Haven’t heard anything about it, but apparently a Star Trek MMORPG has been in development for a while, latest news blurt here. Anyone all over this like I will be if it ever comes to fruition?
Here’s the official site though it doesn’t really tell you much.
I could see it being a good product. You could start out as a crewman and build your way up to commander of a Starship.
There would be a lot of classes available. It is a pretty rich mythology.
Very viable - as middleman says, there’s a lot of backstory and stuff to build from. You’ve also got a built in audience, one that has likely already been introduced to the genre and will hear about the game. At that point it just comes down to how good the game is… which is sort of hard to judge, as it doesn’t look like the company that’s making the game has any track record whatsoever. Which could be a good thing or a bad thing, and only time will tell.
Not an MMORPG person myself, but a question: how is command of a starship going to work out? I could see a guild having their own ship, since presumably there would be little resistance to a command structure, but I have a feeling that if you dumped 1,000 random players on a ship, you’d have 1,000 ensigns trying to be Jean-Luc Picard.
Not viable. In each of the umpteen spinoffs and movies, the story always involves a large crew of people. There just isn’t anyplace in the Star Trek universe for a lone adventurer wandering around the universe while still maintaining the feel of the series. Ad-hoc guilds and the like won’t be able to stand in for being part of a large crew IMHO.
Though if they let you roll a member of the Q continum as a class. I’d buy it in an instant.
It’d have to be a bit different from the classic MMORPG epitomized by WoW and Everquest. But it could work.
You’d start out a low rank alone and with a shuttlecraft (or perhaps on an NPC-controlled ship). You’d do missions handed out by Starfleet/Klingon High Command/the Grand Nagus/etc and level up making your character more powerful and giving you access to bigger and better ships.
However, you’d also get the ability to make new characters that operate alongside your own, that develop as you take them on missions. So you’d develop your crew as you built up your captain.
So, Picard would be a Level 30 Human Diplomat
Riker would be that player’s Level 20 Human Warrior
Data would be a level 25 Android Scientist
Worf would be be a level 18 Klingon Warrior
Etc, all controlled by the same player, at the same time.
Kind of like Guild Wars then, sorta, if I remember correctly you could “hire” a team of npcs to tag along, etc.
They wouldn’t really be NPCs, though (well, except for the Redshirts), they’d be secondary PCs that would be customizeable and level up along with the main PC.
IOW, you wouldn’t play as Kirk, you’d play as the entire crew of the enterprise, but start as Kirk.
Not a bad idea, but it sounds more viable as a CRPG like Baldur’s Gate than a MMORPG.
But imagine a Baldur’s Gate where you can interact with other people also controlling a party of six. Chat with them, trade with them, and kill them and loot their corpses.
I can see it being a lof of fun if it is done that way. Depending on your starting class, you could be in an exploration vessel, medical ship, war ship, etc… by the time you get to “captain.” The hardest thing would be, how do you work the in-between stages? Sure, you start off with a small shuttlecraft by yourself, butwhat about when you’re a lieutenant? Are you forced to do nothing but missions where you look at a viewscreen while the NPC captain gets all the fun? That seems like it would be the hardest part to implement.
According to the main site, it’s set after all the series (and movies) have ended. I beleive they are in the mid-24th century, yes? It says it’s at the end of the 24th century, so I guess 30-50 years after TNG. It allows for some new technology, and even new threats. Another race from the Gamm quandrent wants to invade, or the Borg come back (as player characters! 
), or the vidiians, in their quest to rid themselves of The Phage, attack border colonies on the Alpha quadrenty (and for that matter, have we ever seen any of the Beta quadrent? 
)
But we all saw what happened with Star Wars Galaxies. It crashed and burned. I tried it myself, and it was simply too large. Too many classes, which themselves led to even more classes, and the route to get there was hard. It wasn’t for the casual gamer. If done right (like CoH,) then you can make an MMORPG that appeals to the hardcore and the casual gamer.
No, no, as a player character. One lucky player (chosen randomly) gets to control the entire Borg race. All at once. They have a single mind, after all.
This sounds pretty cool. I’m not really into MMORPGs, but I’d be willing to try this one. However, wouldn’t it make more sense if your NPCs were assigned to you by Starfleet?
But as said, they are NOT NPCs. They are jsut more PCs. Like in Baldur’s Gate, or a Final Fantasy game, you control a group of people. Most of the crew would be NPCs, yes, but the main players (captain, first officer, chief engineer, doctor, etc…) would be made by you. Or, another neat option would be that they are PCs, but not created by you. The game randomly creates several characters for the different positions, and as captain, you have to “request” for them to be on your ship and hope that no other captain wants him. If someone else does as well, then there has to be some kind of system for deciding who gets him. If someone dies, then you have to either promote someone from on board your ship, or request someone new. All your ensigns will be fresh out of academy, so make sure to avoid any Wesley Crusher-types. 
Sure there is. Witness the Next Generation episode The Outrageous Okona.
And even at that, there are plenty of very-small-crew merchant ships in Trek backstory. Harry Mudd or Fajo from TNG’s The Most Toys. How about the uncontrolled Bajoran who ran away with Tin Man? There’s an interesting character type.
The way I’d see it, you’d get to have two types of crewmen.
Your bridge crew, which would be customizeable and level up alongside the Captain character. If killed, they could usually be revived same as the main character. There’d be some exceptions, and losing them would be a pretty big deal.
Then you’d have redshirts to fill out your crew and away teams. Anonymous, relatively weak, and utterly disposable. If killed, you just go to the nearest starbase to pick up more.
Of course, a huge chunk of gameplay would look a lot like EVE online, but the Away Team portions would differentiate it.
You know, if the real game sucks, they should be ashamed of themselves. My game is pretty cool, and it took me like five minutes to think it up.