Star Trek online?

[Murgos]

New Battlestar Galactica MMO... mmmmmm

I like the show, but it's not especially well suited for an MMG. Unless you like political PVP with occasional space combat.

So you wanna go do a Baltar run?

[WindupAtheist]

Misposted something to the wrong thread.  Er, I mean, RESERVED!

Edit--  Now that my mistake has pretty much forced me to post on the topic of Star Trek Online, all I can say is... sadf.  Cries of "lol holodeck" aside, who in their right mind thinks this property will make a worthwhile MMO?  They need to fill it with tribbles and green-skinned sluts and sell it on sixties camp value, because nobody is going to want to play a pajama-clad TNG-era redshirt.

[jpark]

Sounds like the mole to me.

For some reason I agree here.  My apologies to the original poster if I am wrong.

[HaemishM]

New Battlestar Galactica MMO... mmmmmm

I like the show, but it's not especially well suited for an MMG. Unless you like political PVP with occasional space combat.

Very few TV shows or movies are. By very few I mean none, of course.

[Venkman]

BSG would be ok if it had a timeline of sorts, maybe set during the Cylon wars.

ST:TNG? Meh. Five years too late, for both the license and the gameplay. If they made a world in which people could run around and choose their Popcap/MIni-clip casual game to play on a Holopad, and there was no fee, and it could be played in a browser, and it was free to download, maybe. Otherwise, life about a starship is boring, and the only fighter craft that exist are in the books.

Although all those Ready Room meetings with Picard would sit well with those long accustomed to waiting to raid.

[Samwise]

Something sorta like Puzzle Pirates, with multiple players working together to crew a ship, could be cool.  Coming up with good "puzzles" would be tricky.

[5150]

I worry for the future of this game

I know people will disgree with me but I liked SWG's openess at launch, I just cant see the same openess in STO (and if there is the game will likely fall foul of the same complaints that SWG did...)

I cant see them giving everyone a ship (like Eve) because you'd need an NPC or player crew (and what if you like to solo or none of your friends are onlne?). If everyone can be a captain, who wants to be a red shirt?

[Strazos]

Erm, correct me if I am wrong, but the command officers Are the red shirts.

[schild]

Erm, correct me if I am wrong, but the command officers Are the red shirts.

You're wrong. Red shirts are the folks who often didn't have a last name and died shortly after being introduced. Much like red names...

[Strazos]

Oh, I guess you mean original Star Trek, and maybe TNG.

[schild]

Oh, I guess you mean original Star Trek, and maybe TNG.

As opposed to what? That's where the term red shirt comes from. Nothing else is called a red shirt. You were simply wrong.

[Trippy]

Oh, I guess you mean original Star Trek, and maybe TNG.

As opposed to what? That's where the term red shirt comes from. Nothing else is called a red shirt. You were simply wrong.

He's just confused on the history of the term. If you started watching ST post TOS calling the expendable crew members "red shirts" doesn't make sense since they were typically in gold shirts since TNG swapped red and gold from TOS.

[WindupAtheist]

A "redshirt" is that nondescript and never before seen ensign, who accompanies the main characters on an away mission, for no other purpose than to die and thus show how dangerous things are.  When Picard, Riker, and Ensign Smith beam down to the planet of flesh-eating wombats, you know that Ensign Smith is the redshirt regardless of the actual color of his uniform.

And you know that when the show comes back from it's next commercial break, it'll be to Riker solemnly intoning "He was a good man!" over Smith's wombat-chewed corpse.  Or in the case of STO, something like "Dammit Jim, I'm a catass, not a doctor!  Meaning I can't rez.  LOL."

[Strazos]

He's just confused on the history of the term. If you started watching ST post TOS calling the expendable crew members "red shirts" doesn't make sense since they were typically in gold shirts since TNG swapped red and gold from TOS.

Thank you.

[Sky]

The term comes from the popular American science fiction television series Star Trek. In this series, characters wear tunic colors defining their station and/or area of expertise. In the original 1966 series, a person wearing a red shirt was a member of the Engineering or Security department. Security officers had a habit of meeting tragic ends in many episodes.

Typically, an away team would consist of Kirk, Spock, McCoy (all main characters who stood zero chance of dying) and one never-before-seen red-shirted ensign, who would be dead by the end of the mission, usually within minutes.

The two exceptions to this rule were Mr. Scott, the famous Chief Engineer and Lt. Uhura. They almost always wore red uniforms in the original 1966 series, yet lived through the film era. In a few episodes, Scotty did indeed get killed, but was revived by the end of the episode.

In the Next Generation and later series, redshirts are known as yellowshirts, as that is the new color of the security department.
Redshirt/yellowshirt death occurred much more rarely in Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, because of the limited crew sizes for those series. On Star Trek: Enterprise not a single crewman was lost until the second episode of the third season (even then, his section colour is unknown as he is only seen draped in a sheet).

:) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshirt_(science_fiction)

[5150]

I wish I'd never said 'red shirt' now.....

(reminds me of the Python sketch where you cant say 'matress' to the guy who sells beds otherwise he puts a bucket over his head and you have to get into the fishtank and sing Jerusalem)

oh I said it again!

(now having flashbacks from Holy Grail and the Knights who say 'Ni' but can't say the word 'it')

I'll get my coat.....

[Merusk]

I wish I'd never said 'red shirt' now.....

You know.. the entire thought process of "well, redshirt is too oldschool" went through my head when I read that.  However, I thought it would be entirely too picky and way too geeky to point it out.  Plus, since "Redshirt" was coined even before TNG was on the air,* I figured everyone knew what it meant.  Damn youngins.



