I love day/night cycles in MMOs. It always makes the world feel more real, and if done well the changes in the lighting can have a dramatic effect on the visuals of an area. A lot of the visual appeal of Fallen Earth came from the lighting, especially at sunrise and sunset.
Yet it seldom is
done well, and the most common failing in MMOs is that when it's dark
– whether outside at night or inside in a dimly lit interior –
it's not actually dark. Even Fallen Earth made the nights brighter
(and shorter) in response to player whining feedback.
Star Trek Online is different. Icy fog fill the corridors of a Klingon warship boarded by the Breen and the enemy are dark silhouettes in encounters where most of the light comes from weapons fire. Other battles are fought in smoke and flame, or in the magma glow of Gre'thor.*
There's another story arc on Drozana Station, which I haven't done yet on this character as it's not available to Klingons until level 31, which has some of the best use of lighting I've ever seen in an MMO, even to the extent of one firefight taking place in near total darkness.
All of which makes a nice contrast to other environments in the game. The interiors of Starfleet vessels are as clean and bright as you'd expect them to be. Well, give or take the battle damage...
STO isn't afraid to use darkness to add atmosphere, and that's rare in MMOs. I'm just glad that these days my PC can handle the graphics settings that show it to the best effect, which was definitely not the case when I first played the Drozana story arc years ago.
*Gre'thor aka Klingon Hell. That's a really good story arc, with a couple of unexpected and excellent call backs to the events of the tutorial mission.
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