Cryptic’s Star Trek

First, let’s do the easy bit. To apply for the Star Trek Online closed beta please visit this link. If you get in, remember who sent you and beat up a dev to get me in. Closed beta started October 22nd and Star Trek Online is slated for a first quarter 2010 release. Amazon pre-order link is somewhere below.

So. Star Trek. I was raised on Star Trek. Oh there were other shows, there was Doctor Who ingrained so deeply in my mind that I sleepwalked (slept walked?) to the source of the theme music once. There was Space 1999, Blake’s 7, UFO, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. British 70s sci-fi, American sci-fi it didn’t matter. I was born and raised a geek. I love newer stuff. Stargate, Farscape, Odyssey 5, Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 all are huge to me. Star Trek though… despite the rubbish first three seasons per show, despite the ending of Enterprise or even worse, the Warp 10 episode (disowned from Canon) and despite what people may say about the latest movie, I love Star Trek. Shannon too is a life long Trekkie and we’ve both said to one another that love it or loathe it, we’re honour bound to at least trial Star Trek when it gets to Open Beta/Release (Though Cryptic, I can totally be bought by two closed beta keys if you want me to be nicer). With my geek cred established needlessly let’s get onto the real reason for this post.

KHHHHHHAAAAAAANNNNNNYYYYPPPPTTTIIIIIICCCC. (Why does the spell checker have no problem with that but dislikes “cred”?)

Let’s start with a previous blog entry, The Cryptic Model. I suggested that if “polish” is the watchword of Blizzard, then “custom” is that of Cryptic. Look at what they’ve done to date. I think people have died due to the amount of time they spent in the character creator (Joke, seriously). So far Cryptic has offered up two perks for Star Trek and like any good little nit picking fan boy I have an issue with both. First we have the perk given to the Lifetime subscribers of Champions Online, the mirror universe uniform. That makes no sense. Allow me to explain/Shut up and listen. The Terran Empire as seen in the first Mirror Universe episode, the one that established that evil twins have goatees and thus goateed people are evil, collapsed shortly after Kirk got his Kirk on. By the time of DS9 Earth and such had gone from almighty warmongering empire to a slave race to the Bajorans, Cardassians and Klingons. By the time of STO (some 20/30 years after Nemesis) the idea of wearing a Kirk era alternate universe evil empires outfit? Yeah I’m going to go and put a big fan boy NO on that. The second perk is even more unforgivable. Pre Order From Amazon and get a Borg Bridge officer. If I have to explain why that is wrong you never really got the Borg did you? This isn’t a Seven of Nine type issue where it’s a recently saved human (and generally getting de-borged is reserved for main cast) who happens to have some implants and such. No they are saying here have a Borg. I could come up with methods to justify that, like the individual “Hugh” Borg Lore was hanging out with or the Borg from Unity. In any event, despite any justification, you’d imagine they’d be a rarity as opposed to every Tom, Dick and Harry Kim who pre-orders.

Moving onwards we have further complaints. We’ll swing the bat at Cryptic first and then back to the game. Star Trek Online is being based on the Champions engine. Sure this means that development time has been cut, they already have the engine and tools and whatnot. Star Trek thus will be out in the first part of 2010. February if Amazon is to be believed. That seems rushed to me, terribly so. Further to my complaints, I foresee the C-Store making an appearance in Star Trek. I’ll have to wait and see to complain properly about that one.

At this point in the entry I was geared up for further bile and ranting. However I think I will leave it here for now and save that for another day. Suffice to say, the ship list does not please the Ardy. Instead I will end with one or two positives.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the view of the Klingons being presented, I admit that it is a good move to have an iconic pvp based race. Klingons love to fight and it can even be another Klingon. Also the progression and some of the ships interest me. Still, with the game only going into beta, a lot can change. Let’s hope the needs of the many are satisfied by what Cryptic is attempting.