There's a bit more conversation, scanning, and diplomacy around the setting now with Duty Officers doing other sorts of missions than blowing up things or shooting them.

While still combat heavy, the revisions to the game have also moderated it a bit.

Some of them tend to run with the idea that Q postulated in the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, that it's not about charting stars, but to expand one's horizons and boundaries. They also believe that if they just focused on things like diplomacy, the game would get stale very fast. They believe that, yes, Star Trek was about trying to follow the Opening Narration, but it was just backdrops for the conflicts of the day. However, other players point out that all MMOs run on conflict of some sort - player-made or developer-made. They accuse Cryptic of never watching Star Trek or just focusing on the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes involving the Dominion War. These players run on the idea that Star Trek is about exploration, diplomacy and following the Opening Narration of 'to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man/one has gone before'. Many players don't like it at all, get frustrated every time a new conflict starts up and hate the fact that their characters are openly and willingly spilling blood left and right in a sick and twisted version of Gunboat Diplomacy that involves actually using those Gunboats.

A lot of the conflict over if this game is credible for actually being a Star Trek game worthy of the title is due to the game's heavy combat stance.

The base is breaking further as a result. While STO got Denise Crosby as Sela (who was one of the Killed Off for Real Novel-verse characters, though players are starting to wish she'd die in-game, too) and Tasha Yar, made Kira the Kai, kept DS9 and lots of publicity push from CBS, even including STO in official timelines for their comics with IDW. 4 years later and the STO Timeline is suddenly Lighter and Softer than the novel verse simply because in those 4 years several novels were released that featured the deaths of several popular characters, destroyed a few popular pairings and blew up Deep Space 9. When it launched it was Darker and Edgier than the Star Trek Novel Verse. Interesting, retroactively, STO is gaining legitimacy in this regard.Basically it's the same as any other MMO. Rifts have formed within the game as vocal Klingon players clamour for content, among other issues. Rifts have formed over whether it's a credible addition to the Star Trek universe, or simply a flash in the pan and not long for this world.

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