This is the most recent transcript of the Game Informer Magazin articel of Zinkievich posted by Everitt_Cage on STO.com.

Throughout its existence, a large part of the developer's energy has gone into crafting an engine that can handle any game they throw at it. By allowing designers, artists, and programmers to work inside the game world, the engine can implement new ideas almost instantaneously. Consequently, only weeks after aquiring the liscense a devoted squad of developers had a prototype version of Star Trek Online up and running. For anyone familiar with next-gen development timetables, this sounds preposterous. The implausible scenerio becomes a reality once you see just how far the game has come in these short months. During our visit, a huge number of art assets were already in place. Space combat was up and working. Whole planets and the ability to run through them were on display. The remarkably extensive race and character creator already produces endless varieties.

This accomodating tech gives Cryptic enough confidence to proclaim the game will release before the end of next year on PCs and consoles. Like Champions Online, which Cryptic will release this comming spring, Star Trek Online is built from the ground up as a game that functions as a unified experience across any platform. While approvals from the major console manufacturers are still pending, it is telling that the team demos the game with both keyboard and mouse or an xbox game controller - the same controller players will be using to tackle Champions when it releases on that console next year. "Both Microsoft and Sony want MMOs on their platforms, but they have to figure out how they can enter that space", Zinkievich tells us.

Since it aquired the rights, Cryptic has been busy implementing design ideas and crafting the future of the Star Trek mythos. While the upcomming J.J. Abrams movie will take viewers back to the genisis of Kirck and Spock's time on the Enterprise, Cryptic has been given full reign to drive into the unmapped time period of the much later 25th century. "The universe is a little bit different than when everybody left off with Nemisis", explains Zinkievich. "Things have changed. Its more hostile. A lot of the old threats and challenges that the different civilizations have faced have come back to the forefront". STO is set 29 years after the end of Star Trek Nemisis, the last of the Next Generation films. In 2409, the Khitomer Accords have broken down, shattering the peace that once kept the Federation and the Klingon Empire as allies. An ancient threat has subtly emerged, looming over the civilizations of the Alpha Quadrant, but each culture seems to only know bits and peices of the puzzel that could reveal the danger.

The Klingons have absorbed the reptillian Gorn into the Empire, and enacted an alliance with the green-skinned Orions, even while the bellicose Nausicaans are increasingly attracted to the Klingon's agressive tendencies. Across the Nuetral Zone, the Federation continues to expand. Longtime allies like the Vulcans and Andorians contine to explore the stars beside humanity, while both Bajor and the Ferengi have joined the Federation and Starfleet. The Romulans continue to pick up the peices from their recent civil war, and the Cardassian and Dominion forces remain an unkown factor in the upcomming struggle. As the game begins, outright war between Klingons and the Federation seems inevitable, and each faction is jockeying for resources and allies, even as skirmishes begin to break out.

Players will fly their starships into this dangerous backdrop when they log into Star Trek Online for the first time. You'll begin by selecting one faction or the other. This choice will determine who you'll be fighting against if you partake in player versus-player combat, what races you can choose from, and what ship designs you can play with. After choosing a race or creating your own(see page 53), you'll proceed to build your first ship(see page 55). Every player in game will fly their own vessel into battle, maintain a crew, and explore strange new worlds even while playing the game solo. Your primary avatar in the game world is the captain of your ship, though he or she may not hold that esteemed rank as the game begins. Your first ship may be as small as a runabout, but the rank progression will unlock ever more grand ship classes to command.

Each ship has a bridge crew. These unique individuals act like pets in other MMOs. Each one is player-controlled, but AI driven. Whether science officer or security chief, each character has his or her own unique stats, race, and areas of specialty. A tactical officer may know all about modulating shield harmonics to ward off Borg weapons. Your doctor may be especially experienced at field medicine, and thus a great choice for your away party. This crew will grow alongside you, or can be transferred away as you encounter new officers that better fit your command style. They can be injured in battle and taken to sickbay, but as a rule they wont die as you wander the galaxy together.

