet visible in Sol system is Earth (and its moon of course), but they cannot yet be visited. A team is working on making visitable locations for these planets, and all the other planets of Sol system. Presumably with the forthcoming PvE expansion for Klingons (a free expansion coming out this July), there will be more Klingon tourist areas.
Disappointingly, the earth does not rotate and when you navigate close to it, the texture is mediocre at best. I'm trying to remember my time in SWG:JTL but it's all a blur. I can't recall whether the planets appeared larger or rotated. I don't remember feeling overly disappointed, but I also had a LOT more to distract me in space.
I betaed SWG (didn't sub after as SOE really screwed the pooch); but tried the game again back in November 2005 when they had a free 10 day demo after the NGE changes (and didn't subscribe again - but the SWG planets diddn't rotate, and overall SWG system space didn't look 1/3 as nice as STO's (and I'm talking once zoned ito a system or mission - not STO sector space)
I have played sporadically since open beta and can say that the game has come a LONG, LONG way since then. I am very impressed with what they've done with it thus far. I think it has a good future ahead. They even implemented autofire so you can let your phasers fire each turn without constantly mashing the spacebar - a long wanted feature. They truly listen to their subscribers and are always working on new stuff. For an MMO this early on in its life cycle, this is a great thing. I only wish I had more time to devote to it; my wife and I also play WoW religiously and she is not into it (yet) - I am trying to at least get her to create a character to see how it is for her! Either way, it's definitely worth a try if you have any inkling of interest.