MMORPG.com StarQuest Online Correspondent Allen Richardson writes this introduction to the space-based MMORPG, StarQuest Online.

For the most part, space has been a hard setting to use for a MMO. You have futuristic MMOs like EVE, where your character is a ship. You don't really have an avatar. You have futuristic MMOs like Anarchy Online, where you are a character, but you are planet-bound. There seems to be very few happy mediums where both space side and planet side are wired seamlessly together, where you can be a character on both the planet, and the ship. There are many reasons why, the biggest being the engine coding problems. Star Trek Online promises such a medium, but only to a certain extent, you are only portrayed as a character on your ship when in a boarding party battle sequence.

I really never paid much attention to StarQuest. It has been listed on MMORPG.com for a long time, but there never seemed to be any activity or news about it. The graphics are sub-par when compared with game like WAR or EVE. SQO uses DX8 graphics engine. The sound isn't exactly the crispest in the world, but I understand that a couple very resent patches upgraded the sound quite a bit. The community of StarQuest is small, but highly active. Some areas of character animations, like running, seem a bit girlish. This game definitely wasn't built to be a eye popping piece of graphical candy. Neither does it cater very well to the casual gamer. It is made entirely for those who want the most from their roleplay experience. When I finally went and tried the game out. Here is what I found.

Read the StarQuest Online Feature.

Damn you make it sound awesome..when perpetual announced they were developing a star trek mmo I so wanted it to be exactly as you described this game, if i had have known all this a while back i would have checked this out...downloading very soon lol 

Excellent

Try it out people, try it out! :)

Excellent review. This game sounds fun. Though with the scope of the galaxy, does the small population seem non existant?

account registration and management are down.....

Originally posted by jinxit

account registration and management are down.....

They're back up now

And it really is an awesome game, I've been playing since beta and it just keeps getting better and better

with the big galaxy people tend to stay in about 300-350 ly sphere around earth so you will see people all over the place myself and the Therataan protectorate are almost constantly running probes into the alliance so if nothing you will see us or one of our ships

also in the recent months the population has really sky rocketed so join up and you will definatly see people not many people but the player base is certainly growing

Originally posted by Vevi

Excellent review. This game sounds fun. Though with the scope of the galaxy, does the small population seem non existant?

Starquest is a evolving MMO. People stick closer since the population is small. As the population gets bigger, the area in constant use spreads out.

Originally posted by jinxit

account registration and management are down.....

It was down for about a hour, StarQuest got a new website. So don't worry, thats not going to happen again in the near future

Well I registered and down loaded the program but it does not work.

It fails on the windows extractor program.

are you on vista by any chance ? if so there is a trouble shooting guide on the game wiki

i wonder why some people get loads of problems and some get none

Getting started with VISTA:

The SQO experience changes little no matter which Windows OS you have, but their are some things Vista requires you to do to get started, following this guide will assure the easiest setup.

1. Download the client from the SQO website.
2. Run the installer, as administrator, with the default options.
3. Restart your computer
4. Go to your firewall, and make sure that StarQuest Online is in your exceptions list.
5. RIGHT click the SQO shortcut, and click "Run as administrator"

6. Thats it, your ready to play. Bet you thought it would be a lot harder than that didn't you? 

Nope I am on XP

Then your problem would be one we have never seen before.....

Drop me a line at venusteck@gmail.com and maybe we can figure out whats keeping you from installing.

I played a lot of Traveller and Mega Traveller, so when MMORPG.com worte an article about StarQuest Online (SQO), I eagerly signed up for a free trial. While downloading the client, I read the SQO forums, mainly sections dealing with getting new players situated- the newbie guide by darkjedi63 (in the FAQ section) was especially helpful.

SQO has got to be one of the friendliest MMOs around. Many offers of help and useful advice from established players came in, even before my client was fully downloaded! However, the game suffers from an antique  user interface that really takes the enjoyment of playing a game away. I'm not even talking about the 1990s graphics, because that doesn't affect game play. I mean the following-

1) Simple movement- you left-click your mouse to move. No A-W-D-S system. You can't even use "num lock" to auto-move. It's left-click to a spot, and left-click to another spot. You can't use your mouse to turn your character. Very inefficient, and not at all user friendly.

2) Camera- you can't hold down left mouse button to pan camera angles, because you have to use the mouse wheel. It's not a huge issue, but from playing UO, WoW, LotRO, SWG, EVE, and a multitude of PC games, I wonder why SQO game designers chose an oddball interface.

2) Doing simple things- You have to have money (credits) in your hand to purchase things. No logical tools like left-click for menu, hightlight item to purchase. You click control-L and control-R for left and right hand actions. Items obtained do not automatically fall into your backpack or pockets, you have to manually move them from your hand to your pack/pockts. What's the point in that?

I really want to like SQO, because it's the closest thing to Traveller/Mega Traveller on the market. But the unfriendly user interface makes playing SQO more work than play. We all play games to have fun, so it shouldn't be chores to do basic things like buy, sell, use tools/items, inventory management, and even something fundamental like walking around. At least add an auto-move button (like num lock) and let players turn with moving the mouse! On the other hand, players say you get used to the clunky user interface, and the game grows on you, so maybe I'll give it another shot. But WOW! What primative user interface!

I agree Lowenblade.  Nice game, friendly players, but the user interface really bothered me.  I wanted to play the game and have fun, not be frustrated with all the idiosyncracies of a nonintuitive UI.  I suppose you get used to it, I did not stay around long enough to find out.

The players have spoken, the StarQuest devs listen (as always :D).

The UI has officially taken top priority on the Dev's list, and they want to know what you think.

We ask that you at least try out the current UI, (so you know what all it needs to do) then email your UI improvement suggestions to me at venusteck@gmail.com

Thanks for your input, we hope to have the UI more to your liking as soon as we can read all the suggestions. :D

*stunned*

 Now THAT's the kind of dev-player interactions missing from so many MMOs! I'll log on tonight and give it another spin.

They got my soul when they stated that they read each and every account registration.

I was new and didn't really believe them, so I registered a fake account with some stupid joke in the "where did you hear about us" line, and it wasn't 12 hours later I got a warning about playing with the registrations. :P

Ya, the Devs not only listen, and chat everyday on the forums, but they also play with us sometimes. Actually they have killed the best crews we can put up against them several times, with no dev cheats.

So, bring on the suggestions, they will make a difference. ;)

Heh I remember an admin giving me a 'heartattack' after I asked him what he'd do if I shot him

It was a good opportunity to check out the new carpet though..