Startrekonline.com has given us yet another 'history lesson' from the 25th century as a point of view.

Starfleet Intelligence continues to gather reports of unrest on Romulus. Praetor Tal’aura enacts food rationing and strict limits on replicator use on the homeworld, saying that the empire’s resources must be reserved to support the military’s campaign against Donatra and the breakaway Imperial Romulan State.

The shortages spark rioting in the capitol of Ki Baratan, and the struggle goes on for two days before the praetor orders troops to intervene. Observers on Romulus suggest that as many as 2,000 people could have died either in the initial riots or at the hands of Romulan troops.

The civil unrest and resistance from Romulan nobles strain Tal’aura’s command of the empire. She calls upon her allies in the Senate to help in stabilizing the government, and they respond by voting to expand the praetor’s powers, giving Tal’aura the power to grant or remove noble titles, which previously was a privilege that only the emperor enjoyed. She also is granted the ability to declare war without Senate approval.

Ambassador Spock returns to Romulus to take his place with the Unificationists. Leaders of the movement say that although they could not win the support of the Federation, they will continue to “wage peace” on Romulus.

On Stardate 60900.31, Fleet Commander Tomalak attacks Donatra’s fleet at Xanitla. Tomalak’s forces are soundly defeated in the battle, and he is dealt a further blow when Admiral Taris and the twelve ships under her command defect to the Imperial side.

The Cardassians make some gains in their efforts to rebuild their war-ravaged planet, signing a new agreement for aid from the Federation and beginning reconstruction of Lakarian City. Excavation of several sites on the planet reveals Hebitian relics, and the publication of these finds sparks a resurgence of interest among Cardassians in ancient religious and cultural practices.

The Oralians, a religious group dating back to the Hebitian civilization that was outlawed by the Cardassian Union, begin openly holding services and seeking adherents among the Cardassian population. The rise of this spiritual movement is opposed by the followers of the True Way, which continues to call for a return to the totalitarian practices of the Union.

The Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets are at odds over the Klingon takeover of Khitomer. In a narrow vote, the Federation Council decides not to formally censure the empire for its military action. However, the fact that the matter went to the full Council for a vote is enough of an affront for Qo’noS to temporarily recall its ambassador to the Federation.

Hardliners on the Klingon High Council demand that Martok eject Federation ambassadors from Klingon space. Martok refuses to do so, and then defeats Councilor Qolka in a duel of honor after he accuses Martok of being a “pet desperate for the approval of his Starfleet masters.”

In legal matters, Rear Admiral James Bennett of the Starfleet Judge Advocate General’s office rules that the “Data Decision,” referenced in The Doctor’s legal arguments to keep the mobile emitter, is too narrow to be used in this case. Bennett rules that the precedent can only be applied to prove that The Doctor is not the property of Starfleet, and not to decide whether or not he is a sentient being. The Doctor’s counsel appeals the decision, and analysts predict that the case will continue for some time.

The Soong Foundation, a group affiliated with the Daystrom Institute and dedicated to promoting the rights of artificial life forms, announces that it is beginning research to create a mobile holographic emitter of its own design, with the hopes that the technology can be adapted for civilian use.

Let's hope more follows in the comming weeks.

Hello trekkies, casual gamers and roleplayers!

Let me introduce myself. I'm Jodocus, an avid Star Trek fan and a longtime roleplayer and MMORPG gamer. From today on I'll be your new blogger on Boldy Play!

The lifetime subscription sweepstakes has now closed. Cryptic Studios will be chosen around August 25 and notified around August 28.

Cross your fingers, I know I entered and I'm sure plenty of you have done so as well.

Best of luck to everyone!

The Federation and the Klingons were doing pretty well together at the end of Deep Space 9 and we haven't seen much since that would indicated any conflict. However, when Star Trek Online begins, it seems as if Federation-Klingon relations will be back at the state of The Original Series.

If so, how did it happen?

There's a great deal of speculation going on in the forums right now on a thread by Polaron.

