See space sizzle in these five new Star Trek Online screens

Unfortunately, I have a feeling someone's pre-ordering this game for me for Christmas. I had been really looking forward to this game but now I'd like to wait it out until I hear the initial reviews. I hope they fix the timing of the laser fire. From the pic and vids, it looks like God's playing pick-up sticks in space -- the battles look like a major fuster-cluck.

To be honest I would love to play this, but the kid that lives two doors down from me is already a PITA since he learned I own a "gaming rig". And since the little blighter already wears a star trek tshirt to school 3 days a week this might encourage him to move in. Which will bring along his annoyingly enthusiastic console FPS dad and his awkwardly flirting with me in front of my girlfriend wife.
Here comes a great question, just how many of you out there plan to wear star trek uniforms when you play this? C'mon fess up, were all nerds here! I just know someone is going to play so long they croak and are found dead surrounded by empty rock star cans while wearing a star trek uniform.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is about to get truly eeeeeepic!

I've heard good things about the beta...so I dunno what people are talking about.

I also think slippy is a little ridiculous. Complaining that a closed beta test have lots of downtime, and lots of bugs, feel incomplete, and is patched often. I thought that was the definition of beta test.

The ship battles look realistic to me. Lots of ships in one area would, of course, be a "fluster-cluck" (which I assume is a kind of space chicken).

I'm still looking forward to it. The open beta, I think, will prove it one way or the other for me though.

For those of you stating it's just a beta, wait until open beta, etc. How many time have we heard this about so many games? STO is being built using the same engine as Champions Online. One of the reasons it has a short beta period before release is that the engine doesn't really need to be beta tested as much. As for the short beta test times, I don't care for them either, you don't have much time to get in there and test lots of various things to break even though there are some specific things to test. I didn't understand it for CO and I don't understand it for STO.

Hopefully when all is said and done something nice will come out the other end :)

Hopefully someone will release some graphics configuration settings that tone down the cartooniness of the colors and make it a bit more realistic. Cryptic's artsy-fartsy department seems to have a crush on comic book colors :(