One of the advantages of setting an MMO – or any other game – in an established fictional universe is that there's already a fanbase out there to tap into. Just as there are certainly players of Lord of the Rings Online who come to that game because it's set in Middle-Earth, so there are certainly players of Star Trek Online who come to it because it's Star Trek.
It's not enough though to have the name, or the races or the ships or the sound effects or any of the other things that fans associate with this setting – it has to feel like Star Trek. STO does that fairly well.
It's by no means perfect. Even allowing for the fact that there's a war going on the bodycount is off the scale compared to the source material (LOTRO has the same issue) and I know that over the years STO has drawn a fair amount of flak for the focus on combat rather than exploration, and for the frequent lack of non-violent solutions to problems.
That latter point is, of course, less of an issue for the Klingon Defence Force.
These are not Starfleet missions with the serial numbers filed off. It's not so much "can I solve this problem without resorting to violence?" as it is "can I solve this problem with a photon torpedo?" and the answer to that question is always yes.
This is what I meant by the feel of the game. The Klingons* in STO put me most in mind of how they were portrayed in Deep Space 9, which had consistently the best Klingon stories and characters – with an honorable mention for The Undiscovered Country. The writing is terrific and while it's often very funny it doesn't slip over into caricature.
There's a few nice subtle touches as well, like the way that when the Federation show up they tend to come across as smug and condescending – exactly as they'd be seen through Klingon eyes – and of the supporting cast of Klingons thus far it's K'mtar who is the least convincing and who feels like he's trying a bit too hard. It's the sort of thing that could be dismissed as a weakness of the otherwise strong writing and voice acting, but if you think about who K'mtar is it's actually a rather clever way to portray the character.
There's a lot of fun in the Klingon missions, and plenty of good action, but that's not all there is, and that too is part of what Star Trek, in any form, should be.
*Even though my captain and bridge crew are Orions I'll still refer to them as Klingons in this kind of discussion. They are, after all, serving in the KDF, and the one-size-fits-all dialogue – though clearly written for actual Klingons – still feels in-character for them. Orions, or other races, serving in the KDF would, I think, readily adopt the attitudes and mannerisms of the main race of the Empire. When on Qo'noS, as they say...
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