Here's my speculation, as posted on the thread:

I think the most likely cause is that the Federation refused to share the technology Janeway brought back from the future. Either they didn’t want to share this new tech with the Klingons because they wanted it for themselves (something very possible considering some of the Federation’s politicians we’ve seen lately) or because they were afraid that distributing the technology would contaminate the timeline.

The Klingons likely took serious disagreement to this, accusing the Federation of trying to keep the Empire on a technologically or political lower level (a not uncommon argument from the Klingons) and threatened the Federation with war if they didn’t give up the tech.

I’d bet the Federation then made transwarp public, in order to try and keep the Klingons happy. However, of course, what the Klingons wanted was the combat-centric tech. In that situation, I could easily see the pre-existing allies of the Federation turn on them, including Worf.

Star Trek Online's team has posted a report on their experience at the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas.

Check it out!

Ten Ton Hammer, a Massively Multiplayer Online gamers site, has just posted their exclusive interview with Jack Emmert and Emmert has now revealed a few new things.

Emmert noted some of the character elements you'd be able to customize, including "your face, your hands, your adding of antennae, big insect eyes, crazy colored skin, spots, and so on"

He also took a look at some of the important elements of the game, and the impossible one. Time travel was not going to be as big a part of the game as it had been in, say, the original series, due to the difficulty of creating new assets. Getting the spaceships right was very important however.

When it came to game mechanics Emmert revealed that they were working on "a system that we are working on now that addresses creating and generating territory - boundless territory - for players to investigate. Maybe it’ll be inhabited, maybe it won’t."

He also stated that landing missions to planets would be their own instances. 

We already knew about classes from the Star Trek Online reveal in Vegas, only a few days ago. The real news in Cryptic's FAQ is the information about PvP.

The FAQ confirms both PvP and PvE mechanics for the game with the PvP ruleset being based around faction vs. faction (so dueling starships are out, I guess?). It goes further to confirm the rumors that there will not be separate PvP, PvE and RP servers.This is one big hint towards what we've been hearing all along, which is that Cryptic is aiming to have one big server for everyone, in the style of EVE Online.

Open PvP, according to the FAQ, will be restricted to far-off disputed or unclaimed sectors of space (once again, sounding a lot like the 0.0 sectors of EVE). There will also be: "consensual PvP and competitive PvE between realm borders (the Neutral Zone), where players will be competing over territory and resources with the option to PvP."

Will this mean a Starfleet Command 3 or EVE -style competition for territory between the two major powers? It also sounds like we'll be seeing the sort of situations, as there were in World of Warcraft, where major resources will only be available at the site of major conflicts.

What does this mean for players that invade enemy territory? Will there be an option to engage them (in the way that you can go active PvP in WoW)? This would make a lot of sense as there were plenty of cannon situations where Federation ships chose whether or not to engage enemy ships within their own territory.

Penny Arcade speculates about how transporters will be used in Star Trek Online in their latest news and comic post. I guess STO has hit the gaming mainstream now?

Cryptic Studios has just put up a new FAQ on the Star Trek Online website. There isn't much new on there. Some of the answers are practically word for word quotes of Jack Emmert's previous interviews.

However, for those of you who may just be getting into what is going on with STO and Cryptic, it certainly does answer the most common questions out there.

Check it out.

Yesterday STO forum poster Jodocus posted a thread in which he identified a number of the starships shown in the Star Trek Online trailer.

Jodocus identified the following starships from the Federation:


  • Galaxy Class

    The Galaxy Class starship appeared in the trailer relatively unchanged from its appearances in the TV show. It appears to have been modified only slightly, with Jodocus observing changes in its configuration similar to those during the Dominion War.


  • Galaxy Class - Heavy Refit
    The main difference between the heavy refit and the normal Galaxy class seems to be some reinforcement and increased impulse power, with four impulse engines.


  • Galaxy Class - Light Refit

    The light refit of the Galaxy-class ship seems to be a scout-type ship, taking some inspiration from the New Orleans-class.


