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Gamers are a strange, particular breed of human. Some may have little to no patience for one game, but then they’ll go around collecting all of the gems in Diablo 2 with little to no frustration or anger. They actually would want to do this. And the reason for this is simple: it’s all about immersion, and winning. People who don’t play MMOs don’t understand that an MMO is an ongoing thing, and not something that can really be won.

Now on to Star Trek Online. Everyone knows what Star Trek is, and as such, it’s a love/hate relationship for many. The social stigma that surrounds Star Trek fandom is storied, yet it is a badge of honor for many nerds/geeks. But we learn from history – games that are based on licensed properties are not always necessarily good. Famous examples include ET for Atari 2600, Total Recall for NES, Superman 64, and more recently, Star Wars Galaxies.

The game’s story takes place in the original Star Trek universe, although it does refer, via cutscenes and the ruins of Romulus, to the events of the J.J. Abrams reboot from 2009. With the destruction of Romulus, the Klingons saw it fit to make a break from the Federation, and things aren’t much better than they were before the Klingons broke their alliance with the Federation.

In case you have NO idea what I’m talking about, it’s okay. Here’s a link to help, along with the incredibly well-written and detailed backstory of the game, as written by Cryptic’s team themselves.

The game plays, as some have described, a combination of EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and WoW, but in described the former two games, players usually add “…but better.” Cryptic obviously looked at the good ideas that were present in both games and retooled them to make it more replayable. There are two sides to the game: ship combat/exploration and ground combat.

Ship combat can seem incredibly slow to people used to larger, fighter jet, X-Wing type battles. But that’s physics in action – bigger starships will take longer to make their actions than a smaller one. Example: an X-Wing can fly wide circles around the U.S.S. Enterprise and do a good amount of damage, if the Enterprise could only fire from the front. The amount of time it would take a larger craft to rotate is more than half the time it takes for a smaller craft. A less nerdy example – a year is a year because of how massive the Earth is, and the motion required to make it happen.

So if you’re upset about a little slow-paced ship combat, take solace in the fact that although this ship combat can seem slow, it is exciting and sometimes difficult. Utilizing strategy and your ship knowledge is key to winning some battles, as well as your officer’s abilities to the ship.

The ground combat is action/time-based, if that makes sense. The phaser rifle attacks have cooldowns, and some are not as effective as others in close combat, so there’s a melee attack that is useful to knock back your opponent.

Yes, your ship is crewed with three officers – Engineering, Tactical, and Science, to be exact. These three NPCs are useful in space combat, where their unique abilities can save your ship or boost its’ combat ability, and they serve as Guild Wars-esque henchmen on away missions on the ground. They are trained separately from you, so it’s important to keep up with the skills if you want to stay alive. They also carry weapons separately from you, so it’s another thing to manage.

Utilizing your Bridge Officers on the ground can make for interesting combat. Everyone on the ground can be flanked for extra damage, and the Officers can be controlled separately through rally points on the UI. Set up a specific formation, and your away team can become deadly in combat.

The biggest selling point of some MMOs is the level of immersion that is brought with the game. This game was tooled obviously for the old-school/experienced MMO player in mind – there are separate places for your captain to make notes in his/her log, write personal log entries, as well as a biography and full name. It brings a tear to my eye to think that maybe some people are roleplaying their little Starfleet hearts out somewhere.

The crafting system, as well as being a little tiny for such a robust genre, helps for the immersion in a big way. Scanning different mission areas will lead to anomalies, just like on the show, and inspecting the anomalies leads to randomly selected crafting mats, which are turned in to a science facility, like Memory Alpha, then created into useful items for your ship or ground team.

Quests, or “episodes” as the game refers to them, are some of the best quests I’ve played, then some are standard MMO fare. The action, story-based “episodes” are fast-paced, exciting, and hardly feel like work at all. Then there’s the standard MMO “patrol missions”. I assume Cryptic wants you to hate patrol as much as the actual Starfleet did on the show, because patrol is a lot like daily quests on World of Warcraft – a crapshoot in terms of fun, and can seem dreadfully annoying. It’s also a long quest chain that doesn’t lead to any experience points until all are completed.

Here are a few complaints with the game so far: the leveling system is a little confusing for beginners. Every certain amount of number levels, your character gains a rank, which then can gain new ship powers, new ships, or new weapons. This may be easier than I’m making it, but it seems a little too confusing for an MMO beginner.

Also, some items drop that may have no relevance to your ship right now, so you consider the point of upgrading the part. Some stats seem to have no relevance in combat, and there is no tooltip explaining that.

The split between ground/space combat seems skewed far into the “space” side of the table, but that may just seem that way because the patrol missions can take forever. Like WoW, STO has a big world map that actually feels huge. So it takes long to fly from some systems to another. So Peggle for STO should be developed ASAP.

The good news is that some of these very complaints could be gone in a couple months, because the great thing about MMOs is that they’re always changing. Much like the prepubescent teenager, things are always growing, getting harder/softer, or longer. So if you have a few pet peeves about the game, chances are someone agrees with you and is begging for it to be changed on the forums.

Rundown:

Pros: Some entertaining quests, good music, and beautiful visuals of space.

Cons: Space travel makes ground combat seem rare, lag leads to sad captains (ninjaed crafting mats), some stats/game commands aren’t well explained.

Bottom line: Cryptic hits a three-run homer with this title, but not a grand slam. It can compete with World of Warcraft, but it cannot beat it unless some changes are made.