Star Trek Online is released properly on Friday - and it's pretty darn anticipated, seeing as many of you are already well entangled in the Beta.
The early signs are good - and it looks as though STO can become a serious player in the MMO world.
CVG caught up with Craig Zinkievich from developer Cryptic to find out more...
Does the game offer something for fans of Star Trek 'through the ages' - and across the series' various guises? We believe there will be something for every Star Trek fan. We have our own timeline but fans from the original series and next generation and so on will be able to take something from this game. We also make references to key people, places, and times of those things Star Trek fans have come to love.
How does the combination of orbit and ground-level gameplay work? For all intents and purposes, your ship disappears when you're on the ground. The way the game works, when you move to a new map, all of you moves, so if your ship remained on another map in orbit, you'd be in two places at once. And some things are impossible, even in Star Trek.
How many villains from Star Trek's history will make an appearance? Remember this is 30 years past Nemesis, so many of the Star Trek villains are dead or are no longer an issue. However, certain species such as the Borg are back, and the Klingons and Federation are in a state of all-out war. So it's not one enemy per se as it is a ton of different races the Federation has to worry about. It's really turbulent times in the galaxy and the Federation is trying to keep it all together.
What has the reaction been to the Beta thus far? The feedback has been great! Of course there will be people that have their own idea of what a game should be so if you don't do exactly that then you've failed in their minds, but overall it's been extremely positive.
We've actually been surprised about the number of people wanting in the open beta and then the increase in pre-order sales after they've played the open beta. It's really exciting.
How often do you envisage Cryptic adding things to the title in future? There is still so much we want to add to this game. There is just so much out there in Star Trek lore and history it would have been impossible for us to get it all in at launch.
But we really want to see what direction our community and fans want the game to go and then we want to add that in. Is it more playable options on your bridge, or engineering room? Do you want more Klingon play? More species in general to be playable? There are just a lot of directions we can go with the game and we definitely want more and more in the game.
Check back tomorrow for the second part of our interview with Craig.
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