Below the bridge officers sit the rest of your general crew. Unnamed but still essential, they offer passive bonuses to your ship as you play. For instance, a good repair team is a necessity if your planning extensive trips into the dangerous Neutral Zone. These characters can die, and once severely depleted, your ship will be in a sorry state. You'll need to return to a starbase or find a friendly planet and hope more recruits are willing to join you.

Setting out into the galaxy, players will find an expansive game "world" quite unlock other MMOs. Everything scales to the task at hand. At the top level, a galactic map reveals huge sectors of space to explore. Take your ship into an individual sector, and you'll see a tactical display of systems, the concentration of other ships in the area, and your own ship's place in the mix. "Sector space is like astronavigations", Zinkievich says. "We want sector space to e a place where players cross into each other". The sector display reveals the topography of space, allows repairs and chatting, and serves as a conduit between major points of interest. In sector space you'll navigate to your destination, making choices about whether to pass through an unknown nebula or go around, or how close is too close to that black hole along your path.

The real fun begins when you arrive at your chosen system. At this scale, you now see your ship in three deminsional space. In a given system, each planet might have its own bubble of space to investigate, willed with moons, starbases, planetary rings, and of course enemy ships.

Space combat is a focused tactical affair, more akin to pirate sea battles than high-speed dogfights. In one encounter we were shown, the playet flew a large Starfleet ship into battle against two smaller Klingon Birds of Prey. Quick button presses readjusted power between weapons and shields. The tactical officer cued up a photon torpedo spread to hammer an opposing ship, a skill that must recharge after each use. Numerous complex skills also function on the same recharge functionality. Meanwhile, more basic attack and defense features are built around resource management rather than timers. As the Klingon vessel drifted away, badly damaged, its companion ship tried to sneak around to level an attack from behind. Shifting power away from weapons and engines, our demo player boosted the rear shields in time to prevent catastrophic damage during the barrage. Rolling the ship around to starboard, the Starfleet ship's weapons were brought back up to full and a long blast of phaser fire drained the second Klingon's shields, leaving her incapacidated.

It wont be unusual after a battle to beam down to a nearby planet or across to the other ship to continue a mission. Here players will encounter the final level of scale - one that feels more familiar to MMO players - a traditional third-person view. "When you go on an away mission, your going to bring four of your bridge crew", Zinkievich relays. "The bridge crew is there to fill in when our friends arent around". Any number of tasks might be required in thsi part of the game, from exploring a ruined structure on a planet's surface to retrieving some important vaccine only found in the planet's plant life. Like in space a lot of the excitment will come from the inevitable conflicts that arise. Avatar combat is an entirely different battle system from the tactical ship battles in space. Focused on fast-paced action, phasers and disrupters are fired using an aiming reticle, and visceral melee combat arises when Klingons bring bladed bat'leths to bear. "The avatar combat is meant to be a complement to starship combat", Zinkievich says. "We want it to be fast paced. We want it to be alot more visceral".

Fans will be quick to point out that combat is only one part of the STar Trek universe. To address this point, Cryptic is implementing a number of game mechanics to deepen the gameplay beyond mere battle dymanics. Diplomacy with other races is a core component of that plan, typified by the need to recruit new races into your respective alliance. Crafting, trade, and mining might be on a more grand scale than in many MMOs, but its there for players to partake in teh galactic economy.

Another central tenent of the Star Trek experience is exploration. "We have to make sure that the universe feels vast, along with all the storylines and plots - that there is a place where you can go out into deep space and explore and go where no man has gone before", Zinkievich tells us. While thousands of players may be wandering through the Star Trek Online galaxy, every player can explore strange new worlds untouched by other captains and crews. Existing worlds(like Vulcan) and popular locations(like DS9) are heavily designed and costomized by Cryptic, but the thousands of unexplored systems are procedurrally generated by the Cryptic Engine, allowing the game space to endlessly expand in every direction. By creating a multitude of art assets for planetary features, the game engine can create new worlds on the fly, populating them both with creatures and unusual terrains. We were show a planetary surface covered with huge spires of violet crystal rising to impossible heights and widening into high, mushroom like platforms. With a few button presses by an artist, the yellow tinged sky turned into a reddish blue hue and the landscape morphed until it was unrecognizable from its previous incarnation. Between the use of tools like this and Cryptic's ability to make structured instanced areas for individual players, the illusion of pioneering deep space exploration emerges.

