Star Trek Online: Beam Me Up, Scotty?

First we have "grind" issues.  "Grinding" is essentially performing repetitive actions to reach the end of a quest.  Apparently Star Trek Online suffers from this.

Given the huge, compelling nature of the Star Trek universe, this should have been one issue easily avoided.  Hopefully patches and updates of the game will resolve this problem, as it makes MMORPGs just plain boring at times.

Then we have the fact that it is not a true MMO.  This is due to the game being highly "instanced."  What this means is that no more than roughly 50 players at a time can be in the same area.  While this avoids lag (a game-killing slowdown of graphics and sound), it also takes away the giant feeling of living in a huge, populated universe.

But the worst sin involves the twisting of the dynamic Star Trek universe into an action packed space combat game.  "Alabaster Jones ‘perpenhopher'," in his review on Amazon, addressed the problem very succinctly:

"What Cryptic has done here is taken all the 40+ years of lore, all the potential for a massive and engaging game, all the many varied aspects of Star Trek, and they distilled it to a very, very simplistic space shooter that feels about as massive as a shoebox."

That's the kind of thing that churns a Trekkie's stomach.



But even with all of its problems, I find Star Trek Online intriguing.  MMORPGs have the ability to not only expand in size and story, but to also fix the problems that players have-though that is quite tricky.

I'm willing to give it a shot and trust that the issues will be settled with updates and expansion packs.  After all, the 2009 Star Trek film was pretty action packed-and also one of the best forays into that universe ever made.

Oh, and as a side note: "summitus" has posted a ton of his game-play-in chronological order, starting during the first hour of play-on YouTube.  This is a really great representation of the current status of game-play for Star Trek Online:

If you want to beam yourself into the Star Trek universe, go to Amazon or Star Trek Online!

SOURCE: Wikipedia, Star Trek Online