In 2017, a new era of Star Trek was born. More than a decade after Enterprise’s cancellation, we returned to the pre-ToS period with Discovery. We had drama, betrayals, twists and movie-quality set-piece space battles. Also mushrooms or something. Next year, a decade after it began, this era will be over.
Discovery ended in 2024, and while we’re still following the exploits of a pre-Kirk Enterprise in Strange New Worlds, its final full season will air this summer, followed by a truncated fifth season, likely next year. Starfleet Academy, meanwhile, will only be getting one more season—for a total of two—also airing next year.
Beyond the Discovery era, we got Picard and two animated shows: Prodigy and Lower Decks. All three have concluded.
In total, that’s six shows that have concluded or been cancelled, though two of them have still to finish their runs, since Star Trek returned to our TV screens. But throughout this period another Star Trek property has been quietly trucking along without any indication that it has a shelf life: Star Trek Online.
Fraser Brown
I’ve been far too obsessed with Star Trek since the late ’80s, and my controversial take is that Enterprise was actually good and has the best intro. But I’m really a DS9 boy until I die. I’ve been playing Star Trek Online since 2010, and still play my OG Federation captain—he’s been through a lot.
A 16-year mission
STO launched on PC in 2010, and it’s weathered some storms since then. MMOs were a lot more common back then, and didn’t have a deluge of live service games to contend with. But STO has kept up with the changes. It shed its mandatory subscription years ago, and now it doesn’t even offer optional subscriptions for those who want them—it is entirely F2P, supported by a cash shop and a wide range of microtransactions.
I’ve been playing it off and on since launch—initially to get my Star Trek fix during a long fallow period where all we had to look forward to was the occasional middling film from the Kelvin timeline (or the Chris Pine timeline, if you prefer), and later to enjoy some more old-school Trek after Discovery dramatically changed the universe’s tone.
And I’m still here. These days I’m flying around in a Lexington-class monster—a ship originally designed by the Terran Empire in the Mirror Universe, eventually adapted by Starfleet in the prime universe. It’s got a big ol’ cannon on top of it, and I’ve customised it to look like it’s been assimilated by the Borg Collective. It is my prized possession.
Look, Star Trek Online wasn’t exactly cutting edge in 2010, and now it’s positively creaky. The cinematics are low budget, the ground combat is janky and even though onboarding is a lot better now than it once was—in part thanks to recruitment events where everyone can roll a new character and get all sorts of bonuses and goodies—the new player experience is a bit messy. But there hasn’t been a better Star Trek game, it’s still one of the best MMOs around, and it genuinely has something for every kind of Star Trek fan.
You can play as a captain from any era of Starfleet—starting out in that era, before you’re dragged to the current era—as well as a Klingon, Romulan or Jem’Hadar captain. And my god, the ships. The ships! You’ve got the classics—like every version of Enterprise—but you’ve got just as many deep cuts. Remember that episode of Lower Decks where chief engineer Billups has to visit his overbearing mother? It’s the one where he has to avoid having sex so he doesn’t inherit a throne. It’s a good one. And now you can fly his mum’s incredibly ostentatious ship in STO.
Plenty of ships are given away for free as you progress through the ranks, though the best ones are typically locked behind the cash shop or loot boxes. My Lexington cost me over 20 bucks. But! All of those fancy ships can still be earned without dropping a dime. STO always has some kind of event going on, where you can unlock ships or fancy bits of gear—and completing all the events in an event campaign nets you vouchers that you can use to pick up both cash shop and loot box ships.
With a bit of effort, almost every ship can be yours without ever opening up your wallet.
Flying solo
Some players will tell you that you need to join a fleet and grind, grind, grind away to get the most out of the game, but that’s nonsense. I’ve been in a grand total of one fleet in 16 years, but I’ve spent most of my time as a solo captain. There are some ships and modules only accessible if you’re in a fleet full of heavily invested players, but there’s simply no reason to get stuck into that side of the game unless you care about competitive PvP.
If you just want to live out the fantasy of being a captain, you can do that without much work or investment. And that’s what STO does best.
