As previously established, I am a huge nerd (<- MASSIVE UNDERSTATEMENT).  This isn’t just a fat joke, though I am also fat, but today I mean it in the sense that someone will say something innocuous like “I’m making a note here” and I’ll finish, uninvited, with “Huge success!” in an enthusiastically robotic tone modeled after the computer from the game Portal.  If I have to explain why this makes me a nerd, then just assume it’s an extraordinarily nerdy and socially awkward thing to do.

So when I read about a Star Trek MMORPG (pronounced “Mumooorpguh”) being made, I responded with cool, collected interest (actually: “Squeeeeeee!”) and began looking forward to seeing how it turned out.

“Finally”, I told myself, rubbing my hands together in anticipation, “I’ll be able to play one of these games and excel at it!”  Worlds of Warcraft, Everquest, and others of the genre had been completely uninteresting to me because I don’t like magic stuff.  Star Wars Galaxies was just, well, boring and was less about Star Wars than it was about killing space rats and casting blaster spells at space Orcs, and I just couldn’t get into that either.  But certainly something like a trek game would have to be done correctly, right?  Right?!

Well…  not entirely right, it seems.  I watched some videos, and it looked…  slow.  Pretty, but slow, as in gameplay not ‘choppy framerate’.  The videos were full of gently swooping ships moving around in front of planets and nebulae and asteroids with fart trails coming out of their space engines for some reason.  The only combat shown was from an outside perspective and seemed to be about ships standing next to each other and shining space flashlights back and forth until one of them spontaneously exploded.

WHEN SUDDENLY, I was chatting with a friend and he mentioned in passing that he had played the beta.  Whaaaaa??!

SUPER ACCURATE CHAT LOG:

Him: So i preordered and am in the beta for star trek online
Me: Neat, I was just bitching about ST:O to someone a few minutes ago!
Me: I am firmly hoping the game is better than the gameplay vids I’ve seen.
Him: It is exactly the same as Pirates of the Burning Seas except kind of fun.
Him: Well ok
Him: That’s not really fair
Him: POTBS was the worst game ever and I actually sort of enjoyed playing STO last nihgt
Me: I am concerned that it’s a mega-grind where you cast phaser spells at people occasionally.
Him: Let’s say that the gameplay is basically like BOTBS except you can do things of consequence while not in your ship like cast blaster spells and jump.
Him: Well
Him: It is a mega grind where you cast phaser spells
Me: I imagine someone will make a mint crafting  photon torpedoes to sell to other players, and that there will be a brisk business of hunting space rats to collect the appropriate amount of meat to build phaser pistols and new uniforms.
Him: in space i casted some photon torpedo spells at orion pirates
Me: Take THAT, Orion pig dogs!
Him: it was groovy
Me: The Federation dialectic demands that your small business be destroyed so that our Utopian vision of galactic communism can be achieved!
Him: Nah it’s fun I suppose, it has a sort of episodic feel to it sort of like doing eve missions where you get a quest/mission then you go to someplace else in your rocket ship and maybe do some stuff there and beam some jerks aboard and maybe beam down to a planet or to another ship and shoot your phaser at things.
Him: You can also do it as a klingon.
Him: I was going to mane my ship the U.S.S. Esses after the ship in that one comedy film but it was taken i guess.
Him: name, that is.
Me: “Hello captain, I have some boxes of SPACE GRAIN that must be transported to SHERMAN’S PLANET.  There may be ONE KLINGON SHIP in the area according to our scans.  Would you like to accept the contract?  Press 1 for yes, 2 for no.  Note: You may only reject two contracts per 24 hour period from any agent.
Me: “The warp coordinates for this arbitrarily precise location we have for them has been loaded into your NaviPuter”.
Me: ZOOM-WARP: “Captain, I’m picking up ONE PIRATE SHIP on scanners!”
Him: Yes basically though so far it has been more like
Him: Admiral: Captain, we need you to go find out what happened to our ship off in some corner of space there’s been pirate activity
Him: me: ok <gets in rocket ship and blasts off into space>
Him: <navigates weird unintuitive warp system to get to the place>
Him: Then i come out of warp, fly towards the ship and OH NOES IT’S WARP CORE IS ALL MESSED UP SOMEHOW AND THEY ARE BEING BOARDED BY PIRATES
Me: What timing!
Him: I shoot a couple of pirate starships and beam over with my away team consisting of me, my tactical officer, who is the only bridge officer i have, and 4 or 5 redshirts named “security”
Me: AKA: Walking Ablative Armor
Him: I easily dispense of the overwhelming pirate force and rescue the injured crew
Him: Ther captain nobly decides to keep trying to fix the warp core so i beam the fuck off the ship
Him: then she can’t do it so i have to beam her off too
Me: Then suddenly DX11 effects appear as the ship explodes, I assume?
Him: well
Me: Kablooey!
Him: I try not to be awfully close when that happens because you take damage from exploding ships
Him: but yeah basically
Me: Was there an expanding space donut coming out of the explosion?
Me: Because that’s how you know it’s a big deal.
Him: No no space donut i’m afraid
Him: then i fly back to earth spacedock and do another one
Me: Ah.

The conversation sort of petered out after that, I think some LOLcats were exchanged.  The important thing is: I got to talk to someone who had actually played the game, and while he sort of liked it, it seemed to be for the reasons that I hate every other MMORPG.  Oh, le sigh.

As excited as I am about the idea of a game that somehow makes being a Star Trek fan more socially objectionable, I’m beginning to have my doubts about this.  If, as it appears, this merely combines the drudgery of Star Wars:Galaxies with the drudgery of Worlds of Warcraft and pastes a Star Trek skin atop it, then…  well, crap.  Sounds boring.

In closing, this is the part of the post where I’d usually make some witty commentary on the whole thing, maybe take it in a different direction or close out on a cheap joke, but this this has sat in my outbox for almost a week, and at this pace, the fucking game will be published and dead of old age, so I’ll just end on a positive note: C#