Even if the combat and exploration turn out to be good the game will be in serious trouble if it doesnt deliver meanigful and structured gameplay. Fetch quests to bring back 10 Ferengi ears to a quest giver just doesnt work. The solution lies in the roots of the STar Trek franchise - the TV episode framework. Zinkievich elaborates: "We found there is a structure to all the episodes in how the story unfolds. If you apply this pattern, it fits to ----- percent of the shows. Its almost a subconcious -----. So we're taking that and trying to apply it to the content". Star Trek Online's core mission and story progression will appear as linked episodes - each with their own plot and unique events.

Cryptic demonstrated one episode that gives a glympse into how this mechanic works. Starfleet contacts you with a request to delivers a Vulcan ambassador to his race's religious monastery on P'jem. Once there, a small fleet of Klingon ships attacks, warning that P'jem has been infiltrated by Species 8472, the dangerous race first seen in Star Trek Voyager. Fearing the threat this race represents, the Klingons intend to capture the planet, an action you must now prevent. -----tial space battle eventually goes planetside since ----- deliver the ambassador to his destination as ---- forces continue their attack in closer quarters. -------- fought victory, Starfleet contacts you to relay that they've found the actual body of the Vulcan ambassador. Realizing the man you accompanied is an imposter, you track him down and he reveals his identity as a disguised member of Species 8472, then flees to a Klingon ship. You give pursuit, and finally destroy the ship, but as the episode ends a number of curious threads remain unsolved as to how this alien race managed to reach Starfleet and what their intentions are. Episodes like this will play out over the course of around an hour, and the team's goal is to have each one deliver a satisfying mix of action, exploration, diplomacy, and a variety of locales, just like an episode of one of the TV shows.

Apart from the dozens of episodes that provide context and plot, Cryptic is also focusing on the wider multiplayer experience. Players can form fleets that emulate the familiar idea of guilds. "The fleets are able to build starbases, which are like social hubs", Zinkievich explans. "There are stores for your fleet. Theyre also a place where the economy can flourish. Fleets will be able to build the top end ships. Its going to be so resource intensive that only fleets will be able to put those ships together". While traveling as a group, whether with memebers of your fleet or in an impromtue task force, the episodes unfold just as they would if you were by yourself. While playing with a group of four other players, your away team will be made up of each commanding officer, with support from bridge crew that remains in orbit. Play with fewer players, and some captains can bring their best officers to fill out the five person team.

The more focused group content will emerge from dynamic events that occur in different space sectors. For instance, three Borg cubes arriving through a transwarp conduit represent a threat no captain would tackle alone. These incursions into friendly space will appear on your sector map. "iIf you want, you can fly over there and jump in with a while lot of people to these zone-wide events and take them down with your fleet". Other similar dangers include the planet eating Doomsday Machine from the classic original series episode of the same name, or even the return of V'ger from the first STar Trek movie.

Beyond group encounters exist the unending factional war between the Federation and the Klingons. This conflict will play otu both indirectly and during PvP combat. Players who dont want to get involved in the war can help their faction by completing missions for the unaligned worlds. "You dont have to actually go and get owned by somebody else in order to enjoy the faction gameplay", Zinkievich says. Convince a civilization that you can help them, and they'll often side with your faction, delivering technologies, additional resources, special abilities, or recruitable members of the species for your crew. More militant players should head toward the Neutral Zone, a gateway to the heated multiplayer war zone where the war between these two massive powers will play out. "We want to do direct PvP on ships and on ground as well. The results of those battles will determine who owns that system that week, and what resources you win for your faction", Zinkievich relays. Systems will change hands as the war continues, each offering certain strategic advanteges that the other faction will desperately try to recover. Battles can be massive affairs, with the sound fo phaser fire, the flash of detonating torpedoes, and the sight of massive starships being ripped apart and blossoming into explosions.

