Review – Star Trek Online goes F2P

Let me start off by saying I am a HUGE Star Trek nerd. “How huge?” you might ask. Well, pretty huge. I have four different Star Trek uniforms, that I am not afraid to wear in public. I have over 200 Star Trek action figures, still carded, lining the walls of my apartment. I have the toy version of every Enterprise available (no one has ever made a large scale Enterprise C). I have the full set of Furuta ‘gashapon’, or ‘candy toys’, available only in Japan. I have an animation cel from The Animated Series. I buy a Ships of the Line calendar every year. I took time off work to go see the closing of the Star Trek Experience in Vegas. Instead of Magic: The Gathering, I got into the Star Trek Customizable Card Game. Oh yeah, and I own Captain Kirk’s chair.

That was my desk chair at work. So yeah, I’m kinda a huge Star Trek Nerd.

So needless to say, 2 years ago when I learned they would be making an MMO based on Star Trek, I was in. In fact, I bought a brand new high end laptop just to play it on, and a lifetime membership before ever even playing I was so excited. I even bought the tie in novel. I’m not a huge gamer, but I’d done some MMO play before. I played WoW for 4 years until it got to be too much of a job and my real job was interfering with it, and I was in the betas for Earth & Beyond and MultiPlayer Battletech, two other Sci Fi MMO’s that crashed and burned that no one else remembers. Yesterday, being January 17 (17/01, see what they did there?), Star Trek Online went free to play. What are a huge Star Trek nerd’s thoughts on this, and STO in general?

Well, now that its free, there are far worse time sinks out there. Is it the greatest MMO out there? By no means. In fact, I would barely call it a MMO. Its more like a “Massively Single Player” game, in that at no point, up until endgame, is there ever a need or reason to team with other players. I made it all the way to max level without joining a Fleet (STO‘s equivalent of a guild) or even teaming with another person. Which for me, is not a problem at all, I tend to prefer it that way. However, once you get to endgame, the only content left is Special Task Forces (raids), which require you to team with other people. It’s a very odd dichotomy in that you are never taught how to team at all through the story missions, but once you get endcap that is all that is expected of you.

And hitting endcap happens far too fast. After F2P went live (it went live early for existing members), I started a new Klingon character. I was able to get to endcap running nothing but Duty Officer missions. These are a new type of “quest” added for F2P, that sort of combines materia from the Final Fantasy series (different officers give you different innate abilities) and part Pokemon (there are different levels and variety of officers to collect and trade). They are fun and addicting little missions, but they are just diversions from the real meat of the game.

And that meat is one thing Cryptic has managed to do really really well in getting the look and feel of the Star Trek IP down. It truly feels like you are in the Star Trek universe. And they know their shit. Little things from all facets of Trekdom show up, like Naomi Wildman is the commander of Space Station K7 and Mackenzie Calhoun giving you PVP missions, you can even build your own Delta Flyer shuttle. From planet names to weapon types, they really paid attention to the little details. And the storyline, the storyline missions are truely amazing. After a brief tutorial, they really throw you right into the thick of things. I dont want to spoil it for you, you really need to play it yourself, but I will say that there were points in the story that I was truely moved, and the scene below literally gave me goosebumps.

If you recognize the location, you’ll understand why. That is my Captain and his away team. Yes, that is Kif Kroker as my Chief Engineer

The only problem with the storyline is that there isn’t enough of it. If all you did was play the storyline missions, you could get through it all in maybe 40-50 hours. Cryptic has not released a new set of Story Missions in over year. They do have a User Generated Content tool that they tout as being awesome, but frankly, I just consider it fan fiction. There is no way to know when you play a UGC mission if it’s any good beforehand, and I don’t want to have to sort through the much larger pool of bad ones to get to one of the few good ones.

Also, what gear you get doesn’t really matter. Ground combat is so easy (at least on standard difficulty, elite is crazy difficult (and bugged with one shot kills) that it’s not worth playing). Your bridge officers (basicly your team of NPC pets) can kill almost anything without your directions no matter their class type or how they are loaded out. Space combat is more fun and a bit more challenging, but basically just becomes circle your ship around theirs and pressing the spacebar repeatedly to fire all phasers until your opponent dies. Once you get get through all the story missions, there are some other types of missions you can do, but while the skin on the planets involved or the alien race you encounter may change, they tend to fall into one of just a few mission types and get repetitive very fast. They have added some new event type missions in the last major patch, but these are still repetitive and grindy, and only occur during certain times of day.

Even so, I would still highly recommend at least a play through of the story missions. Is it worth paying for? If I didn’t have a lifetime membership, I certainly wouldn’t be paying for it, based on the difference between the paying and non paying memberships, which is negligible, unless you want to make your own content. But if you are looking for a light breezy way to kill about a hour a night, playing through the story missions can be a fun way to kill some time. And if you wanna do all the other stuff too, that’s great.

For more info about Star Trek Online, check out their website at StarTrekOnline.com. And check out the F2P trailer below, which is actually pretty badass. If you do decide to give it a whirl, send me a tell in game, I’m Scott@Ulicqel. I’ll send you something cool. My bank is full of crap I never use.

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook