Let me start off by saying that I am not a Trekkie. I liked the new movie, and that's about my exposure to the series. This game, however, has me hooked like no other MMO has before. The space combat feels awesome, and I love struggling to keep up my shields while getting in position to fire my photon torpedoes. The ground stuff feels great, too, because I feel like I'm playing less of an MMO and more of a polished shooter when I'm engaging the Orion and Klingon. The quest, called episodes here, are actually pretty lengthy with several parts to them, and everything feels like it would be something plausible you would do if you actually lived in this crazy sci-fi universe, meaning no "BRING ME THE HEAD OF TEN ENEMY CAPTIANS!" missions. I haven't tried PVP yet, though I've been told it's awesome.
All in all, the Giant Bomb beta giveway showed me just how much I am into this new MMO, and I am ready to get into the full thing.

Yeah, I'm ready to get the full game (not sure whether to get it via D2D/Steam or retail) and while I'm a big fan of Star Trek I will NOT buy a lifetime subscription to it. MMOs generally are a timesink... for about six weeks. If this grabs my attention for longer than that I may get a three month sub and see what happens.
And by the way, Digital Deluxe Edition has the KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN emote. That is all.

I've enjoyed Star Trek ever since I was young, but try as I might, I really don't enjoy STO so far. Space is nice, the battles in space look nice, but control wise all it ever feels like to me is that I'm spamming controls to fire of phasers from the side while waiting for a shield to drop. Then it's a gamble as to whether ship really will fire of a photon torpedo when you tell it to before those shield go up again.
I haven't been impressed with fighting on the ground either, but I wonder if that's because I really enjoyed the way such things were handled in MXO with the Interlock system.
I also hope Paramount don't grow bored of STO in the same way Warner Bros. grew bored of MXO, the resulting licensing issues (and handing off to SOE) put paid to MXO after only 4 years or so (although truth be told, that game was dead within 2).

I must say that I'm MOSTLY enjoying it myself which for an MMO hater is a big step, I think the real difference is the departurefrom generic fantasy world and the fact that it actually feels pretty star trekky. Personally I'd have designed it differently so the controls for the away team section was a bit more 3rd person shooter (as in mouse look with the crosshair being a cursor rather than just being a proper 3rd person shooter) and I'd have probably made the space battles a bit more complex and starfleet command 3-ish but I figure its got to appeal to people who just want the pewpew pew.
Without a doubt its better in a group than solo, maighstir and I were teamed up yesterday and when we managed to get into the same instance of a fight, it was pretty cool to be able to support each other's attacks (or more commonly he phasers down the enemy shields and I steal his kill with a pair of overoaded quantum torpedoes, tee hee)
I'm contemplating getting it and thats a hell of a departure from the norm for me. My decision to get it will probably depend on whether I'm bored by the end of the beta and by how many other people I know will be getting it
Anyone up for a bit of fleet action?

Sounds very... uh, um, okay.

The ONE time I don't add "and thats not a sexual metaphor"...

Hey, I just had a great idea! Let's post our handles here and we'll be able to find each other in-game!
I'm certainly enjoying it so far, but it takes some time getting used to for a WoW-junkie like myself. I actually like the space battles, and there is actually some nice trickery involved that's saved me a few times, like redirecting power from the shields at one side to the other, or turning around to get enemy fire at a side where the shield is still strong while the other side recharges, or simply turning to get both the aft and fore cannons facing the opponent. Unlike in the aforementioned WoW where I usually just stand in the same place and slap the opponent over and over with whatever weapon I'm carrying.
I've lost count over how many different "currencies" there are in the game though; Starfleet Merits, Energy Credits, at least 4 different kinds of "anomalous data".... and probably a couple more that I haven't encountered yet. Of course, I guess they had to be creative since money seems to be very seldom mentioned in Star Trek proper, the only instance I can remember is in First Contact, I think, when the 20'th century woman asks Picard about the cost of the ship and he replies that money doesn't really exist any more.
If you for some strange reason better left unspoken would wish to find me, I'm Hiwea@Maighstir.

Yeah, Earth at least no longer uses money, but currencies do exist, especially for the Ferengi.

Quatloos! They didn't use quatloos!

They don't use them in the BETA (at least that I've seen), who knows when the most sensible of all currencies will be patched in

Meh. Champions Online backend where everyone is a Ship Captain = WOW with a skin.
If they had been smart, STO would have been 30% Mass Effect, 45% SIlent Hunter 3, and 25% standard MMO.

Oh and my character name ID thingy is christinehoward@aliasalpha (there's a space in the actual character name but I think that gets removed in the address). Failing that, if you see a small kick arse starship called the USS Avatar (nothing to do with that film) bitchslapping everything in sight until those unfortunate incidens where it explodes, that'll be me

Gah!, stop making this game sound good. I already have to many games on the go let alone the couple MMO's I'm on already at the moment. I was hoping this would only be just another cloned MMO in a star trek universe, is it actually different and fun?

Well I like it (even with reference to my post about it being clunky) and I hated WoW. If you really like trek then it'd probably be a good game for you.
Surely they'll have a 14 day trial at the launch to get more people in so it might be worth waiting for that rather than just buying it straight out

I am in the beta, and I can't believe people are playing the same game as me.
It's Champions Online...with space stuff. Anyone who played Champions (like myself), would know not to give this company more money.
They seem to have a business plan of taking games that need 3-4 years of development and shipping them in 2. How does this work out? Well you just hype, get pre-order money, get lifetime subscription suckers, and offer 6-12 month subs.
In any case, one of the main problems carried over from CO is the graphics engine. I thought it was an Nvidia issue but 3 systems (1 with ATI) and it has been bad across the board.