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The Future of Star Trek Online
The future of the upcoming MMORPG Star Trek Online has been in question in many minds ever since the "indefinite hold" that was placed on Gods & Heroes. Yesterday, it was reported that P2 had lost the license and that it would be taken up by another company. MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood explores at least one possibility for the game's future.
It seems like ages ago that Perpetual Entertainment announced the “indefinite hold” that had been placed on their historically-based MMORPG, Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising, leading many to question the future of the company’s other project, Star Trek Online.
When the original announcement hit that Perpetual’s original IP MMORPG would not see store shelves, the reason given by the company’s President Chris McKibbon was that the company would be focusing its efforts entirely upon their proprietary engine and on the development of Star Trek Online:
“Moving forward, we're shifting our collective focus, resources and development efforts to Perpetual's Platform Services division and Star Trek Online, thereby ensuring that the game lives up to the high level of expectation set by the dedicated Star Trek fan base.”
Recent events though suggest that it looks as though the “dedicated Star Trek fan base” will never see Perpetual’s vision of the Star Trek Universe as Warcry’s Dana Massey reported yesterday that, according to “multiple [unnamed] inside sources”, P2 (known previously as Perpetual Entertainment) had “ceased development on Star Trek Online”.
Massey’s article went on to assert that the license, along with the game’s content, minus the code, would be moving into the hands of another development studio in the San Francisco area.
Later last night, a site called Woot Studios announced that the San Francisco area studio in question is none other than Cryptic Studios. When reached for comment, Cryptic’s Online Community Manager Victor Wachter told MMORPG.com:
“What we are doing with P2 is interviewing a number of their former employees for positions here at Cryptic for our projects currently under development.”
While this is not an official confirmation, even the rumor could be seen as welcome news to numerous STO fans who had shown concern that Perpetual’s vision for the game and staying power as a company were lacking.
Cryptic Studios is best known for their work in developing the first ever superhero MMORPG in City of Heroes, which was later followed by its companion game, City of Villains. Both of these games have gained notoriety through their unique and detailed character creation and class systems.
Star Trek Online, should the license go to Cryptic, will join the studio’s other high-profile upcoming MMORPG Marvel Universe Online and would certainly make Cryptic the studio to watch in the coming years.
With all of this to consider, on question burns in my mind... If Cryptic Studios ends up developing a Star Trek MMORPG and Marvel Universe Online at the same time, will we finally see a digital version of those great X-Men / Star Trek crossover comics and books?
The link just takes you to the news page for STO, not the story.
What ThePatriot said.
Yeah, you caught me while I was still in the process of posting the news item. You guys are too quick.
The link should be working now.
IF it's Cryptic Studios then the Star Trek IP is in good hands. I have faith in Cryptic Studios.
Yep, it's working now.
If this is true, hopefully it wont slow Marvel's development down, which I doubt it will.
LOL i really do hope its true, cryptic are the only mmo developer i cant say one bad word about
The latest rumors from December/November indicate MUO has been effectively cancelled so don't get your hopes up.
Well if this is the case, STO wont slow down MUO, especially if its at a complete stop
"When reached for comment, Cryptic’s Online Community Manager Victor Wachter told MMORPG.com:
“What we are doing with P2 is interviewing a number of their former employees for positions here at Cryptic for our projects currently under development.”
If that's true, then I don't care if Cryptic is making ST:O or anything else. If they hire even one of the "management" people from PE ( especially Daron "Iknownothingaboutgamedevelopment" Stinnett ), I won't touch it. And I'd be hesitant if they just hired the coders/artists, as these people already have the "style" of ST:O that they worked on with PE ingrained in their brains. Nothing from PEs' idea pool should make it in the game. Period. Burn the content and start over with fresh people. Put PEs' guys in janitorial, or let 'em make a Hello Kitty sequel since they like cartoony crap so much.
/rant off
Cryptic Studios, eh. Well that's better than with Perpetual. Maybe than can do something with the STO license.
Cryptic Studios is way better than P2. I played CoH/CoV for 2 years and have nothing to complain about them.
If Cryptic takes this project, I'm even more excited about it. They did a great job on City of Heroes, and their free expansion issues for that game were also excellent. They added content, and added an economy, new zones, new powers etc. without breaking the game or taking away features that previous/current players enjoyed. Also, and very importantly to me, when upcoming expansions had bugs, they took the time to fix them before release. Some players didn't have patience with this, but I've seen the alternative. I'd much rather wait another month or two and not have things broken and frustrating. Also, the Cryptic people actually seem to make games because they like making games. It never seemed like they were pumping out semi-functional or uninspiring content just to try to make a buck. I'v enjoyed playing in their virtual world for about 2 years now. This is good news to me.
wonderful. another mmorpg we get to wait a decade to play. it's a good thing i have no chance of getting married or achieving any sort of real world success in that time.
see you at launch!
While it wasn't as bad as Sony's SWF mistake, it was the impetus for half of our supergroup to leave the CoH world behind. I'll never trust Jack again for sure.
I agree with the above poster. Enhancement Diversification turned my super heroes into super duds. Instead of feeling like a super hero, my characters felt like hero wannabes. The game went from being fun and exciting to the typical boring grind of a subpar MMO, with a hell of a lot of less content than most MMOs on the market.
Even before the changes, CoH was boring after a couple months of play, thanks to their extremely repetitive mission system and complete lack of world exploration. Cryptic hasn't proven to me that they can make a fully functional MMO that has all of the sandbox style content that we expect from a AAA game. What they have proven is that they are good at making niche games that have narrow appeal.
Atleast it's cheaper than a wife and less stressful than a job so you're probably going to live a long life..
