Warcraft meets Star Trek?
Ever want to zip around different M-Class planets causing havoc, flirting with green ladies and punching out some Gorn? Well now that the Star Trek Universe is joining the world of MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) with Star Trek Online, you can! In a press release from developer Cryptic Studios:
Become part of Star Trek®: The Star Trek universe will appear for the first time in a massively multiplayer online game. Everything from the elegant domes of Starfleet Academy to the ancient temples of Vulcan, from the towers of Qo’noS to the Fire Caves of Bajor, from the mysterious Mutara Nebula to the unexplored voids of deep space, all will be represented in stunning 3-D graphics. Immerse yourself in the future of the Trek universe as it moves into the 25th century: a time of shifting alliances and new discoveries.
Adventure in the Final Frontier: Explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations in an expanding vast universe. Make contact with alien races, discover resources and uncover mysteries that will change the future of the Star Trek universe.
You Are the Captain: Command your own starship as a Federation Captain or a Klingon Warrior. Outfit it with the systems that you need to make your mark in the galaxy. Customize your ship as you see fit. Recruit, train and mold your crew into an elite force for exploration and combat.
Surface, Shipboard and Deep Space Adventures: Command your vessel in thrilling space battles, or beam down to planets with your away team for face-to-face confrontations. Missions will take you and your friends into space, planetside and even inside starships! Powered by the Cryptic Engine, Star Trek® Online will be developed for both console and PC formats. With customizable ships and characters from the Klingon Empire and United Federation of Planets, ground, space and shipboard gameplay and unique options for player-generated content set in the Star Trek universe, Star Trek Online is the MMOG that allows you to boldly go where no one has gone before!
Gameplay footage and a release date are both set to be revealed at the annual Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas’s Gene Roddenberry Theater on August 10.
(Thanks to Easy Strider for the tip)
The main issue I see here is that you've got two kinds of gameplay required – ship travel / combat and character interaction. There's a good chance we'll not see ship to ship battle, at least not in this initial release. The ship will be used as a background, like any other "town", and it'll just "appear" at a new planet. If not, they'll have to come up with ways to make the several days of inter-system travel interesting on the ship.And as with any lisenced game (DC Online, etc) the odds of getting to "work with" any of the named characters from the shows will likely be rare. So it'll mostly be a standard sci-fi game with Trek trappings.
Dang — the headline got my hopes up.Here I was, thinking that CBS and Blizzard had worked out some sort of multimedia deal for a crossover novel and/or manga, given that both properties are published by Pocket (prose) and TokyoPop (manga). I could imagine the story — the Starship Enterprise finds the world of Azeroth, and they discover that the Dark Portal is actually an Iconian gateway.A guy can dream. ;)