When I last saw Star Trek Online, it was March and I was at Perpetual Entertainment's studios in San Francisco. There were a few early (and impressive) terrain builds, a handful of character sketches and a group of extremely excited designers and artists working on the project.
Fast forward to the Austin Game Developer's Conference, where I had the opportunity to sit down with Daron Stinnett, Executive Producer of Star Trek Online. Where was the project now? "We are in pre-production, so we have our tools and technology in place." said Daron, "We have our ground game-play prototyped, our space game-play prototyped, we have our art style set, we have the design of the world well understood and mapped out. We know where our players will be visiting and the races they'll meet along the way. In 2008 we are heading into production to produce the massive volume of assets needed to create this universe."
Star Trek Online will have classes similar to existing MMOGs, although they are called "professions". I asked if they will be tightly focused and defined, or if they'll have overlapping skills, allowing development of the quintessential "mage-tank". Stinson responded, "We are going to make
