As to currency, There is currency in the federation, a credit system backed by latinum( i think thats the right spelling).

What Picard meant was that money was not required, as in the basic necessities, food, living arrangements, bills ect. a citizen of the federation does not NEED money for anything, but, if you want luxuries, you sure do need money.

Remember DS9, if the federation crew wanted to visit quarks establishment, they needed currency. Remember Riker’s poker games? they weren’t playing for free, they backed up chips with currency.

And as to the Utopian society? maybe if you lived on earth and didn’t go anywhere. But there were serious tensions with many different races.

In fact, if they placed the time frame of the MMO star trek just beyond the TV shows, you could create lore for some real fighting, the popular thing to do would be kilngon/federation vs cardassian/romulan.

Considering the need for combat in a MMO, it would be easily acceptable for fans to see some lore created, that stays in line with the already established lore.

Seriously, if you followed the TV shows, the federation is constantly on the brink of war, one wrong word to a Romulan ambassador, an accidental bumping into of a highly placed cardassian official.

It is even very feasible to expect some sort of secret deal the romulans and cardassians made to bring down the federation, and of course the klingons come to the fedrations aid, since they hate romulans as much as a vampire hates garlic on his steak.

Reason why I say that is because an mmo has to be one of the most toughest game design subjects, where talents, time and money make the dream happen. The investment in creating an mmo is as high stakes as in its sales, you could say all that you invest in creating an mmo is the equivalent if not double the return in sales assuming the project lives to its hype.

Since we have ascertained that much, I can only think of two possibilities aside from all the BS talk. It will either work out or it won’t simple as that, and if it doesn’t you would have proved history’s greatest fork in the road that a Star Trek mmo can never be done.

I would love someone to suggest a game that might meet my expectations.

The two games I enjoyed were the Tie Fighter game and Lightspeed (from micropose)

I’m looking for a game that puts me in control of a big ship and it FEELS like it’s a big ship.

And it feels like I’m in control… I love being able to repair my ship because it takes damage, of being worried about running out of fuel, but I don’t want a ponderous slow game like Battlecruiser 3000 AD… I want TENSION

That’s what makes a good game for me, being worried and concerned with winning, but having more to worry about than another stupid space dog fight… they all involve the same bs… you do a fly by, you turn around, you do a fly by… you aim ahead of your target, it blows up. Your shield regenerates… OK… boringgggggggggg and *played out*, it’s been done, too often. let me climb around my ship and do repairs on my engine, let me manually adjust where my shields are strongest like in Tie fighter.

Does anyoen have any suggestions?

I tried the Star Wars MMO and the groud part was cool, the space part was impossibly difficult.

Conflict? Well as a huge fan of every Star Trek series the show is totally based on conflict. It is not a utopia in my opibnion although it is often cast as one. The whole pont of Star Trek is that it focusses on HUMAN conflict. Even though earth has been freed from hunger, as long as there are human(oid) beings who must interact there will always be conflict. In the end conflict is not a negative thing. It is what drives us to grow. The best part about Star Trek is that it deals with problems that still face us today.

The solution to this is to base a game that has conflict of many kinds. Not just fighting (trust me, that gets BORING very fast anyway), but diplomatic and interpersonal conflicts as well.

Another idea is to make large events to polarize the community. Like the borg attack. This would be a big event that intrudes into the game and affects everyone. This could be organized through a command system based on personal affiliation. I.e. if you are a Romulan all your missions center around this, but you have choices.

Seriously, I could sit down and start writing ideas, missions, player scripts, classifications, etc and write for weeks upon weeks without stopping to an almost unlimited degree of complexity. No one will ever ask me to do this though sadly. But I think they would be better off making it “ne game” and coming up with a creative way to do space battles from the bridge. After all no one could single-handedly take the enterprise and pilot it around by themselves like an X Wing. You must think outside of this box. There is no need to satisfy anyone. Make a MMO that is so good no one can deny it and the people will come regardless even of the topic.

I am no game designer, yet after reading all these things it makes one become one. I really not understand why is it so difficult for someone who is familiar with the Star Trek Universe be unable to make a MMORPG design for it.

