Star Trek Online Heading for MMO Graveyard?

I really don’t have it in for Cryptic, the designers of Star Trek Online, though it may seem so if you happened to read my impressions of the Champions Online beta last August. Many called me out for being overly hostile, for being too critical of a beta, blah-blah-blah. Folks, I’ve been around forever and I’ve played every MMO ever designed. I can spot a loser from a mile away and no amount of polishing and tweaking can fix fundamental design problems. I pegged Champions Online as a complete loser of a game and the ensuing months have proven me correct.

So it is with a heavy heart that I must slam Star Trek Online, which I have been slogging through for several days now.

First, the obvious: Cryptic is over-extended as a company. Making a solid MMO is a mammoth undertaking, a chore made all the more difficult by an ever-expanding market and increased competition. If you can’t deliver something as good as or better than the competition then you are doomed. When one considers Cryptic is a relatively small company, it’s utterly amazing they opted to take-on Star Trek and Champions Online at the same time. This business decision spelled disaster for both products as neither has received the attention they require.

In terms of Champions Online, Cryptic didn’t face a rabid fan-base full of demands and expectations, so its failure was barely visible to the gaming public. But with Star Trek, Cryptic is messing with a popular brand and its failure to deliver a compelling experience will be far more devastating.
The Star Trek Online graphics engine is stale and runs like crap, much like Champions Online. This can be attributed to a lot of players piling on the servers, which in turn hurts the frame-rate, but still: on a powerful Quad-Core machine there is no excuse for the choppy, unacceptable frame-rate I am experiencing.

Graphics can be optimized and streamlined, so that’s no big deal. The big deal arrives in the form of gameplay, the same area Cryptic dropped the ball in Champions Online.

There is nothing new in Star Trek Online you haven’t seen before and seen done better, especially in a game like EVE Online, a title the designers of STO may have wanted to investigate. Same derivative introductory sequence you played in City of Heroes and Champions, same skill mechanics, same interface, same everything, just decked out in Star Trek aesthetics. Same body, different suit. On the upside, Star Trek Online appears to be more group friendly, but that plus is also a negative for gamers who tend to play solo, which represents the overwhelming majority.

Death has no bearing on anything, so if you and your team are on a space-based mission, everyone can die endless times with no impact on your mission. You can trick yourself into thinking tactics will have some kind of impact on the outcome of a space battle or you can be a realist, cut to the chase, and plow your craft into the enemy, rinse and repeat. Zero sense of accomplishment or purpose. Empty and hollow, two things I did not want in a Star Trek MMO.

Just about every aspect that sucks in Star Trek Online can be attributed to Cryptic’s game-engine, the same engine they incorrectly believe can be used for every game concept. It may save the company a ton of money in development, but the game suffers. You can’t just shoe-horn a new MMO in an old-engine and expect miracles. Then again, perhaps Cryptic’s margin for success is so low in terms of costs that they don’t need a ton of players to turn a profit.

I have a laundry list here of things that suck about Star Trek Online, but then I realized it is pretty much the same list I had from Champions Online, so I’m not even going to bother spelling out the same issues.

Just know this: Star Trek Online is not a good game, nor does it have a high likelihood of ever being great. It is yet one more cookie-cutter experience from Cryptic, a company who once innovated the MMO genre and is now content to function on auto-pilot, seemingly blind, deaf and dumb to past errors of judgment.

I’m not a Trekkie by any stretch of the imagination, so it is possible that hardcore fans of the show will be more forgiving, but I don’t think so. When compared to Trek games of the past, like Starfleet Academy, STO will come up short in every category.

Many wonder why it is World of Warcraft has been so dominant since its launch and no other MMO has been able to take it down. The answer is quite simple: no one is trying. Every attempt is half-hearted or, worse, a direct rip-off of WoW’s style and interface. Cryptic has the talent and ability to deliver something better and it’s depressing to see them once again releasing a pile of junk.

Help me Bioware-Kenobi, you’re my only hope.