The upcomming prequel movie is meant to reinvigorate Star Trek viewers, and Star Trek Online is clearly meant to do the same for the gaming world. No other Trek game projects are in the works right now, and Star Trek Online represents the most extensive and massive game the STar Trek universe has ever seen. It isnt suprising that Cryptic is hearing demands and expectations from any number of different quarters. In response, they have done the only thing that makes sense. "We make games that we want to play", Zinkievich proclaims now at the end of our day with Cryptic. "Theres not a big ------ meeting where we determine who our audience is with a Venn diagram. We're making the game that we are going to find fun. Thats really our philosophy across the board at Cryptic Studios"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Khitomer Accords would have superseded the Organian treaty. If it has dissolved, then the Organian Treaty is also moot.

Also, I have to admit that if P'Jem and V'ger are included, it excites me. Who is to say that all of the questions have been answered about these two? Or that someone else isn't using or events surrounding them to promote their own ends.

First Contact may be much more complicated than this article indicates. We don't know the specifics yet.

Lastly, most game companies make games they want to play. They are gamers, too, so it's a good litmus test of how to implement design.

I'm really upset that this article didn't excite you more. I really thought you would find a lot more in it to enjoy. I hope that some of the things we find out as we move forward are more to your liking.

Well canon errors can hopefully be fixed ,personally, I dont believe isolationists like Species 8472 would even be outside of fluidic space let alone tampering with the affairs of the Federation but you never know Janeway's diplomacy might have failed. If you follow Legacy soft canon V'ger could come with several borg cubes to earth for like end game content.

Redshirt there was the 2nd klingon war so why would this be any different..

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Khitomer Accords would have superseded the Organian treaty. If it has dissolved, then the Organian Treaty is also moot.

The Organian Peace Treaty was a treaty that was forced upon the Klingon Empire nd the United Federation of Planets by an all powerful god-like race, much like the Q Continum.

The Khitomer Accords was a political treaty that was formed between the Klingons and the Federation. It would be impossible for the Khitomer Accords to "supercede" the Organian Peace Treaty.

From Memory Alpha:
The Treaty of Organia, also known as the Organian Peace Treaty, was an agreement enforced by the powerful noncorporeal beings of Organia upon the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire, ending the Federation-Klingon War (2267) in 2267. (TOS: "Errand of Mercy") The treaty established a Neutral Zone between the two powers. (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)

According to the terms of the treaty, each side could lay claim to a disputed planet inside the Neutral Zone between the two powers, and was given the opportunity to demonstrate its ability to develop that planet most efficiently. Also, each side was granted the right to demand use of the other's shore leave facilities along the border. (TOS: "The Trouble with Tribbles")

The Treaty of Organia was eventually superseded by the Khitomer Accords of 2293, which bore out the Organians' prediction that the Klingons and the Federation would one day become friends.

Now, I understand that Memory Alpha states that the Khitomer Accords superceded the Organian Peace Treaty. However, because of the nature of the Organians power, and because they felt so compeled to stop the potential war that they rendered both sides completely harmless, do you really believe that once the Khitomer Accords were signed, the Organians simply said "They are friends now and will never go to war again."? If the Federation and the Klingons were on the brink of war or war broke out, something tells me the Organians would be asking some questions why their peace treaty was being violated, and would once again render the 2 factions harmless.

And Adrmial of Starfleet, what 2nd Klingon War are you talking about? Not the one during DS9 right? Because that was between the Klingon Empire and the Cardassian Union.

 Acording to Memory Alpha, the Khitomer Accords did supercede the Treaty of Organia. I guess it is a matter of "whom do you believe"!

 The Second Federation-Klingon War in 2372-2373. Although the Klingon's were attacking Cardassia, the Federation Council condemned this invasion. Gowron withdrew from the Khitomer Accords. When the Federation refused Gowron's order to withdraw from the Archanis sector, the Klingon's began a full scale war with the Federation. DS9: "Broken Link"