"Narratively, it’s been a thrill to expand on the foundations of fantastic Discovery characters such as Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs), Cadet Sylvia Tilly / Captain Killy (Mary Wiseman) and Commander Ellen Landry (Rekha Sharma). We’re also excited to have Anthony Rapp join the cast for the launch of Awakening on September 10."

What’s the experience been like to integrate new stories from Star Trek Discovery in your game?

It’s been nothing short of amazing. Discovery marked the first time that Star Trek Online operated in lockstep with a live Trek show. We embraced this unique opportunity and the result was the Age of Discovery expansion. By developing AoD over many months, it afforded us the chance to deeply explore characters and locations introduced in the show while developing the latest starships, weapons, armor and gadgets for our players.

Narratively, it’s been a thrill to expand on the foundations of fantastic Discovery characters such as Captain Gabriel Lorca (Jason Isaacs), Cadet Sylvia Tilly / Captain Killy (Mary Wiseman) and Commander Ellen Landry (Rekha Sharma). We’re also excited to have Anthony Rapp join the cast for the launch of Awakening on September 10.

Can fans expect more Discovery-related content in the near future?

With Awakening, we are kicking off an entirely new story arc advancing the Discovery-era 2256 narrative into Star Trek Online’s 2410 timeline. This gives us incredible flexibility to blend Discovery (and other) themes into our upcoming releases. Players will first experience this with a hologram of Lt. Commander Paul Stamets (voiced by Anthony Rapp) during Awakening this September. As we know there is a lot of exciting new Trek coming from CBS with more Short Treks, Picard, Lower Decks and Section 31. After the response we received from the Age of Discovery expansion, we’ll want to remain agile for these emerging opportunities as well.

"We don’t sell power. It’s not pay to win. The items we sell are largely vanity-, utility- and convenience- based."

Rise of Discovery removes level restrictions on Tier 6 starships, which is something fans have been very happy about. What led to this decision?

Let me start by saying that the development team tirelessly strives to make the game more exciting and accessible. Over Star Trek Online’s amazing 9+ year run (Our 10^th Anniversary is in January!), hundreds of ships have been developed. We realized that for most leveling players, trying to determine which of these ships to command and under what conditions was possibly more of a distraction than a benefit to their Trek experience. As importantly, for our fiercely loyal player base, we wanted to make the alt (additional characters) leveling experience more empowering. The way our scaling T6 ships unlock over the leveling progression gives players increasing ship stats along with additional Weapons and Console slots. Ultimately, it’s about fantasy fulfillment and we’ve received wonderful feedback on this feature.

As a free-to-play title, how do you find the balance between monetization and balanced progression?

It’s quite straightforward with Star Trek Online. You can play every piece of content in our game without spending a dime. Hundreds of hours of episodes, Task Force Operations, Patrols, Events, etc., are 100% free. Our business model, which has made it possible to keep the game extremely healthy, is based on selling optional premium goods. We don’t sell power. It’s not pay to win. The items we sell are largely vanity-, utility- and convenience- based.

"To be able to explore the roots behind the relationship between Lorca and Landry, and the fall of the U.S.S. Buran was an amazing experience."

Now being nearly a decade old, what’s been the biggest challenge for you in terms of keeping STO active?

It’s all about servicing our amazing players. They adore Star Trek and we’re privileged to have the opportunity to continually evolve the game for them. With new entries like the Age of Discovery expansion, we created an entirely new starting experience for those players who may have found STO through Star Trek: Discovery. For our existing players, we introduced numerous special events, which debuted all new Task Force Operations. Some of these events had a new meta reward attached to earn a choice of T6 ship. We also made all T6 ships scale to player level, which was a very nice quality of life feature for both leveling players and those playing with alts. We also reworked the mission journal so end game player could immediately access their favorite episodes.

How do you strike the balance between being authentic and true to the larger Star Trek universe while also injecting your own ideas and stories into the game?