  • Galaxy-Shovel Variant
    This ship bears a strong resemblance to the Galaxy class, but with a radical change to its saucer section. The hull now resembles a shovel. The ship looks a little bit like the Yeager-class. The ship also strongly resembles some of the starship design elements in the game Starship Creator.
    Jodocus speculated:
    Perhaps starfleet decided the saucer-section of the Galaxy class was too large and truly posed a threat to it's crew as a major catcher of weaponsfire. This new design seems to reduce the saucer section with almost 30% of surface, making it likely easier to avoid enemy weaponsfire.


  • Sovereign-class refit


  • This Sovereign-class looks significantly different, possibly even a different class entirely, it appears to be more nimble with greater structural reinforcement. In addition, it looks as if there are some ablative armor generators. Jodocus also noted the Miranda-style rollbar between the warp nacelles.

  • 'Donut ship' or Windrunner-class?

    This class looks new, not like anything we've seen in the official cannon. Judging by the prevalence in the video, this may be a fairly common ship during the time period STO is set in. This vessel seems to be based off of some of Perpetual's old artwork. Jodocus also pointed out some strong similarities to the Windrunner-class, a mod ship developed by Thulls for Bridge Commander.


  • Tahoe-class

    This is a strong combat-oriented looking vessel. It bears a strong resemblance to a ship in Perpetual's concept art, the Tahoe. This ship also looks as if it has ablative armor generators. The as of yet officially unnamed vessel is likely a serious warship.


  • Ambassador-Class Refit Hybrid Variation

    The old Ambassador class appears to have survived its age. Two variants appeared in the trailer. It may also be an entirely new class.


  • One Klingon ship appeared in the trailer.

  • Vor'cha-class

    A Vor'cha-class Klingon ship appeared that looks pretty much identical to those seen in the series.


  • There were also Borg enemy ships that appeared in the trailer.

  • Borg Cube

    This Borg Cube appears to be a more tactical, highly armored variant.


  • Borg Sphere
    This seems to be a fairly typical Borg Sphere, the main variation seems to be the docking port, which reflects the Borg's evolution in Voyager's Endgame episode.

Jack Emmert has answered some more of the fans' questions, addressing the issues of if Star Trek Online would be on Xbox360, looking deeper into the economy of the game, dealing with ranks, and giving some tasty hints about how combat would run.

Hailing Frequency has released part two of their interview with Emmert, Cryptic Studios' chief creative officer. (Boldly Play has compressed the video to under 10mb, for those with lower bandwith.)

Emmert finally answered one of the questions that have been big for many STO fans; what has happened to the player-controlled bridge officers that were in past plans? Cryptic's representative had a decisive answer.

"We are not currently planning on cooperative bridge play," he said. "We do not envision, and I think this is something Perpetual had talked about, where different people are manning different parts of the ship. That is not something we are planning on doing for launch."

However, that doesn't mean you'll never see the inside of other peoples' bridges.

"You can beam over to somebody's bridge, cooperate in terms of a mission where you have to go to each others bridges or go to one of these bridges and fight off a Borg infestation, for instance," Emmert said.

When asked about 360 gamers playing with PC owners, Emmert stated that it would be "technically possible" and that the game engine could absolutely support Xbox360 but that it was not yet definite.

Emmert spoke about the two types of combat. Starship combat, which he called "more Bridge Commander-esqe" and ground combat, which would be fast-paced, with "beams everywhere."

"We're aiming for star ship combat to be fun, slower paced, more tactical, more like tall ships. Where positioning, timing, these things are very important."

Emmert noted that starship combat couldn't be compared to traditional MMO combat.

"The traditional MMO structure doesn't necessarily apply when you are dealing with ships," he said. "There are lots of different mechanics that we can use to differentiate starships for space combat. There's firing arcs, there's how much power something has, how fast it can go."

Star Trek Online ground combat looks to be distinctive as well.

"As for ground combat, the standard roles may not really work so well. There are certainly medics, there are certainly different forms of ranged combat, but we are probably not going for quite the same MMO mechanics as you might find in standard fantasy fare."

There was more about fleets, which are now promised to be without a population cap. While the commanders of these fleets will not be paid (it wouldn't be canonical) Emmert said that the players would find themselves achieving new ranks, which would provide their own rewards.

