I beta tested the game, and overall I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed it much more than CO, and it seems further in development than CO was last time I played that game.

I would say if you go in with low expectations, you will be pleasantly surprised. I went in expecting it to be a crap fest and it's actually pretty polished, though it still has some issues.

I definitely plan on picking this one up down the road, but at the moment I have a self-imposed moratorium on getting new games (big move coming up in the coming months).

If you're an EVE fan you may find STO lacking, if this is your first space MMO you might find it's a good time.

Ultimately my opinions are my own, and while I enjoyed the game when I played it, I know a decent portion of MMO players out there found it to be lacking.

If you didn't get into OB and you're not sure whether to get it or not, you may as well wait 3-6 months and get it then. Everyone who's been involved with an MMO launch will tell you that very few are in "release-ready" states when they're released ;)

As another reviewer pointed out, ST is all about the ships. And it's still a bust in that department as damage to your ship isn't nearly as dramatical as it should be. And that's really a bummer for me. But, good review you got none the less ^^

I'm going to give it a go, but I don't expect to be in it for the long haul. It just seems a bit too... placid for lack of a better word.

Head over here for it :P http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.171258

well i think star trek online might be a lot more massively multilayer if it opened its doors properly and wasn't pay monthly which is the main reasons I've lost interest other than that i like star trek enough to forgive any minor bugs in the game.

you know honestly at first i was like OMG BEST GAME EVER... then after some hours into it, it got more and more repetitive and the amount of content was starting to become clear.

The overuse of instancing was also a big pain, i counted the amount of time you see a loading screen in just the tutorial, if i remember correctly it was something like 8 or more times. IN THE TUTORIAL ALONE!!!

Almost everything you do in STO puts you in a new instance, sometimes I wonder if they could not have put more stuff into the same instance. I want to play a game not look at constant loading screens.

Getting back to content and gameplay. The land and space gameplay is very arcade style and though you manage your shields a bit (you press the arrow keys on the keyboard to temporarily boost shield strength in one area at the cots of the other shields or you press the HUD icon to balance your shields out temporarily equalizing the shield strengths out, you also have energy management of which for cruisers you basically only ever use two modes, all energy to weapons and all energy to shields. If you are being attacked by quite a few you need all energy on shields, if you are hardly being attacked you need all energy on weapons.

You also have different weapon arcs and depending on your ship and loadout these will mean you will need to change your tactics slightly. Though these add quite a lot of tactical elements, it is nothing we haven't seen before (e.g. Bridge Commander) and quite honestly is a feature you would expect to see in a Star Trek space action game.

The ground battles are quite fun though they are very very simple. Squad controls are basic (which is good as they work, though your squad AI sucks and will often aggro other groups because for some reason they just suddenly think they have to run way far away from you and your targets). There are some nice mechanisms in the ground combat that other mmos do not have.

Then on to quest content. Auto-teaming (though currently disabled in the game due to Cryptic still not having their server issues fixed) is a blessing, when it works... which so far it has not worked much since launch and was often off during Open Beta and then again during the head start.

The quests themselves are very repetitive and by the time you reach level 11 you will have probably done more or less the same quests you will be doing for the entire rest of the game (max level is like 80 or something i think? Not sure...)

The different ships are cool and have balanced stats, ultimately though the variation comes from how you outfit your ship. The klingon ships also feel entirely different from the Federation ships and require an entirely different flying style. PvP is also really fun as both Klingons and Federation. Though some of the PvP battles still do not work properly, other than the simple PvP team deathmatch, most of the others do not work properly yet...

personally i think the game is pretty good, needs a bit of tweaking here and there but it will get there im sure. but at the moment it is a good game

Couldn't get in to Eve at all, but love Star Trek. I do hear such great things about Eve, I wish someone would run with the same mechanics and just put it in a different setting.