Interview: Star Trek Online

Your Questions Answered by executive producer Craig Zinkievich.

2010 is shaping up into a stellar year for science fiction MMO fans. Not only do we have BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic to salivate over, but Cryptic's Star Trek Online, too. Following up from our extensive gamescom preview, we nabbed executive producer Craig Zinkievich on the phone for a massive interview on all things Starfleet, Federation and Klingon. Here, in the third and final part of our massive interview, we put the great VideoGamer.com community's questions to Craig, and get some interesting answers! Missed part two? Never fear! A link is here! Missed part one? Don't fret. Aim your phasers here.

robz48: Will there be a monthly fee?

Craig Zinkievich: We haven't announced what the pricing is, but yes you can expect it to be a standard subscription model.

robz48: Can you play as a hot alien girl?

CZ: [Laughs] I think you have to be able to! I've seen miniskirts as a costume option!

Karlius: Will it be full of Star Trek fanboys that will get pissed off if you mess around? If so sign me up!

CZ: There will probably be Star Trek fanboys that will get pissed off if you mess around. For Cryptic one of the funnest parts about an MMO is to relax restrictions, relax what people can do in terms of customisation - not tighten it up, not put hardcore rules in. Because then what people get out in the end, how people role play, all the behaviour that just comes out of nowhere, is just awesome. It's fun to see. It's one of the most rewarding parts about putting out an MMO. So yeah, maybe the fanboys will get a little upset, but I'm looking forward to it.

CheekyLee: I think that the world needs to know one thing above all others: Will there be Tribbles? :O

CZ: [Laughs] There have to be Tribbles in the game! There's definitely Tribbles in the game. There's even one full episode, an hour long chunk of space ground, space ground, that is focused on the Tribble menace.

gair22: The Klingons appear to be at war with four factions right now. The Romulans, the Federation, the Gorn, and the Nausicaans. Who are the Klingon allies in STO?

CZ: I'm not going to spoil the story because they ally with a couple of their enemies right now. There's a little bit of conquering that happens in the timeline. I think we've talked about this a little bit - the Gorn and the Nausicaan and the Orions end up allying with the Klingons in the end, so those are allies. The Klingons are victorious on those fronts.

gair22: Cryptic has mentioned the three different types of ship classes. Escort, Science, and Cruisers all have specific functions. The Cruisers particularly are balanced to be the best tanks. Can we expect 'threat' based abilities, and will Science ships 'heal'?

CZ: Science ships do, in basic mechanics yes, they do end up healing other ships. They send medical parties over. Engineering ships though also can send engineering teams over to help aid healing hulls of ships. So at times we put MMO labels on some of the things within Star Trek, just to try to get the very general ideas across, but there are a lot of lines that are blurred. There are a lot of things that end up moving into another class. It's not, okay healer is science, tank is this, pew pew is this. It does blur and there are new and different roles that exist.

gair22: There are a few different websites offering incentives for pre-ordering STO. Some include Bridge Officers, and others include ships. Will Cryptic offer a method for people to redeem all of the various pre-order items to prevent people from having to order multiple copies?

CZ: We haven't decided whether or not those things will be available post launch from the Cryptic Store or not, and I don't know where that currently stands.

Bloodstorm: How will the end game work?

CZ: There are three different aspects to the endgame: there is PvP advancement and rewards at the endgame that people who are into that can go off to; there is exploration content that is specifically for the Admiral ranked members; and then there is PvE "raidisodes" - five-man raids that are focused on the endgame and there is a rewards structure there, too. So we wanted to make sure there were choices at the endgame as well.

rbevanx: Will it offer something for non Star Trek fans (myself) as games like Star Wars: Knights of the Republic appealed to non Star Wars fans (again like myself)?

CZ: The game is just chockfull of lore, right? Around every corner you're going to see a reference to something or the name of an item is going to hearken back to an episode you saw. That being said, first and foremost it's a game, it's not a simulator. We want to make sure it is a fun and engaging game and you don't need to even know anything about the license, the universe, in order to get in and start enjoying it. Our fondest hope is that people who don't know Star Trek at all, people who aren't really fans, who are like, 'ooh, you know I saw that movie, I want to know more about that universe', get in and get hooked and learn all of those things. So no, you don't need to be a fan. You don't need to know about the license and the universe at all to get in and play.

thompo555: What's your favourite part of the game?

CZ: Oh god! They always ask me that and I haven't been able to pick between the three items I keep saying over and over again. To me space combat is something special, and is a brand new thing within video games that every person who plays is just bowled over by how deep it is, how much strategy, how much tactics… Even people who have been playing it for the entire dev cycle are still finding new things about it every week. The episodic content, it might not hit people at first, but the feeling of going back and forth from space and ground and constantly moving through these maps and through these stories, sets it apart from any other MMO experience that is out there. And then last but not least, I do have a soft spot for the bridge officers. It's hilarious and interesting how quickly you become attached to these guys. You name them, you give them faces, you equip them, they come down with you on away missions and help you out in space. You do become attached to these guys a lot. During development every once in a while we have to do a character wipe on our database, if we're updating things. The last character wipe we did, I didn't care about my character who I had been playing for 20 hours. It was that one bridge officer, Washington, and she was awesome and she always helped out and she was levelled up perfectly! It's amazing how they are secondary characters to you. Those are my three favourite things!

Star Trek Online is due out for the PC sometime between the beginning of January and the end of March next year.