"You will rank up from commander to captain to admiral and so forth," he said. "Over time, as you rank up, you'll get access to larger and larger ships, better crews, and so forth."

Crafting will be one of the skills you can pursue in Star Trek Online, there will be elements of interior design available, with Cryptic aiming to allow as much interior customization of starships as possible. You will also be able to follow in the footsteps of many of Star Trek's famous engineers and build devices to improve the ship.

When asked what the post-release held for players, Emmert had big plans.

"We'll open up more parts of the galaxy, that is the Romulans, Dominion. We will spread into the different quadrants. We hope eventually to go to the point where we take some of our tools and turn them outward to the players so that they can create their own missions, their own planets, their own aliens, their own adventures for one another."

Check it out, Cryptic Studios has put up the webcast for all to see!


Star Trek Online Las Vegas Webcast from Cryptic Studios on Vimeo.

See the trailer on YouTube:



Very cool, lots of Borg.

You can see the gameplay trailer at higher quality by downloading it from the official site.

Jack Emmert, chief creative officer at Cryptic Studios, was interviewed by Star Trek podcast Hailing Frequency. In the discussion, Emmert went into greater detail on some previously revealed information and reveled some new game elements.

Emmert confirmed that the Klingon Empire and the Federation will be opposing forces in Star Trek Online and that new players would be captaining their own ship as part of the military structure of one galactic power or the other. Though you cannot currently play as a civilian or non-affiliated character, Emmert mentioned that it was a possibility for future updates.

Emmert put a lot of emphasis on the detail available during character creation, noting that a number of races, including Vulcons, Andorians and Gorn, would be available. Most interesting of all however, was his statement that players will be able to "create your own alien race and call it whatever you want and give it its own abilities and everything."

"We are known for our character customization," Emmert said.

Emmert also confirmed that there will be guilds in STO, in the form of fleets.

"Fleets are going to be able to work cooperatively to build space stations, perhaps even shipyards and other facilities to allow them to expand their abilities."

In a manor similar to EVE online, it seems that there will be some form of resource gathering that can be coordinated to give guilds more powerful items and ships.

"[Fleet construction will] allow them to build even bigger ships, maybe even mining colonies and science stations, that sort of thing."

He also hinted at raid-type events for Fleets, saying "there are some threats that only fleets can face."

STO will be isolated to the Alpha Quadrant, according to the interview. However, in addition to the old standbys of Vulcon and Andor, there is plenty still unexplored.

"We divided out a section of the alpha quadrant and we've split it up into zones and then star systems, where you'll encounter all your favorite planets and you'll also see a whole bunch of unexplored stuff. So you'll be the first person in a particular star system, name the planets, name the star do all that stuff."

Travel from one area to another will be done by using your starship's warp drive or through transwarp conduits.

When asked about legendary ships and characters from the series and movies, Emmert emphasized that the game would be taking place long after the film Nemesis. However, he hinted at time travel, saying that you never know who you might run into.

Perhaps there's hope of camping a Captain Kirk spawn point after all?

Boldly Play will be Live Blogging Cryptic Studios' reveal of new information and actual gameplay footage this Sunday at 1:30 p.m. PST. Join us to discuss what is going on with Star Trek Online as it happens.

The official Star Trek Online website has recently put up a post about a new sweepstakes. From all entrants, five winners will be selected to win a retail copy of Star Trek Online and a lifetime subscription to Star Trek Online.

To enter the sweepstakes, you must first register as a member of the Star Trek Online community before 11:59 p.m. PDT on August 17, 2008. After registering, they can enter the contest by clicking the sweepstakes link.

Winners will be chosen at random and then will receive an e-mail or overnight mail around August 28.

According to the post, the estimated value of the prize is $550 USD.


TrekMovie.com has just put up some images from the Trek Con, including some very fuzzy cellphone screen shots of in-game play.

They look very cool. There's a image that looks as if it was out of the opening credits of Voyager with a Galaxy-class starship. There is also a shot of combat on the bridge, some combat on a planet, and a Borg cube tractor with an Intrepid class ship in tractor.

