Why Trekkies Should Play Star Trek Online

With Star Trek Online, the new sci-fi MMO from Champions Online developer Cryptic Studios, out this week, now’s the time to bust out some STO-related goodness for you budding Starship captains to soak up like forward facing shields absorbing photon torpedoes. The wonderful truth is that, if you’re a Trekkie (owning a Starfleet uniform isn’t required), you should be playing Star Trek Online. Read on for ten reasons why.

You get to be a Starfleet Captain!

Not at first, of course. Well, you do, sort of. When STO begins, you’re a lowly Ensign, but after the kick-ass tutorial, you’re promoted to Lieutenant and given your own ship. Now, we know that this makes no sense; Lieutenants aren’t allowed to captain Starfleet vessels, but you can forgive the game this inaccuracy because otherwise you’d be sitting in a ship banging on a computer console in engineering for hours in order to level up. The point is that STO lets you live out virtually the starship captain fantasy; the James T. Kirk/Jean-Luc Picard fantasy. And for that, we are grateful indeed.

Set phasers to stun

In STO you can beam down to planets and tackle away missions with other players or use your bridge officers. Now, pretty much everyone agrees STO’s on-foot combat isn’t up to much, but it does let you fire phasers, and… wait for it… set phasers to stun. How good’s that? All you do is equip your phaser, auto-target a bad guy with the Tab button then press the hot-key to fire, but it looks right and it sounds right. When you’re in a five man group and everything’s kicking off, you can’t help but feel like jumping out of your desk chair and doing a forward roll on your bed. No? Maybe that’s just us, then.

Names, places, faces

It seems like a ridiculously obvious thing to say, but it’s important: STO is the official Star Trek game. That means that fans will recognise loads of the planets, alien races and starships they encounter as they explore the galaxy. And right away, too. STO begins with you beaming onto the U.S.S. Khitomer, which, as any Trekkie worth his or her salt (do they have salt in the future?) knows is a reference to the planet Khitomer, the place where the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire signed the Khitomer Accord peace agreement. Beyond that, though, everything looks as it should, from nacelles and saucer sections to Klingon foreheads and Bajoran noses. STO is authentic, and that’s what Trekkies want.

You can be a Klingon

The Klingon faction in STO is disappointing for a number of reasons – it’s player versus player based and has to be unlocked – but once you get to wield a bat’leth you’ll forget that Cryptic hasn’t really fleshed them out properly. There’s work to be done with the Klingons – which Cryptic promises will come in future updates – but fun can still be had blasting the arrogant Federation into oblivion with your very own Bird of Prey.

It looks and sounds the part

Star Trek’s iconic sound effects are world famous. Everyone recognises the “pew” of a photon torpedo, the boom of an exploding warp core, the sound of phaser fire, the sci-fi whizz of the transporter, and any number of wicked beeps and boops from the television shows. And they’re all faithfully recreated in Star Trek Online. The first time you go to warp the hairs on the back of your neck will jump to attention like a Starfleet cadet caught cheating in a quantum mechanics exam. When you fire your first torpedo, your geek-sense will go off the chart. In short, STO’s cool. So cool.

Customise your own ship

No, I don’t want the nacelles there, I want them there! No, the saucer section is too big. It should be smaller! Gah! Who the hell designed that hull section? Fire him! That look is way too retro. 24th century me up, baby! You call that a trim pattern? Here, let me do it. It would be an understatement of galactic proportions to say you can customise your starship in STO. It would be more accurate to say you can mould it like some god-like potter. The point? To create your own Enterprise, or Defiant, or Voyager, or, if you fancy it, something really out there. The choice is yours, captain.

The Borg!

They’re bad – and ugly – but we we’ve got a soft spot for the adapting automatons. The Borg and their great big cubes are great, and they’re in STO. And right from the start, as well. You begin the game fighting off a mysterious Borg invasion. What are they doing here? Why are they “somehow different”? And how come every morning I sleep through my alarm? That last question doesn’t really relate, but true Trekkies have answers for everything. In the meantime, it’s time to fight back!

Q will be in it!

The omnipotent Q, perhaps the greatest Star Trek character of all time, won’t be in STO at launch, but Cryptic has confirmed the mischievous trickster will turn up at some point in the future. The update will be called State of Q, a high level quest in which Q will transport you back in time to do him a special favour. What that favour is, we don’t know. But rest assured it’ll be something worthy of Q’s great intellect, and fondness for mucking about. Finger clicking is unconfirmed at this point.

New Spock does a voice-over

Not Old Spock (Leonard Nimoy), but new Spock, the one from the lens flare-heavy J.J. Abrams reboot (which we love). His real name is Zachary Quinto, and he voices an emergency medical hologram who guides you during your first tentative steps like an AI mother stuck in your head. He’s quite a catch, given the immense popularity of the film, and it’s cool to follow his orders as you battle against The Borg in the game’s action-packed tutorial. But it’s disappointing that he buggers off after the tutorial wraps up. Boo. Still, we understand the situation: Spock doesn’t come cheap these days.

Space combat is so Trek

The best thing about Star Trek Online is the space combat. It’s slow, considered, tactical and, when it involves loads of starships and enemy vessels, awesomely epic. The slow and considered part of STO’s space carnage may put off adrenaline-junkies with goldfish-like attention spans, but Trekkies are made of more intelligent stuff. As you broadside the enemy, firing ALL PHASERS AND PHOTON TORPEDOES!! and redistributing shields to starboard to soak up return fire, you can’t help but think: “Yeah! Eat my particles dirtbag!” Then warp cores explode and STO gets even better.