Star Trek Online review

So I've passed the halfway mark, level-wise, on STO, and I figure I'd write down some of my thoughts on the game so far. This makes the... 3rd? online MMO I've played (4th if you count Gaia Online's zOMG, I guess), so some comparisons with Perfect World International and Guild Wars are probably inevitable.

Also, I feel we need to note that Cryptic Studios, which makes STO, was bought by Perfect World Entertainment, which changed the business model of the game from subscription to free-to-play early this year.

And also note - while the game has PvP (mostly Fed. vs Klingons), I don't play PvP, so this review is focused exclusively on the PvE stuff. It helps that the game is designed primarily for PvE with PvP being the "afterthought"... (kinda the opposite of GW:Prophecies).

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In Summary:
Great big authenticity stamp with regards to the franchise. Wonderful storytelling and promising RP potential. Some unique mechanics and stuff. Not much of a multiplayer game, but that's not a big issue for people like me who prefer to play in single-player mode. Still a little rough around the edges, but I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt due to its relatively "young" age.

Playerbase quality

You know, say what you will about GW's playerbase, but I have noticed that they are generally quite... anally hardcore? :-p Yeah, even...especially the PvE folks.

I don't know how other pay-to-play games like WoW has it, but I've been reading some general whining on the PWI/STO forums about grab bag items and how the players demand transparency from the devs on the percentages of certain rewards.

And I can't just help but compare it to the Guild Wars fan base, which instead of demanding hard numbers...start tallying up the #'s themselves across large numbers of people, and then estimate a drop rate/spawn rate/etc. from there which then gets posted to the wiki or wiki discussion page. Now, yes, I do get that there is a difference here in that the GW players are crunching numbers on largely non-purchased stuff (drop rates, spawn rates, holiday mystery box rates, etc.) But given how fast the grab boxes in STO/PWI sell (only the keys need to be purchased with $$), I don't think there are any less sources of datapoints there either; just no one getting together to crunch some numbers.

Even in general, the GW wiki (and related wikis like PvX) is a pretty awe-inspiring place. Quick updates, complete records of every bit of minutae in the game, strategy suggestions that get updated according to game/skill balance, statistical analysis of all sorts of stuff...

They're all free-to-play games. But what's so unique about the GW crop of players?