General Discussion

It's official. As of today, Cryptic Studios, the company behind the original City of Heroes and now Champions Online is the studio now behind the development of Star Trek Online as the company launched a new website that can be found at www.startrekonline.com.

Los Gatos, Calif. – Cryptic Studios™, a leading developer and publisher of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), announced today that it has secured the global rights to develop and publish Star Trek® Online, a massively multiplayer online game based on the legendary Star Trek franchise, from CBS Consumer Products.

Cryptic will unveil the first Star Trek Online gameplay footage as well as details about this highly anticipated MMO at the annual Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas on Sunday, August 10, 2008. Trek fans from around the globe can also view the event live via webcast at http://www.startrekonline.com/.

Interested participants can register today for the Star Trek Online webcast and to sign up for the STO community by visiting http://www.startrekonline.com/.

Check out startrekonline.com

I have always been a Star Wars fan and not a Star Trek fan but it is nice to see Star Trek finally becoming a MMORPG. It is too bad it is being passed around companies though and I don't think Cryptic would be my first choice to develop it.

     this is a crappy IP to make a MMORPG game for, so no wonder its getting passed around likethe office slut. If you make a game true to the Star Trek Universe, gameplay will be hand-cuffed and gamers who are not Star Trek freaks will not like it. However, if you place gameplay ahead the Star Trek lore, god help you, a whole Star Trek convetion will show up to protest. 9 times out of 10, Its a damned if you do, damned if you do not title.

It IS possible to develope a good game here, but its a VERY thin tightrope that must be traversed for a very long time. It will take a ton of money to meet expectations, and if yer off even just a bit....this genre is becoming very saturated, so to get a decent share of the market that is spread all over so many games now, you have to really have a good game. Another Scary prospect for whomever would develope this game. I wish them luck, they're gonna need it.

They did a good job with City of Heroes/Villains, so hopefully they'll pull through on STO.

I agree with the second half of Spanky's post -- it will be a very thin tightrope. I'd love to see them pull it off though.  I don't see an oversaturation of sci-fi MMO's right now so I think this would be a welcome addition to what's around... if it's done right.

To stand a chance at success, it will require a lot of money and some probably a lot of controversial decisions which I'm sure will piss some people off while delighting others. It will be interesting to watch what they do with it.

Cryptic does have a very tight rope to walk indeed! For many years I use to consider Star Trek fans to be the most nit-picky people on the face of the planet. I should know this because I've been a Trek fan since 1967 or 68. However, since I've started playing computer game, and MMO's in particular, I am now convinced that MMO's players and Trek fans are in a constant and epic battle for the nit-pickers crown.

Now with Cryptic taking on a Star Trek MMO, they will have to contend with a dual assault from both the MMO and Trek nit pickers. Any one false move could sent the whole project falling in to an endless abyss of Trek/MMO'ers complaints and outrage since the devs are not living up to there very specific vision of what the game should be.  All I can say is good luck and God's speed to you Cryptic!!

its nice to see that a star trek mmo  might happen . the franchise at the moment is in pretty bad shape and i m not sure how well the reboot movie will go down . the problem in someways it the loyal fan base who really dont want to see anything challenging happening to the franchise . cryptic have a good name and fingers crossed they may produce something interesting . ( lets just say treks in better hands thant the dc universe online )

It will be interesting to see what they do.

They seem to be off to a decent start with the general description.   Better than the Perpetual's concepts at least.    They expected people to play roles like navigator or engineer  and only were talking about playing Federation.   The write-up under the Cryptic announcement says everyone to command a ship and you get to play a Klingon if you want and that already sounds like a better game.  

It's just a start but at least they're off on the right foot. 

Cryptic is one of my favorite gaming studio companies, I like most of their games they put out.  The problem here is that it's not their baby, they are just taking over someone else's work.  Basically for it to truly be their game they would have to have designed it from scratch, unless they plan on doing that I don't really have high hopes for this news.  This is of course assuming that the prior developers did crappy work, who knows, maybe they did a great job.

Either way, I'm happy Cryptic is in charge now, but if this turns out to be a lost cause then I won't hold it against Cryptic.

Too bad STO didn't get hooked up from the beginning with a good developing company.