I'm in the Open* Beta for STO. Here are some thoughts.

* No, it's not entirely open. But equally, it's not all that hard to get in. It's a bit like the gating on Google Wave (although not gated quite hard enough, as I'll say below).

  • Space combat is good fun. You manually pilot the ship in order to get the best combination of your firing arcs, your shield facings, your enemy's arcs and his facings (and it gets more complicated when there are multiple enemies around, of course). It's action in a way that EVE isn't, but it's also tactical in a different way to EVE; I think a fair summary is that this is tactical combat whereas EVE has strategic combat.
  • Ground combat is surprisingly good as well; it's got facings too (and I didn't yet notice any timing issues) and a nice variety of abilities.
  • Everyone is in one namespace, which means that if I can find anyone who plays it I can stay in touch with them through it: I consider WoW to be too big for its own good in that respect.
  • I'm annoyed that it wasn't made clear that my forum handle would be visible in-game; I picked it on the assumption that I would never need to use the forums. When I get a proper key I might start a new account with it, but in the meantime QE readers can find me very easily indeed... (Although you both know who I am already: my concern would more be strangers from the game finding this place)
  • The fleet actions are like WAR's public quests: you show up and you join a fleet to blow stuff up. Gloriously chaotic space combat ensues, and I find it fun.
  • They massively underestimated the interest the beta would get. There isn't enough capacity. Not much more to say; I can't really decide how stupid a mistake that is.
  • There are some shocking bugs, but they're mostly to do with timing and load issues, so I have a certain amount of sympathy for the difficulty of finding those things before you get this far. It is still beta, at the end of the day.
  • I remain annoyed (I think I forgot to mention this exact point in the last post) that the lifetime subscription offer ends before the game starts, but I'm getting toward making my decision on the strength of the beta.


If you are likely to play it, comment up.