Our partners at CBS make this very easy for us. Approaching our 10^th Anniversary, we’ve established a respect and trust. I think some great examples of this include our last three Discovery updates and upcoming Awakening release – in each case we expanded, often in quite deep ways, on narrative introduced in Discovery. Look no further than Rise of Discovery, to be able to explore the roots behind the relationship between Lorca and Landry, and the fall of the U.S.S. Buran was an amazing experience.

METROID PRIME

Nintendo’s seminal Metroid series has always seen us explore wondrous and unearthly alien vistas, and Metroid Prime was no exception to that rule. As the game that took the series to 3D, in fact, it presented us with more starkly realized alien landscapes than any game in the series has before. Tallon IV is a beautiful, desolate planet haunted by the remnants of the Chozo, and as you dig deeper into its secrets, you find threats hitherto undreamt of. There are many reasons to play a game as stellar as Metroid Prime, but the star of the show is the world it has you explore – few outer space games have achieved a setting as rich or as well realized as Metroid Prime did.

While Star Wars has always had a steady presence in the gaming medium, its spiritual brother series, Star Trek, has never gotten a solid foothold. While there’s been games here and there, the most notable being the ongoing Star Trek Online MMORPG, it’s never managed to get its brand as far reaching as many would have hoped for. Now it seems the IP owner, CBS, is looking to change that with a new franchise initiative, which will include video games.

Via a press release, CBS announced a new global franchise group for pushing Star Trek in various mediums. The move comes after the franchise has seen a revival with the recent films and the current show, Star Trek: Discovery. The group will be managed by Executive Producers Veronica Hart and Alex Kurtzman. The series focuses largely on discovery and exploration, which seems to be a natural fit for gaming, so it’ll be interesting to see if they can translate that to the gaming medium.

The  group will set out to “invigorate and broaden the Star Trek fan community through additional branding opportunities, such as podcasts, a reinvigorated StarTrek.com and new digital spaces, consumer products and gaming, as well as live experiential events and global attractions. These endeavors to further grow the brand are designed to complement the Studio’s expansion of the Star Trek universe, which now includes two live-action series, two animated projects, and multiple ‘shorts.’”

Currently, Star Trek Online is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The latest non-MMO title to be released was Ubisoft’s Star Trek: Bridge Crew, available on PlayStation 4 and PC.

After having existed solely on the PC for several years, Perfect World Entertainment the publisher for Star Trek: Online announced that the game is going to be coming to the PS4 and Xbox One this fall. Because the game has been in existence in one form or another for years now, when it hits consoles it will be bringing over 130 featured episodes and 11 seasons worth of content.

Star Trek: Online is a game set up to make you feel as if you are playing an MMORPG inside the universe the Enterprise flies through. Familiar races and classes, as well as ships and characters, are all included in this version.

Much like something like Diablo III, the PC port will be bringing all the add-ons that were already offered over the years for the PC version.  Players will be able to play through a ton of content and hit the level 60 cap entirely free. Star Trek: Online is coming to the Xbox One and PS4 later this fall but an official release date hasn’t yet been announced. While it’s a little old you can check out our review of the early version of the PC version.

It’s never a good thing when a developer is forced to lay off employees especially when it’s a long-time studio that’s been carving its own niche in the industry. Sadly, this appears to have been the case with Cryptic Studios, developer of MMORPGs Neverwinter and Star Trek Online.

The lay-offs were issued by publisher Perfect World Entertainment and though a public statement has not been issued, many of the staff are confirming the same in various social media outlets. The number of employees let go also seems to be quite severe as Massively reported one (recently deleted) tweet describing them as a “slaughter”.

The timing is quite odd since Cryptic Studios was readying to release Neverwinter on the Xbox One on March 31st. Will the recent lay-offs affect the future of the franchise? That remains to be seen but in the meantime, stay tuned for more information and an official statement from Perfect World Entertainment.

