Star Trek Online at Ten Ton Hammer

Craig – And we have openings! Look on the website, apply!

Garrett – Oh awesome, that’s a good plug right there *laughs*

Another question which is interesting… “Will there be immersive holodecks?” That’s a good one.

Craig – Oh, holodecks. Wow.

*laughter*

I think holodecks are… it’s almost a bugaboo on the team right now, and I’m about to throw down the gauntlet and say that no one’s allowed to say holodeck for the next couple months. The holodeck is something that is just so powerful that everybody wants to put everything there.

Its like, “Well the tutorial, that’s gotta be in the holodeck!”, “Oh, well we’ve gotta go and see Abe Lincoln… in the holodeck!”, “Well, that’ll be the way that we get to go back and replay episodes that we’ve already done will be the holodeck!”

And so it’s such a cool trope in the universe, it’s such a cool thing. Who knows, maybe you’ll get to go to the holodeck and play Champions Online.

*laughter*

Garrett – Somebody just wrote that – STO / Champions crossover.

Craig – I just saw that…

Garrett – I love it. I guess a good one here is the PC / Console server question. Are you guys gonna be, you know… With Champions and the console questions we always deal with, will you see Star Trek Online for the console?

Craig – We are developing the game for the PC and consoles right now. We do plan on making sure that this game plays and is fun on the console.

Garrett – Cool. I guess the last question, and I know everybody’s going nuts… I apologize to everyone if I can’t get to one of your questions. I’m doing my best here guys.

Jeff – We’re always open to fan questions, so if we didn’t grab your question here maybe we can send it to Cryptic and get it answered.

Garrett – Of course, post it in the forums guys, we’ll do our best definitely to send over a collective interview.

I guess the last thing I wanted to ask, and somebody brought this up and it’s very true Craig, and I know I had asked you when we talked at Comic-Con. Is there something that you can tell everybody about Star Trek that you haven’t said yet? Just a general fun… I know it’s a tough one to toss up, but it’ll give you the chance here to kind of say, “Hey, by the way, this is in the game and it’s freaking amazing and no one has asked me about it yet.” So go ahead, I’ll turn it over to you.

Craig – I think the only thing that I can speak to that won’t get me into total deep trouble with our PR team who likes me to keep tight lips, is really space combat. Space combat right now is just awesome. The team can’t get enough of it. It’s got a bit of a steep learning curve right now that we’re working on, that we’re trying to smooth that out, try to make it a little easier to get into. But really anybody, after they’ve played it for just a little bit, just a couple of times really, really get into it. And the strategy that is in there, the tactics that you can use, it really just opens up different levels of gameplay that I really haven’t seen in any MMO. And it’s really fun.

Garrett – That’s awesome, I think everyone’s looking forward to it. I can’t imagine how many people have been looking forward to this game over the years. We’ve seen it go through different instances, and I think we can all agree here, it’s in great hands.

Craig – Well thanks!

Jeff – Absolutely.

Garrett – it’s true! And we can’t wait to see what you guys have to show us over the summer, and next fall, and going into, you know at some point the beta and then the launch is just going to be great.

Craig – We can’t wait to show stuff off, it’s… I mean, you say, the response we’ve gotten from the fan, from the press, from everybody has been awesome how excited they are about the game. And I just want to express to everybody how excited Cryptic is, and everybody on the team is in making this game. This is just… we’re just having a lot of fun tackling the challenges and putting this content in, it’s awesome.

Garrett – Very cool, very cool. Well Jeff, I’ll turn it over to you then so we can…

Jeff – Craig, we can’t thank you enough for coming on and talking with us. This is actually just part one of the Cryptic double-header here on Loading… Live. Next week we’ll have Bill Roper, who’s executive producer of Champions Online – same bat time, same bat channel! Tune in next Thursday at 7PM!

So, this has been Jeff “Ethec” Woleslagle for Ten Ton Hammer, along with Ben “Machail” De La Durantaye, Reuben “Sardu” Waters, Garrett Fuller, and our special guest of course Craig Zinkievich, executive producer for Star Trek Online.

Craig – Thanks a lot guys, it was a whole lot of fun.

Jeff – And thank you, we’ll see you next week!