Trackback: First Details Emerge On New Star Trek Online + New In Game Images - http://trekmovie.com/2008/08/09/first-details-emerge-on-new-star-trek-online-new-in-game-images/trackback/


This Sunday, August 10, Star Trek Online will be revealed to the public by Leonard Nimoy during Trek Con.

Actor and director Nimoy will be appearing at Cryptic Studios' event in the Gene Roddenberry Theater at the Las Vegas Hilton.

According to Cryptic Chief Creative Officer Jack Emmert's recent statement to the Associated Press, the plan is to show off footage and details about the upcoming game.

"You're going to see the actual game working and functioning," said Emmert to the Associated Press in his Friday interview. "This isn't renders. This isn't concept art. Everything that people will see on Sunday is going to be taken right from 'Star Trek Online' as it stands today, so hardened people should know that a release date might be closer than they think."

Cryptic Studios and the STO team will not be leaving non-attendees in the dark. There will be a live webcast hosted through their site on August 10 at 1:30 p.m. PDT.

In an AP article released Friday, Cryptic Studios, which had taken the reigns on the Star Trek Online project, gave the first hint of what the game would be like.

It seems that Cryptic will be choosing to discard the direction of the P2 team, which was the last group to work on the project.

"Pretty much, we're not using anything that Perpetual gave us outside of the concept art. No engine, no tech, no art, outside of the concept," said Cryptic's Chief Creative Officer Jack Emmert, in an interview with GameSpy.

In an interview with the Associated Press Emmert said that players will have the option of either playing as a Starfleet or Klingon Captain, with customizable characters from established Star Trek races (including the Gorn!).

Emmert describes the gameplay as very much in line with the television series and movies.

"You'll venture through space exploring new civilizations and life-forms," said Emmert. "You'll also beam down to planets and have adventures inside your ship. It's a galactic-wide game. There's going to be tons of space to investigate. We have a great system for exploration, which will allow for almost infinite possibilities."


The game is to be set in a period "a few generations following the last 'Trek' film," according to the AP. GameSpy has the following from their interview:

The game's setting: sometime in the 25th century, an exact stardate to be revealed at the Trek con unveiling. It's a time of expansion for the Federation, enabled by technological advances suggestive of the capabilities of the biggest threat it's ever faced. Transwarp conduits, once the strict purview of the Borg, are now operated by the Federation, allowing faster, farther travel to previously inaccessible areas of the galaxy. As for it being a period of peace, the fact the game is being designed around two separate factions strongly suggests that they'll be at odds. But Emmert wasn't prepared to confirm this.


Perhaps the biggest change for the long expectant fans will be the switch from P2's vision of multiple players on one ship to a different experience, in which each player is their own captain with their own ship.

However, though this is the direction for the current work on the game, Cryptic hasn't ruled the old approach out.

"It may be a direction we go in the future," said Emmert to GameSpy.

As with P2's development, it sounds as if the Star Trek production community is interested in helping out. P2, at one point, had a number of people who had been involved in the cannon Star Trek involved with their team.

"Some people have contacted me that are involved in other aspects of the Star Trek IP," Emmert said.

The saga of Star Trek Online continues as it looks as if Cryptic Studios (of City of Heroes fame) is taking over. Hopefully this latest development will mean some serious progress on the game.

See the full article here.

P2 Entertainment - formerly Perpetual Entertainment - has ceased development on Star Trek Online, according to multiple sources at the San Francisco based developer. The news does not, however, mean that the game is canceled. The license, as well as the game's content - but not the code - have been transferred to another Bay Area development studio where work will continue. It is not entirely clear at this time what this means for the individual developers who worked on the project at P2.

As a company, P2 Entertainment will continue on with their profitable Perpetual Platform, which has been licensed to industry leaders like BioWare, and refocus their core business on the casual games market.

Without the code, whoever takes over Star Trek Online will be faced with a lot of work to complete the project, which means that fans may have longer to wait for a completed Star Trek Online.

P2 Entertainment had no comment on the story.

WarCry will continue to follow this story as it develops.


From: http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/breakingnews/2802-Breaking-News-P2-Out-As-Star-Trek-Online-Developer