You’ll get into space battles with planet-destroying ships and alien entities, solve diplomatic incidents, travel across time and dimensions, get into ethical debates with megalomaniacs, become a war hero and go on holiday to Risa. If something happens in an episode of the show, you’ll be able to do it in STO.
STO’s main PvE quests follow an episodic format with season-long arcs with themed rewards, multiplayer battles and, frequently, voice acting from Star Trek luminaries. Some of my favourites follow on from TV episodes, fleshing out the original stories or spinning them off in unusual directions. Like the fate of Harry Kim. No, not the Harry Kim who made it home with Voyager—that was Harry from another universe. I mean the Harry Kim who died in the season two episode, Deadlock. Well, it turns out he’s not technically dead, and he gets a whole new character arc in STO.
Ultimately, it’s a Star Trek toybox. Collect tribbles! Hang out with Hugh of Borg! Play minigames for Q! Squeal with delight as you fire off ToS-era phasers, complete with accurate sound effects! It’s Heaven.
It’s also increasingly hard to ignore that Star Trek Online has been going for 16 years.
But it’s also increasingly hard to ignore that Star Trek Online has been going for 16 years. The ships look great, space combat looks pretty good, but everything else? Yeah, it’s looking a bit long in the tooth. When new episodes come out, they are built on ancient bones, and you can tell. There’s also a ton of bloat—so many activities and systems and quests that have just been pushed to the side instead of being removed or reconfigured.
For years now, STO has been surviving. The team continues to craft new storylines and ships, and occasionally we’ll see some new mechanics or the odd experiment thrown in for good measure—but for the most part it’s all felt a touch perfunctory. Just enough new stuff to keep the dedicated players hopping back in their ships. These days, I’m mostly just coming back for events so I can get newer, fancier ships—feeding my addiction.
Next generation
Steam concurrents haven’t risen above 5,000 since 2014. There are still players using the standalone client, and there’s a separate console version—though it’s even less populated. What’s impressive, though, is that the player count has remained pretty consistent over the last decade. Dedicated fans and the odd space tourist have been helping keep the turbolifts running.
But how do you turn those numbers into something that could justify a big reinvestment? It might help now that STO no longer belongs to Embracer—a publisher that we now dread hearing has acquired any studio. Arc Games is now the independent publisher of STO, with Cryptic remaining as developer.
In January, Cryptic CEO Jack Emmert returned to the studio after a decade away—and this is a man who knows his MMOs, having worked on City of Heroes, Champions Online, STO, Neverwinter, DC Universe Online, Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online.
Upon his return, he said, “I cannot promise results, but I can promise effort. I’m going to do everything I can to live up to the team’s and your expectations. I want to make sure that together we make our games flourish. If you’re a current player, THANK YOU! And if you’ve once played but are reading and simply curious, COME BACK! I’ll be actively getting feedback from all our various channels and even more importantly, I’ll be holding a LIVE Q&A session regularly.”
This doesn’t sound like a man who’s happy for STO to just keep doing its thing. But how much can he do with only the backing of a newly-independent publisher without any big cash-generators in its stable?
So I guess what I’m saying is: Come play Star Trek Online with me! It’s awesome, even with its creaky bones. And it’s especially awesome if you’re just starting out. Once you get to grips with it, you’ll have 16 years of adventures to enjoy. And with there being no clear plan for the TV side of things at Paramount, and the only two remaining shows on Death Row, there’s really no other place to get your fix.
In particular, there’s a lot of great stuff here for Star Trek fans who’ve felt a bit left out by the modern era. I’m not talking about the anti-woke babies who want a show about a socialist federation of planets to feature no politics and only space battles. I’m talking about the folks who love the politics and ethical conundrums, but who felt like the Discovery era ended up being a bit too much like an extended therapy session.
STO has all of that good stuff, plus fun space adventures, without every episode devolving into a series of heart-to-hearts with a bunch of people suffering from some emotional trauma. More debates about the ethics of time travel, fewer people bursting into tears because their parents had too high expectations. It’s the perfect balance.
So! I hope to see some of you the next time I blow up a cheeky Crystaline Entity.
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