I Want To Be A Klingon

Posted by Stropp on July 29, 2008

Everyone is talking about the announcement by Cryptic that they have taken over development of Star Trek Online. Well, perhaps taken over isn’t the correct term exactly. Cryptic aren’t using any of the source code that Perpetual Entertainment wrote, mainly because they didn’t want to buy it from Perpetual. (I don’t blame ‘em. If PE managed the development as badly as they managed their company, the code would probably have been mostly rewritten anyway.)

Tipa over at West Karana had a bit of a rant about the announcement, and for the most part I agree with her. I’m definitely hoping the boys and girls over at Cryptic think outside the box on this one and try and depart from the Official World of Warcraft MMORPG Developers Guide that much of the rest of the MMOG development world seems to have adopted — or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the MMOG marketing departments have adopted.

There are certain things that World of Warcraft does that definitely should be retained, but these are mostly usability devices. Things like GUI placement are important to give a sense of continuity. There’s nothing more jarring to a user than to expect something to be one way and find it completely different. That’s one of the reasons for the success of Windows, the GUI elements worked the same way as every other application — but that’s another story.

But that doesn’t mean the gameplay has to exactly emulate every other game out there.

One of the interesting things about Star Trek is that it isn’t about using force to solve problems. Sure. Kirk, Picard and the other in-charge types often had to resort to force, but they did it when all else had failed. More often than not the episodes were about using their brains to solve a problem with the warp nacelles or transporters (weren’t those things deathtraps. They’d never get past Occupational health and safety rules today!) Star Trek Online would absolutely rock if it managed to get this part right.

I really, really hope that the first away missions don’t involve getting sent off to kill ten space rats that are infesting the Jeffries Tubes, or some such thing.

In any case, since Cryptic aren’t using PE’s code, and by the looks of it, they aren’t using the art either, then I expect it will be some time before we can play this one. Maybe I should start a pool… 2010, 2011 anyone?

So there’s plenty of time for discussing the finer points of Star Trek Online as more info is revealed.

And just a personal request to the good folks at Cryptic. Please make sure that you have a good smattering of Star Trek species (they’re NOT races people!) for us to play.

Please. I want to play a Klingon.

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