star-trek-online posts

Last year, Paragon Studios released its Mission Architect tools, allowing players of the super hero MMO City of Heroes to make and share their own missions and storylines in the game. Now yet another major MMO developer, Cryptic Studios, is prepping to release similar tools for its title Star Trek Online.

Cryptic has already launched a forum for discussing the release of the tools, called The Foundry, on the Star Trek Online message boards. The FAQ page in the forums has more info on the tools which will let any player of the game create missions for the title. The Foundry won't allow players to import their own models and art into the game; you will have to work with Cryptic's content for the game. The tools will be released in beta form sometime in early November.

[Via Massively]

If you thought that developer Cryptic Studios has its hands full with maintaining and updating two MMO games (Champions Online and Star Trek Online) as well as making the upcoming RPG Neverwinter, well you might be right. However Cryptic has even more up its sleeves, at least according to a new Eurogamer article.

The article quotes Cryptic's co-founder Jack Emmert as saying, "We've got plenty of other games under wraps." And when ask to clarify he added, "These other projects have been underway for quite some time." While Cryptic has been known as an MMO game developer the announcement of the non-MMO (but still online only) title Neverwinter could mean future games could also deviate from Cryptic's MMO formula.

Hey, would you like to get a chance to purchase some cool new PC games or maybe that new video card for your gaming rig? If so then you had better head over to our official contest page where we are giving away three $200 gift cards for Best Buy to three of our loyal Big Download readers.

We started the contest on Thursday and the response has been huge so far. However, the deadline to enter the contest, sponsored by Intel and the Star Trek Online Architect web site, is tonight at 11:59 pm Eastern time. So if you want in on this cool giveaway, and if you are eligible to enter, you have just a few hours to make your entry official. Good luck.

Time for another giveaway contest at Big Download and this one is particularly nice. Thanks to the combined efforts of Intel and the MMO Star Trek Online, Big Download is giving our readers a chance to win one of three $200 Best Buy gift cards which can be used to buy anything at the major electronics and game retailer. The cards are provided to us courtesy of the Star Trek Online Architect web site where you can play mini-games and enter even more contests to win prizes like Intel Core i7 processors and even a replica of the Captain's Chair from the original series of Star Trek.

How do you get a chance to win one of these gift cards? It's really simple:

• To enter, post a comment on this contest page.
• The comment must be left before 11:59 pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, August 31
• You may enter only once.
• Three winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• The winners will each be sent a Best Buy gift card worth $200
• Click Here for complete Official Rules. You must be a resident of the US or Canada (excluding Quebec) who is 18 years or older to enter this contest

Our thanks to Intel and Star Trek Online's Architect web page for sponsoring this contest. Good luck.

In a bit of a surprise, the official Champions Online web site has posted up word that Bill Roper, the Chief Creative Officer at the MMO game's developer Cryptic Studios, has departed the company. The post contains a lengthy statement from Roper but he was non-specific about his reasons for leaving Cryptic, saying only, "Over the past few months my entrepreneurial spirit has become restless, and I've made the difficult decision to move on and look for new opportunities."

Roper gained fame as one of the leaders of Blizzard Entertainment when the developer released products like the WarCraft RTS series, StarCraft and particularly the Diablo series of games. In 2003 he and several other high profile Blizzard team members left the company to form Flagship Studios where he was the CEO. However its first game, Hellgate London, proved to have a disastrous launch that resulted in Flagship shutting down in 2008. Roper joined Cryptic Studios later that year as its Design Director and lead Champions Online's development through its final year before launching in September 2009. In March of 2010 Roper was promoted to Chief Creative Officer of Cryptic.

Last June Gameforge announced that the game publisher had gotten the rights to make Facebook-based and browser-based games based on the Star Trek franchise. This week Gameforge revealed that the company has recruited the husband/wife team of Denise and Michael Okuda to be consultants on the games.

Michael Okuda has worked on various Star Trek projects over the years as a graphics designer for four of the five Trek TV shows and many of the movies. He and his wife Denise also co-authored The Star Trek Encyclopedia many years ago. For the Gameforge games the duo will be "providing their expertise regarding visual elements and technical data." The browser and Facebook Star Trek games are expected to launch sometime in 2011.

It's been an interesting few years for publisher Atari. The France-based company that bought the rights to the Atari name, Infogrames, bought out the rest of Atari in 2008 and then changed its name to Atari. Two former Sony Playstation execs, David Gardner and Phil Harrison, were brought in as the company's CEO and President, respectively. They tried to turn Atari into more of an online gaming development publisher, buying Cryptic Studios who already had two MMOs in development, Champions Online and Star Trek Online.

Now Gardner and Harrison are gone and Atari is getting yet another reboot thanks to its new CEO Jeff Lapin who took the position in December 2009. The Los Angeles Times reports that Lapin has moved Atari's home office to LA and is now concentrating its efforts on releasing updated versions of classic Atari games as free-to-play web games or digital download titles. Even the Atari logo is being licensed for "a slew of items including bags, hoodies and wallpaper." Atari also wants to license its games to movie studios in LA. Will all of this work to actually make Atari profitable? The article says Atari has lost a whopping $700 million over the last four years.

The development team at Cryptic Studios has added lots of new content and features to its MMO title Star Trek Online since its release back in February. Now the dev team is launching a new "welcome back" weekend for those former subscribers to the game who have since left the game.

The free weekend is in fact live right now and will continue until Monday, August 9 at 1 pm Eastern time. Former subscribers who still have their retail key will be able to download and patch the game up to the full version. As we have reported on earlier last month the game just got a big "Season Two" content update with lots of new story-based missions, additions and mini-games.

Earlier this week Star Trek Online launched it's "Season Two" content update and we mentioned that one of the new additions in Cryptic Studios' sci-fi MMO was mini-games like Dabo, a gambling game that's a cross between a slot machine and roulette. Well, Cryptic must have read our minds because the developer has not only added Dabo, they have added Dabo girls to the game (oh yeah).

In fact the game has a Dabo girl hologram that's voiced by actor Chase Masterson who played, natch, Leeta the Dabo girl in a number of Star Trek Deep Space Nine episodes (Leeta even married a Ferengi on the show; weird huh?). Masterson is the third Star Trek actor to voice a role in Star Trek Online; Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto have voice roles in the early part of the game. You can check out a Dabo game video after the jump:

As we reported last week, Cryptic Studios has launched "Season Two" for its sci-fi MMO Star Trek Online. Subscribers to the game can now get the free content update. In addition publisher Atari has permanently lowered the price of the game to just $19.99.

Season Two adds a ton of new features and content to Star Trek Online including raising the level cap to 51, adding new missions for the playable Klingon faction, new "Tier 5" ship, mini-games such as Dabo, and the new Federation Diplomatic Corps that tries to explore and peaceable setting conflicts. Starting in August, new weekly missions will be added to the game that center on defending an alien race called the Deferi from a new threat.