“In my opinion, the whole game rating business doesn’t necessarily do a great justice to MMOs. MMOs are designed to grow over time and get better with every major release. It might be better if sites like Metacritic could find a way to rate MMOs by releases instead of just the initial day one. There are plenty of MMOs that have made huge strides since days one and some that have even gotten worse. Until then, we will continue to offer the game for free and ask for people to try it out and decide for themselves.”

Game reviews depend on a multitude of factors. Say it’s a game where knowing and experiencing everything within the game is tantamount to a useful review. Oftentimes, if the game is terrible, even for a good portion of the gameplay, it’s not hard to pan it even if the ending is gold (or unusual, as was the case with Inversion).

But MMOs are different – they are constantly evolving beasts, receiving fixes and additions like no other genre. A game like Mass Effect 3 may receive the periodic DLC update, but The Secret World needs to be putting out more new episodes and quests each month. It’s the very nature of the genre – if players have finished everything, and have nothing to do but level grind, why continue playing?

And then there are the patches and fixes, that might have made a previously unbearable aspect of the game quite fun. Some gamers might right off these little fixes as insignificant. But ask any fighting game fan who’s moved from one sequel to the next about balance issues. For ordinary people or reviewers, it may seem minsicule but for the gamers themselves, it could be worlds apart from what they played before.

How does one go about keeping track of every single MMO, be it RPG or shooter, with every new update and quest that comes about? Because our role isn’t to iron out every single possible scenario and then conclude if it’s just right. That’s a QA tester’s job. A reviewer should know if it’s fun or not, and if an update improves something, a quick run through of the game should be made to see just how different the experience is. But again, in order to notice the change, one has to be constantly playing these games, observing the nuances firsthand. Not an easy task when you consider all the other games that demand a reviewer’s attention.

However, in light of Stahl’s views, let’s look at PC games in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, which began demanding more patches than usual. Were those games, some buggy and unplayable, others featuring minor nuisances, judged differently? Was there a “scope for improvement” scale when evaluating a game? How much fun the game would be if all the errors were rectified? Understanding the core gameplay, and identifying what makes it fun is vital. So even if there’s less bullshit in the way of enjoying it, the game automatically goes up in value.

Then again, many games were looked down on at release for needing to be patched – it was even cited as a lazy route by developers to be able to ship on time, while working on fixes later. Why can’t they just delay the title and ensure it’s perfect, rather than shipping a buggy game and patching it later? Some developers even went ahead and did that, but such a tactic is unthinkable in today’s high-pressure, AAA environment. Maybe it’s the reason most blockbuster come to consoles first – a fixed architecture to optimise for reduces dev time significantly, not to mention the number of users is significantly higher for all consoles combined compared to PC gamers. But that time is being cut short, thanks to yearly sequels. Either way, don’t expect to see Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed delayed for any other platform but PC. In fact, when the first Black Ops was released simultaneously for PS3, PC and XBox 360, it was notorious for being almost unplayable on the former two.

Coming back to MMOs, should they be given special treatment? It’s definitely a worthy avenue to explore, even in a limited capacity, but shouldn’t be interpreted as a clean slate for devs. If the core gameplay wasn’t fun the first time around, no amount of polish or additional content is going to fix that.

Should MMOs receive the “only once” treatment when it comes to reviews? Cryptic Games and Star Trek Online producer Dan Stahl, in an interview with [a]listdaily disagrees. “In my opinion, the whole game rating business doesn’t necessarily do a great justice to MMOs. MMOs are designed to grow over time and get better with every major release. It might be better if sites like Metacritic could find a way to rate MMOs by releases instead of just the initial day one.

“There are plenty of MMOs that have made huge strides since days one and some that have even gotten worse. Until then, we will continue to offer the game for free and ask for people to try it out and decide for themselves.”

Source: GIBiz

In Star Trek Online, the Star Trek universe truly comes to life on a massive scale. Players captain their own starships as part of the Federation or Klingon Empire in a persistent online universe, journey to strange new worlds and take part in epic ground and space missions.

Have a look at the trailer above.

In our review of the game last year, we gave it an 8/10. Read it here.