Because if you compare yourself to other successes in the same medium, you’ll end up with some crappy idea like “Wagon Train To The Stars” that’s just doomed to failure.

ANY developer that ends up good and brave enough to contine and follow through with the Trek mmo license if going to have to 1.Find a sane bunch of ADULT Trek fans that are also gamers, but also have full time jobs,families.cats,cars, and most of all LIVES.Those are the people that will be able to give very valuable input to the potential developers of a Trek mmo, not the 24/7 power gamers,die-hard-rabbid-”canon cannot be screwed with, EVER!” Trek nut,and definitely not the 10-17 year of age FPS teen-child,whose vocabulary consists of cuss words,insults, and little else.

A GREAT Trek mmo CAN be made, but it’s going to have to have a tight focus, at least in the beginning and based on it’s success, have the ability to branch out into bigger directions.If the new developers bite off more than they can chew at once(like i think Perpetual likely did), then they’ll likely end up choking(again,very much like Perpetual did)and losing the reigns on the develpment.Whoever does end up in charge of the new Trek MMO team should also be someone that is already well versed in things Trek.Trying to take a 40 year crash course in Trek history and then lead a large team straight into the development of a game based on that crash course(to be blunt and simple)AIN’T GONNA WORK.

maybe theres a large group of people out there that want a different style of MMO. the 8,000+ ST:O fans out there want it. and I’m sure there are lots of people looking for MMO land/space game play that doesn’t revolve around loot and leveling. in fact I’m sure of it, and game developers haven’t taken the time to be creative and come up with something new.

makeing a game for the WoW audience is stupid. people who like WoW will play WoW, but there are other possibilities. since when did WoW become the only way to make an MMO, thats like saying golden eye is the only way to make a first person shooter. or need for speed the only way to make a racing game. or madden the only way to make a football game (which NFL blitz proved wrong)

the MMO indistry is still in its infancy and to say that there is only one way to make a sicessfull MMO is just plain stuped and short sighted. the real companys make new original games, and thats where real sucess comes from.

why was grand theft auto so sucessfull, because it was the first game with game play like that, it was creative and innovative, same with WoW and EVE, new and and innovative.

and for any MMO to become wildly sucessful its going to need to step away from the past, and off the paved path, and blaze there own trail. make a game like no other, make it fun to play, make it true to trek lore and the universe. and it will be wildly sucessfull.

make a game based off of WoW, with a trek skins. MMO fans will play it and say “this is just like WoW, and I’ve already invested a lot in WoW, I think I’ll just keep that account and play expansions some more untill something truely new comes out. and the Trek fans will say “this isn’t star trek, its WoW in space with trek uniforms”

make a game unique fun and true to trek you get MMO fans saying “WOW look at this new game, theres nothing like it and its fun!! I wanna see what this is all about, and am looking forword to what this game is all about and enjoying this new expirience” and trek fans saying “finaly a game that does justice to trek instead of all those half asses crappy trek games of the past!!!”

and this developer over night becomes the next blizzard

Fans (from the word fanatic, lest we forget) are too emotionally attached to be objective about anything – games, TV shows, musicians, spaghetti. Just build me an enjoyable game that happens to have a Star Trek-themed veneer. If I run into Captain Kirk once in a blue moon, how quaint! But his mere presence won’t make it a better game.

And if anyone builds it to work like WoW I will hunt them down and hurt them.

And Todd, I don’t think “young people” is necessarily the correct term, per se (I’ve understood the limitations of innovation and revolution in game design since I was maybe…16 or 17 at a guess, I can’t be entirely sure, but I’ve only just turned 20 recently so I probably still fall into the “young” category). Younger people may like to dream a little more about what can be done, but “inexperienced” is probably a more accurate term to use, especially when big name franchises like Star Trek are involved. Alot of fans aren’t going to be burying themselves in game industry knowledge frequently – they don’t care about that, they care about the dreams, the experiences, and the feelings they’ve had when watching the shows or playing past Trek games. Coupled with the fact that quite a number of people watching “more than the humanly possible” are coming into the higher age ranges (30, 40, 50), it can probably be argued that it’s the misunderstandings of what creating games is all about that causes friction.

I’m pretty sure throwing explosives on a fire doesn’t help that of course, Eric :p lol. But it’s fun to watch in that cynical way nobody gets when it’s about them. It’s just a shame so many people don’t realise they’re being so cruel and bitey about something that’s ultimately…kind of trivial I guess. I’m not even that much of a fan of Star Trek (I probably fall somewhere in the category with Todd – limited knowledge, but overall enjoyed it as a show), yet I keep wondering where all the ethics went. I’m pretty sure the whole of TNG was about being nice to each other…

As to who you’re target audience for a Star Trek MMO should be: I have seen every minute of every Star Trek episode and movie (well, except for the animated series). I’ve only watched Enterprise once but beyond that I’ve seen the rest multiple times. I enjoy Star Trek and I like the universe its set in, that’s part of why I joined the Star Trek Online development team way back in the day. Despite this I can’t tell you how many fingers Scotty has, how many symbionts a Trill releases, or even the names of many of the bridge characters. Shoot, I can’t even think of the name of Voyager’s captain right now. I do know what it feels like to mind meld with a horta, but that’s the limit of my Star Trek geek-cred. I just don’t care about details like that. To a real Star Trek fan who hangs out on Internet fan sites I’m not even worth talking too. And yet I am WAY more of a “fan boy” than what you should expect from the average player. To get a large enough audience you need to target people who have maybe seen a few episodes of the original series and perhaps watched some reruns of Next Generation. Maybe they saw one or two of the movies (hopefully some of the even numbered ones). At best they might be able to name two captains of the Enterprise but even that is a stretch. They enjoyed what they saw and recognize Star Trek as a “name brand”. They like playing games and have either played other MMOs before or at least considered playing them. They see a Star Trek game is coming out so they buy a copy figuring it should have good production values. Short version, I know almost nothing about Star Trek yet even I am way too much of a fan boy to be the target audience.

As for innovating, young people never seem to realize how truly difficult it is to be genuinely innovative. If being innovative was truly as easy as simply having a bunch of ideas bouncing around inside your head than pretty much all entertainment from books to movies and from TV to MMOs would be a lot better than it is. If you have the ability to turn your ideas directly into finished product they you will be rich and successful beyonds any one’s wildest dreams and I am insanely jealous of your talents. Until you’ve developed an MMO (or any large-scale cross-discipline creative work) you can never truly appreciate how hard innovating is.

That being said, there is a lesser form of innovation which I prefer to call originality that is relatively easy to obtain. Originality could be as simple as remaking WoW in space and calling it Starcraft Online. There are also minor incremental evolutions to existing ideas which you could certainly choose to call innovative; for example you might take EQ1, mix in some AC1, add a dash or two of CoH, target a more casual audience and call it WoW. I would argue that these sorts of “innovation” are not enough to satisfy the fans desires for the perfect STO.