*Holy fuck, I just realized that was almost 20 years ago. I don't look forward to having more of these 'holy fuck' moments than I'm already having as I continue to get older.

[Yegolev]

Eventually you'll be saying "Holy fuck, where am I?"

[cevik]

Eventually you'll be saying "Holy fuck, where am I?"

Why, is he going to develop a crazy Salvia Divinorum addiction too?

[HaemishM]

Eventually you'll be saying "Holy fuck, where am I?"

More like "How did I get here?"

[WayAbvPar]

And then you turn into David Byrne and are truly fucked.

[Trippy]

FAQ has been updated.

[stray]

It almost sounds like Eve, except with land missions. Which is cool (on paper).

They really shouldn't wait until "expansions" to put new factions in though.

1) They need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that people do like more than just duel/arena PvP (if done right)

2) Not everyone wants to be Starfleet.

Also, having Klingdon as a playable race, but not as a playable faction is stupid. I can imagine Worf eventually influencing Klingons to join the Federation, but not that soon in the timeline.

[Venkman]

This whole game smacks of newbs designing an MMOG. I still don't think this has any more than a 50% shot at launching. The reasons would be many.

[stray]

Not to say you aren't right in your pessimism, but honestly, I'd rather take newbs over the status quo. The people I want to see design future mmog's are the people who are removed from muds, removed from Everquest, and removed from the general rpg mindset as much as possible.

[Nebu]

Star Trek online = players filling the role of the standard nameless, red-shirted cast member that was first to die in every episode rather than being Capt. Kirk or Mr. Spock. 

Wow... SWG flashbacks.

[stray]

I disagree. There's a hell of a lot of more open endedness to Trek than there is to Star Wars. Kirk is not a Jedi, nor does the universe revolve around his life story. If that was the case, there never would have been 4 spinoffs after the original series.

Also, I think DS9 especially sets precedent for the idea that Trek is a world, and not merely a story for one captain, one crew, or even one faction like the Federation.

[Nebu]

I bow to your superior Trekiness.  I watched the original and maybe a handful of TNG episodes.   

I have yet to find a game MMOG where I felt like a hero rather than a cog in the machine.  If "online world" is their goal and they manage to make a game with the trappings of Eve without the screensaver feel, then I'll give it a try. 

[stray]

I bow to your superior Trekiness.

I'm actually just a recent Trek convert, but so be it. 

But anyways...."Red shirts" actually have names these days! It's a slight step up at least. And umm, they don't wear red anymore. They wear yellow.

On one odd occassion, one of these "yellow shirts" (Transporter Chief O'Brien) actually survived long enough to become a main character on another show. And he's a damn good one too.

[Nebu]

Like this guy...

[Venkman]

Not to say you aren't right in your pessimism, but honestly, I'd rather take newbs over the status quo

I meant newbs in terms of development. Design-wise I agree. I'm tired of status quo too, which is why I bother reading about STO at all. For it being a license, they're actually thinking outside of the diku box.

Further, like yourself, I feel the Star Trek universe is a great universe for an MMO. But then, I'm one of those wierdos who thought Star Wars could work. Mostly this is because what the TVs and movies have lacked in terms of world have more than adequately (and with a great deal more creativity) been described in books. I understand the constraints linear video has on storytelling of course. I'm just glad these two titles use(d) the rich worlds as described by authors.

But I wouldn't use DS9 as a frame of reference :) It and Voyager were results of corporatized group-think that resulted in Enterprise and the upcoming travesty that will be Kirk and Spock meeting in Starfleet Academy, simply because someone did some creative directing on Lost. Gods does Paramount just not get it.

[Trippy]

Not to say you aren't right in your pessimism, but honestly, I'd rather take newbs over the status quo

I meant newbs in terms of development. Design-wise I agree. I'm tired of status quo too, which is why I bother reading about STO at all. For it being a license, they're actually thinking outside of the diku box.

Technically they aren't true MMO newbs since one of their co-founders was in charge of online development and operations at EA.

[Trippy]

But anyways...."Red shirts" actually have names these days! It's a slight step up at least. And umm, they don't wear red anymore. They wear yellow.

On one odd occassion, one of these "yellow shirts" (Transporter Chief O'Brien) actually survived long enough to become a main character on another show. And he's a damn good one too.

Just cause you had a red shirt didn't mean you were going to die -- otherwise Scotty would've been killed off a long time ago. The same thing applies to O'Brien, LaForge, Worf and others who wore the yellow jerseys in TNG. The risk of dying was a formula that took into account whether or not you were on the security team (red shirts in TOS, yellow shirts in TNG), whether or not you were a reoccurring character, and whether or not you had a name. Security team, non-reoccurring, no-name was obviously the highest risk.

[Reg]

Technically they aren't true MMO newbs since one of their co-founders was in charge of online development and operations at EA.

Oh ok, knowing that one of them was around for Sims Online, Majestic, Earth and Beyond and the two abortive UO sequels makes me feel much more confident in this company. :)

[Trippy]

Technically they aren't true MMO newbs since one of their co-founders was in charge of online development and operations at EA.

Oh ok, knowing that one of them was around for Sims Online, Majestic, Earth and Beyond and the two abortive UO sequels makes me feel much more confident in this company. :)

Yes and the other co-founder is a lawyer and was at EA as well in various capacities. Gives you the warm fuzzies doesn't it?