Connect Three Red Cubes to Fire Phasers

Ok, so I've been pushing for a long time, a very long time, for someone to make a MMO where it's a bunch of people on a spaceship traveling around galaxies and doing adventure-type stuff.  Firefly/Lost In Space/MMO X3, whatever. It appeared that we might get that in the new Star Trek Online, until developer Perpetual Entertainment decided to push into the super-profitable casual market, taking STOnline with it. When screens appeared recently, it had a much softer, cartoony look to it, far from the ultra-realistic renders of early concept work.

It looked like a casual game.

Now, just the other day, I was promoting the concept of Puzzle Pirates in Space to Will, and in hindsight, I realize this is exactly what it was becoming.

So it gives me some relief today to read the news the Perpetual, or P2 or whatever it's called now has been pulled from the development of Star Trek Online, and an unnamed developer will be taking over, and more than likely, starting over. This probably means it will be years before we see an actual game out of this, leaving the Firefly MMO that FOX is making as the nearest hope. And let's face it, it's not going to be good at all.

Here's what we were told it would look like originally during "Look Development":

Click here for the big version of what they made it look like.

All of that development and look, all of those hardcore trek fans designing layouts of ship interiors and getting Mike Friggin' Okuda as a consultant on the panel design and it just feels like somewhere along the way, the business end of things said "Think WoW in space!" and that's where it went.

I expressed some sympathy earlier because those guys really seemed to be hardcore about this, but I'm glad I'm the powers that be at Perpetual were not allowed to take the game in the direction they were going, and I hope the new parties responsible will try to succeed in the original vision of the game.

Or dammit, I'm just going to have to do it myself.