Of course its it going to be several games in one, I’d like to see it like several facets of the same game however, like any world, there is variety in it. If you were to make an MMO that only encompasses one aspect of Star Trek it would not work. Why was this hard to understand from the start, is beyond me.

Utopian world? Not exactly, there is so many Villains out there in the Universe, heck the Orions Practiced Slavery, how Utopian is that? How many episodes, in a Stra Trek Chronological order have we seen from Entreprise, to Voyager, and including the movies, that had to do with Miners working their buts off to extract Dilithium Crystals? Greedy Independent Merchants bent on fulfilling their own very Lucrative goals and Latinum Based Pleasures? Pirates and Smugglers, Rebellious factions, to say nothing about Totalitarian Governments of some of the Major Powers out there bordering the Federation.

How many times did the Protagonists of any Star Trek series, had to save some Merchant Ship. Did these merchants not do what they do for Profit? Maybe Star Fleet personnel have a higher moral sence of things however the Universe itself is not made out of Star Fleet its made out of Thousands if not more Different Races with different Views and own Philosophies about how things would work, some are Warrior Based Societies and some others are very Profit oriented, Commerce based societies with little regard towards Life itself.

Gene Roddenberry’s vision may have been Utopian in relation to Human Ideology and the Federation itself, contrasting it against Ficticious alien Cultures in a very philosophical sense permitted by the Fiction element of the series to convey the message “Hey we can be better than that”, yet that does not mean that the whole Star Trek universe is Utopian.

And the Universe of Star Trek has to be the basis of any MMORPG game made for it, not only a single aspect of it. You cant call it Star Trek if you only make a game about Star Fleet and the Federation.

So the basis is the universe, it implies that there will be more than the Federation, and more than Star Fleet, more than Humans. In other words, you have to look at the Big Picture, you cant segment it and make an MMORPG to cater only a single portion of the fan base. This is your setting where you game take place in.

And Yes I realize it is vast, yet again, so was “Star Wars Galaxies”, and so is “EVE Online”, to a lesser degree yet equally challenging was “Jumpgate Online”.

What remains is to clarify what you want players to be doing in it. And the answers to that are more numerous than the questions, which in my mind provides much flexibility for any Development Team’s decision making, to say noting about variety of play, which is important after 10 years of MMORPG’s being out there starting with Ultima Online.

Cant make a STO a la WoW, I am sorry, this just wont fly, no one from the ST fan base will log in a game for the purpose of accumulating wealth, gear, and farm materials or reputation all day long, no matter how good and colorful your graphics are.

Instead, why not follow Gene Roddenberry’s own visions as expressed through his creation? Place the players in Challenging situations depending on the Culture and Background that they have Chosen, people Could elect to play a Civilians or part of their respective Navies. (Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Ferengi – could be a good start of choices for playable sides).

Implement an RvR system in the outer fringes of each of these Governments or Empires, and let the players themselves experience Star Trek by taking the place of both Star Fleet Personnel or as being members of one of these other Empires. Both in Military and Economical applications and always based on the Ethical precepts of each one of these Entities.

Establish Core Sectors where RvR PvP would not be possible, and where new players gain experience for their characters, and establish several avenues. Players can still be part of Science, Exploration, Medical, Tactical, Intelligence, and Commercial and Diplomatic branches of their respective side.

The Galaxy is Vast, even within any of the side’s sphere of influence there can be unexplored areas, areas of expansion. Tour of Duties can be part of the Game, in various areas of expertise or part of any of the above branches.

Bigger ships? Not difficult, if there is already a core mechanism for several players to command and operate together any Defiant Class ship, superimpose that Core on to a Galaxy Class ship and make these players the Senior Staff Group, all of the rest of the crew can be made out of NPC’s.

So the same mechanism can work just as well with the Bridge and Engineering crew of the Defiant and a Galaxy or Sovereign Class Ship. Solutions are not what is missing here, suffice it to be a bit creative in the approach.

Above all, have to have a Dev team that is passioned with the ST Universe if such a game is to ever become a reality. Where there is passion there is only solutions, otherwise all you see is walls and obstacles.

It is a shame that the potential is not being seen here. As the ST universe can provide much fun to millions of people, in a both PVE and PVP, yet above all FUN game to play. All of the ingredients are there, one just needs to make links between them.

Just a few ideas to throw around.