HomeLAN - In terms of gameplay, what will make the Star Trek MMORPG different than other games in this genre?

Joe Keene - We're still in the early stages of the detailed design process, so we're not yet ready to commit to a lot of specifics. That said, we think it's fair to say that our vision for the game includes more action, adventure, exploration and complex questing than many current MMOGs. Some of this approach is driven by an over-arching goal to bring more interesting and effective gameplay mechanics to MMOGs – including mechanics that succeed all the time in stand-alone and non-massive multiplayer games. And much of this approach is driven by the Star Trek fiction and the physical structure of the fictional world. Most of the fiction is episodic, quest or problem-based, and occurs in a wide variety of relatively small locations spread across a vast, but relatively abstract, physical space. This stands in contrast to the majority of current MMOGs, which occupy relatively large, contiguous and slowly-expanding terrains.

Our FAQ reveals some of our basic ideas for the game-play. You are a player who can enter ships with other players. There will be combat in space that involves teamwork. You beam down to planets, solve puzzles, talk to NPCs and get involved in fast-action ground combat. But, we're keeping most of the exact game-play details under wraps until we can start prototyping them to see how they work out. You can be sure that we're not going to do anything just because that's the way it is done in other MMOGs.