STO Guide

I started playing Star Trek Online confident that my years of dedication to the famous TV series, Star Trek Online and my average MMORPG play-time would let me sail smoothly through the game. I was wrong. STO isn’t just a walk in the park. With different ship types available and the fact that I have to manage a crew not just one character required that I learn several things about that facet of online gaming.

After some time in open beta, I realize that I wasn’t going to get anywhere far at my learning pace and decided to endorse help. Obviously, ‘Google’ came to mind first. After browsing around a bit, I came across an Unofficial Star Trek Online guide at killerguides.com. This isn’t the first time I bought a gaming e-book and from a regular e-book scavenger, I can say the guide is very well structured, although it was the very first version of the guide I got.

The guide has proved very helpful in speeding up my learning process and I was able to enjoy the game much faster. A very useful buy and recommendable for anyone planning on getting into Star Trek Online. The fact that the guide is available with free updates made it more attractive as well.

The latest update on Star Trek Online PvP:

PvP action with be revolved around Klingons mainly because their career progression basically relies upon PvP battles. It is a “viable advancement path” for Klingon and Federation players as Cryptic Studios mentioned in their latest article. Players will be able to engage in opposing factions or battle it out amongst the same faction, solo pvp or even team pvp. Moreover some PvP maps will have recognizable PvE missions to battle through.

Hearing that STO Klingons will be a brute forced PvP oriented faction, may actually disappoint the many Klingon’s fan base out there. Sure PvP could be really troublesome, especially when you got players desperate to go a killing spree and decides to shoot anything that moves. That could surely ruin your day if you get caught up in one of those no mercy battles. On the other hand, without PvP, MMORPG will be nothing more than grinding, farming, grinding, and farming. Where is the fun in that? This is purely my opinion, but there is much players can do but give feedback, hoping for a better improvement after the beta stages. Cryptic Studios has a history with adding tons of new features during the launch of the game, so I am pretty sure Klingon’s will win themselves a more well-rounded PvP and PvE gameplay.

Be sure to check out the upcoming STO guide on the latest updates for Star Trek Online PvP.

Star Trek Online is all about skills. Players go up the ranks as skills get maxed out. Thus as you climb up the each rank, you’ll also become more specialized in a smaller set of skills.

The question is, how are ranks obtain? Basically, players will have missions to complete. Along the process, skill points are earned with can be allocated to further strengthen skills.

In Star Trek Online, there are a total of 6 ranks. The STO ranks are as follows:

-Ensign
-Lieutenant
-Lieutenant Commander
-Commander
-Captain
-Admiral

The jump between STO ranks are referred to as promotions. In order to get a promotion, players would have to have used a certain number of skills. Ranking up in Star Trek Online could be seen as a form of leveling for this skill-based game.

Ranks provides a means to measure how far you’ve advanced your character. Like most other games, the items, equipment or other accessories would depend on how far you have maxed out your skills and your current rank.

The naming of the Star Trek Online ranks keeps itself very much in line with the popular movie series Star Trek and thus preserves its uniqueness.

Cryptic Studios has always been known for their customization since their previous games like Champions Online and of course Star Trek Online is no exception. Both your avatar and your starship is customizable from head to toe. An emphasis towards customizing avatars seems to be the most obvious similarities. Cryptic Studios puts emphasis in customization so that even though you have the same class ship, but you can still distinguish yourself from the other players. The concept is to retain the Star Trek look, while adding a touch of your own style. Just to name a few of the parts you can customize: the hull, nacelles, the saucer and the pylons. Of course colors and decals is part of the modifying frenzy.

Cosmetic decorations aside, you can upgrade weaponry, armory, warp engines, deflectors and all sorts of ability boosting upgrades that falls into the game tactics and gameplay. Different starships will vary from ship to ship by how they are customized, due to variable upgrade slots where you can add attribute boosting items. To make things harder, bridge officers that you assign to duty stations can give unique skills or a boost to systems. Progressing through the game will allow you to gain access to new ships and upgrades, so check regularly at STO Guide to see what is the next best new upgrade and customization techniques to optimize your fleet.

One of the highly anticipated online game release next year (2010) would have to be Star Trek Online. Based on the famous TV series since 1966, it’s rather likely that the game will see a lot of new MMORPG attempters. In other words, MMORPG newbies who are long time fans of Star Trek.

Features that really stand out is the highly customizable STO ships and characters. Players can not only chose from a vast range of available races (human, andorian, orion, klingon, etc) but create new races with customized attributes. For more information about this, don’t forget to visit the official site.

Players will engage in PVP combat as well as team up and group ships to fight against NPC vessels. Like other MMORPGs, the game’s economy plays a large role in modeling how each character turns out. There would definitely be elements of trading and reputation points.

Continuing into the game’s features, career paths are also something to look forward to. Just like the movie, Star Trek Online career paths has impact on skill and how the character would command their crew. Career paths include those like doctor, engineer, tactical officer and so on and so forth.

Equipment sets is another interesting aspect of the game. Each ‘kit’ host certain abilities which aids in completing certain missions. Kits go by your ranks and skills. In other words, the game is not so much a leveling-based MMORPG. It all comes down to skills and maxing out your skills to climb up the ranks from ensign all the way to admiral. There are currently 6 ranks in planning.