Star Trek

In the latest Engineering Report posted on the Star Trek Online forum, Cryptic's Dan Stahl starts the discussion with the comment that he is "incredibly happy that Cryptic Studios is now a subsidiary of Perfect World Entertainment." He outline his reasons why before launching into the Engineering Report which outlines what the team is testing, investigating, developing and discussing with regard to STO.

First up are the Borg Red Alerts! These are challenging timed events that will randomly trigger each hour in different sectors. When you see a Red Alert pop-up, you can transfer with 4 other players (Fed and KDF) to take on a powerful Fleet of Borg ships. If you can take them out in 15 minutes, then you'll face a new Borg threat that is bigger than anything we've done in game yet. Tons of new accolades. Tons of great XP for these Red Alerts (they give 5x normal xp and combined with other bonuses that can go up to 10x!). Look for this to hit Holodeck around August 25th.

Then, starting in September we are firing up the REDSHIRT closed beta shard where we will begin testing of the Duty Officer System and the remastered STFs (along with More >

Over at the official Star Trek Online website, the last entry in the Design the Next Enterprise series has been posted, revealing a winner, a completed new Enterprise, and some commentary to boot from Executive Producer, Dan Stahl.

The day has arrived — and we are happy to reveal the final version of the winning ship from our Design the Next Enterprise contest. We present to you the fan-designed U.S.S. Enterprise-F, a new Odyssey-class starship built in a time of war to act as the flagship for Starfleet and the Federation. Originally submitted by fan Adam Ihle, the design was finalized by the Starfleet Corps of Engineers at the San Francisco Fleet Yards.

The new Odyssey class represents the next stage of Starfleet Cruiser design, emphasizing stability and firepower while allowing for versatility in exploration. In the Star Trek Online timeline of 2409, the galaxy is embroiled in war with numerous threats to peace and stability. This Enterprise is designed to carry a message of peace, as well as to show the strength of resolve that forms the foundation of the Federation.

Read the Dev Diary and Check Out the Winning Design at the Star Trek Online Official Website.

Cryptic Executive Producer Dan Stahl has published the July edition of the Star Trek Online Ask Cryptic. The series allows players to ask questions of the dev team. Among other topics, Stahl discussed whether or not Klingon missions would be redone, whether players will be able to skip cutscenes and much much more.

Q: Starfish1 Are there any plans to give us the option to re-trait our characters?

A: We continue to discuss this internally. It does require some changes to how we have the characters setup on the backend. If we do add this sort of feature, it may be a pay service similar to how WOW and other MMOs change your character. Your character may also be offline for a short amount of time while we alter it. The big thing is that many of your costumes and character features are very specific to your species, so once the conversion takes place, your character might look pretty messed up or not capable of looking how you wanted. That is the biggest hurdle we have to tackle before we can offer this.

Read more on the Star Trek Online site.

Fans of the original Star Trek television series and fans of MMOs rejoiced when Star Trek Online was announced. Some of that enthusiasm was tempered, however, once it was released in early 2010. Cryptic Studios has had 18 months to make good on the hopes of its fans. In an MMORPG.com re-review, Lori May takes a look at today's Star Trek Online and how it's progressed since release. Read on!

Space: The final frontier. A place that, thanks to the highly successful Star Trek franchise, is less mysterious and far more familiar than it was fifty years ago. Before the iconic Star Trek (better known as Star Trek: The Original Series or TOS these days) took us there for each episode of this Sci-Fi television hit space was something left purely to our imagination. But has Cryptic’s Star Trek Online (STO) lived up to those famous roots, transporting us all into the world where no man has gone before in an enjoyable, authentic way that holds its own with other MMORPG titles currently on the market? Let’s take a closer look at STO, a pay-to-play (P2P) MMO which combines ship-based combat and ground activities to create a complex, elaborate MMO in More >

The latest developer diary on the official Star Trek Online site has arrived with details about how exactly the team chose the winner of the recent "Design the Next Enterprise" contest and how the team plans to bring that star ship to life. It's a terrific look at the design process from pen and ink drawing through the draft rendered version.

Normally at this stage of the process, with a piece of concept art and a rough 3D model, we'd jump right into building the ship. We'd pass it on to the ship team's capable hands and, in a few weeks and with some iteration, we'd have a shiny new ship in the game. However, we've got a new member to the STO art team. His name is Thomas Marrone and he loves him some Star Trek. He's a talented guy, has this infectious enthusiasm for all things Trek, and he really wanted to sink his teeth into the next Enterprise. Since we only had a front ¾ view of the ship we still had some extrapolation to do. We actually liked the fact that there was room left for us to get our hands dirty in the design. The biggest More >