Yes the missions became repetitive... Cryptic was just too small and for a first game... they did amazing...
-The gameplay and controls themselves were phenomenal and fun
-The PvP came out really good for a game that had it as an afterthought
-The runtime was smooth and has little lag
-The character customisation ... nothing needs to be added to this...
I absolutely agree that repetitive content was a problem.
The only real flaw to the game is enough varied content to keep you leveling all the way up.
That's has a lot to do with financing really... give them Microsoft money or just 1/10th of the money WoW rakes in for a year and it would have been a different story.
I honestly think STO is in good hands.
STO = Dead as a doornail.
Cryptic Studios is fine with me, if it goes to SOE no one will go.
That is AWESOME news! They're a great studio. Cryptic, NCSoft, Mythic and maybe Funcom are the only ones I trust anymore to deliver good products.
Wow great news, those Cryptic people really know their business. Only question I have is transfering the license from Perpetual allowed as it is considered an asset.
To be quite honest, i have alot more faithin STO seeing the light of day than i did before.What many people here have forgotten is that Paramount/CBS knows what a ggoldmine STO could be if done right.It also looks like someone had been talking to Cryptic prior to Perpetual otherwise how would the handover of the license have happened so fast.
Ok well i do seriously think cryptic are the people behind keeping the star trek mmo dream going on for one good reason, marvel and paramount have had an excellent partnership over the years with there numerous star trek themed comic books so i believe marvel took it upon themselves to have a friendly word with paramount and put a good word in for cryptic.
Marvel Universe Online is cancelled, so I doubt Marvel really cares whether Cryptic gets business or not.
Link to that tit bit of breaking news please?
Wiil Perpetual finish G&H now, i always liked the look of that game??
news.mmosite.com/content/2007-11-16/20071116235421130,1.shtml
kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/marvel-universe-online-suspected-of-cancellation-322277.php
No that was cancelled already.
Your second link to that story is tagged by kotaku as rumor and until microsoft/cryptic/marvel can say otherwise theres no reason to take it as anything else, it may be the game is in development difficulty's and just been blown completely out of proportion.
swell.
Actually, there is a VERY active group of gamers who currently play Bridge Commander, Starfleet Command, and Armada to this very day. There are multiple sites dedicated to developing and promoting mods for those games. Go to sfc3files.com and look just how many mods are listed, and home many downloads they get.
The Star Trek gaming community even has a bi-weekly podcast which I am a part of, that gets tens of thousands of downloads with each release. When we had an interview with STO developers, those numbers would increase to over a million.
There is an active and hungry fanbase that is much larger and much more interested in this game than most people realize. The franchise has had trouble, especially with the recent Bethesda offerings, but the fanbase is quite large and ready for a Star Trek Online. Whomever the developer is, they will have an installed, large, dedicated base to go to.
And I am almost certain that fanbase wants something more than just WoW in space.
If Cryptic is getting the license being the game and content, but not the code, then that means they will just about start from scratch. So, if that's the case lets not expect Star Trek Online for another 2-10 years. Yeah, P2 was taking awhile but thats synonymous with ALL gaming companies, jesus.
And a message to the Star Trek fanbois who "P2 didnt tune the game towards", just about all of you have no understanding of what can be made into a GAME, an MMO Game no less, and what can be made on a TV screen and a movie screen.
Oh ye of little faith!
They are getting ready to release a new movie right now! I think that there is a big enough fan base if they are going for a christmas release Star Trek movie. The franchise may be in a lull but it is far from dead.
I don't think Star Trek is dead as a cultural phenomenon. In fact, I think Star Trek is so finely meshed into American (if not world) culture, it will never completely go away. Star Trek is about as much of a fad as baseball, and if they can make successful MMOs on LOtR and Star Wars, Star Trek would have far less problems than either of those IPs in terms of brand recognition.
That being said, there are problems with creating a Star Trek MMO. It has to be designed carefully, and it can't resort to a lot of the things developers lean on to make MMOs work. I mean, you just can't design it like a Korean grinder where you go down to the Nimbus III noob zone and start grinding Ferenghi to level up to the Cardassian instance. That would make a Star Trek MMO an embarassment.
Star Trek is about interpersonal skills and problem solving over tactics and combat skill. There's no real consumer economy either (though I can see ships having to replace warp cores, tricorders, and phasers from time to time). All of these things add up to the real design challenge for this IP: if you design it to attract MMO players using the things MMO players like to do, it ceases to be Star Trek and becomes a parody of Star Trek. If a Star Trek MMO would come out, it would fare far better with the Entropia/Second Life crowd than it would with the WoW/EVE/EQ crowd.
Secondly, politics and the economics of the business may kill this game in the boardroom. I mean, everyone and their uncle wanted Freespace III to come out, but with Interplay holding the rights, and Volition Inc. now with THQ, Freespace III will never happen. I fear the same thing might happen here with STO.
This is the best thing that could have happened to Star Trek Online. Perpetual were a bunch of talentless, lazy hacks. They couldn't even finish their own game, and they were set on destroying what could have essentially become the de facto continuation of the Star Trek universe.
Cryptic says that they are simply hiring Perpetual's staff, that makes sense. I think it's too early to assume that they will be developing STO.
Where ever it goes, STO will be in far, far better hands now. Lets hope that the new company is willing to make this game to it's full potential, the way it should be.
It's a relief we won't see that half-assed piece of crap Perpetual was making.
I've about given up on existing franchises making it in the mmorpg world. marvel died, star wars sucked, star trek and dc online are in limbo.
Stargate I have no hope in.
Conan is about the only one but it didn't have a strong existing franchise just some nice books and a good flick.