STAR TREK Online BETA!

J

Joshinator

Christian Gamers Alliance TeamSpeak 3 Server Opera
Its here! Go and get your keys at massively.com and scroll down to their key give away, and follow the instructions. Hurry, they only seem to have 10,000.

i need people to play this game with lol.

PS. if they run out of keys, and you can't find anymore, I maybe able to get one from fileplanet (i subbed) and I currently have 2 I got elsewhere. One may not work though. So just send me a pm.
 
Joshinator said:
PS. if they run out of keys, and you can't find anymore, I maybe able to get one from fileplanet (i subbed) and I currently have 2 I got elsewhere. One may not work though. So just send me a pm.
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PM sent.

For those who don't win a key or already have a FilePlanet subscription, please take note that the beta for Star Trek Online is a paid beta, not a true open beta. NCSoft pulled the same bait and switch with Aion before its release. It seems MMO developers have forgotten or are willfully misrepresenting the meaning of "open beta."
 
Annath said:
I got a key but I don't know that I'll be able to download it. It's over 7 GB. @_@
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FWIW, there's a .torrent for the client available on the STO download page. I'm currently downloading it on my desktop computer, with plans to copy it to my 500GB external hard drive, then install it on my notebook.
 
Tek7 said:
FWIW, there's a .torrent for the client available on the STO download page. I'm currently downloading it on my desktop computer, with plans to copy it to my 500GB external hard drive, then install it on my notebook.
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Unfortunately my university network throttles the life out of torrents. :/ I'll keep an eye out and see if they add any other download methods though. I might try something other than FilePlanet if the option becomes available.
 
You guys may want to enter "JIH MUSHA SOH" into the "activate beta key" area. ;)
 
XionTawa said:
I am pretty sure that is illegal... :(
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Not for the university. It is for big ISP's like Comcast, but since this is a private network for use by students, where you have to agree to their terms of use, etc, they can pretty much manage it however they want. :/
 
I haven't been able to get in yet. I have to temporarily disable net nanny and then update I believe. But otherwise the launcher keeps giving me cryptic errors.
 
I just played through the tutorial scenario, but I don't know if I can give even a fair "snap judgment" review of the game because the lag was so severe.

The game world seems faithful to the Star Trek universe, both in terms of lore and atmosphere. References to "buffs and debuffs" damage the player's ability to immerse himself or herself in the world, but that's easily fixed by editing a few lines of text.

The graphics are about what you'd expect for a MMO preparing to launch in 2010. Cryptic brought over the robust character customization system from Champions Online, though the choices are not as outlandish (which is appropriate, given the game world).

The missions in the tutorial were more of the same, but it's too soon to tell whether players will be playing through "Kill X number of Y mobs to earn Z reward" and "Kill X mobs until you've collected Y number of items, which, by the way, have an atrociously low drop rate, and turn in at Z NPC" quests until their eyes bleed like they do in the first 40 or 50 levels of WoW.

Combat was, like in almost every other MMO I've played, awkward and dull. Granted, I spend most of my online gaming time playing first-person shooters, so take that judgment in context. STO uses the stock "assign ability to a number key and spam that number key until your enemy dies" system for early quests. There are a few extra abilities (bound to a few extra keys) in the tutorial, but nothing particularly innovative here.

All in all, it's not a bad game. But judging solely based on what I've seen so far (which, I admit, is not fair at all, especially given that the purpose of a beta is to improve the game before release, but let's face it--that's what 90% of the beta players are going to do), STO will probably fare about as well as Champions Online.

Star Trek fans will probably enjoy running around a virtual Star Trek universe and I can certainly see the appeal in that. (I'm more of a casual fan of Star Trek, having watched roughly half of The Next Generation episodes.) I'm a bit confused how the developers plan to explain introducing economy into the Star Trek universe. Wasn't ST: TNG supposed to be set in a time when there was no longer any need for money? I could be mistaken on that point.

All in all, Star Trek Online is worth a glance (especially for serious Star Trek fans) when Cryptic makes a free trial available. Cryptic played it safe; given the current US economy and the risk associated with introducing innovation in gaming, that might have been the most prudent course. But I have a sneaking suspicion that STO will follow the same pattern as Champions Online: well-publicized lead-up to a launch, a solid launch, a healthy starting subscriber base, then a sharp decline in interest 2-6 months after retail release.

Side note: Remember that Easter egg in StarCraft where one of the units says, "This is not WarCraft in space"? I think someone at Cryptic is saying, "This is not World of WarCraft in space!"...even though the similarities are clear (not that that's good or bad; WoW certainly wasn't the first MMO and its success is based largely on delivering a polished update of Everquest with different lore).
 
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