Dan Stahl talks Star Trek Online's Season 4 and beyond

Since taking over last year, Dan Stahl has made a point of being very accessible to players when it comes to the future of Star Trek Online and the team's overall plans. The United Federation of Planets, a fan forum celebrating the variety of games set within the universe, has conducted an interview with Stahl in the most recent issue of its magazine. As always, there's a large number of different projects behind the scenes as the team turns its focus toward Season 4 and beyond.

The overarching plan for the game's second year seems to be to improve and reinforce the game's elements to date, with Stahl mentioning that he hopes to put the Romulan faction into the game before the year is out. There are plans for another increase in level cap, possibly including Admiral-rank uniform variants as seen on the shows. And with Season 4 on its way, the team is hard at work trying to step up the storyline elements about the mysterious agenda of the Iconians, as well as the war between the KDF and Starfleet. The full interview begins on page 10 and should prove interesting to any Star Trek Online fan.

Reader Comments (8)

The interview was okay but the functionality and readability of that online magazine was terrible.

I quite liked it myself. It's just like licking your finger and flipping pages in a real magazine. There's even 'physics' in the way the pages turn and bend. Kinda fun. :D

Gotta laugh at the way the game's only been out for a year and they talk about "Season Four" to make it sound like the game's really old and established. I find that quite cheesy, quite honestly.

@beskar Have to agree in part. Going by established methodology in regards to "Seasons", the time from launch of STO until "Year 1" should be considered Season 1, with the following year leading upto Feb 2nd 2012 being "Season 2".

MOST of the stuff added through these "Season" updates, are things that should've been in the game from the get-go.

@Meurik So they shouldn't be updating the game because it "should've been in the game from the get-go" ?

I'm pretty sure they are not calling them seasons because they want to trick players into thinking a game is established or "old". They just chose to go that route for naming major patches. And who is to say that a season happens only once a year?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a "fanboy". I don't play STO any more. I find the game lacking in certain aspects that usually appeal to me, and until ground combat is fixed i just can't get myself to go through that torture. But i get defensive when players attempt to belittle somebody's creation. I still respect Cryptic for all the effort put into fixing the game and making it a polished product.

Haha i can't believe that every STO post have these people decrying how bad it is and the updates are stuff that should have been there... yadda yadda. The fact is its growing and there are more people on all the time now than I've ever seen. There are so many in fact on episode release days the servers have crashed (and that's a good thing in a way!) It's growing because its a damn good game not because its so bloody bad. Dstahl has been making a good game even better in leaps and bounds and I see it going no where but up these days.

@Thac0 Agreed! I am on those "lifetime sub-suckers" people who comment about STO often mention.. But you know what? I get to come back whenever I want to enjoy a maturing game. The game IS improving, so much I hardly recognize it from the unorganized buggy mess it was a year ago in beta/release. I don't think it's perfect, there are still too many bugs, but I won't knock it or the dev team for trying very hard to improve a great foundation.

At least STO gives me a solid Star Trek experience from the get go, unlike another scifi franchise mmo that failed to even include a true representation of a very iconic "profession" upon release or even years after... *cough*swg smuggler*cough*

@SiriusScaper
I'm not a lifetime sub holder but I also come and go. As I've grown older I have less time for MMOs so sometimes I take a break and/or wander off to other MMOs but I find my slef coming back to STO as its a great casual (as much as an MMO can be i guess) Star Trek experience.

Dan Stahl talks Star Trek Online's Season 4 and beyond

Reader Comments (8)

Posted: Feb 12th 2011 6:27PM Dunraven said

Posted: Feb 13th 2011 9:54AM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Feb 13th 2011 1:12PM beskar said

Posted: Feb 13th 2011 2:38PM Meurik said

Posted: Feb 13th 2011 4:54PM Loopy said

Posted: Feb 14th 2011 10:00AM Thac0 said

Posted: Feb 14th 2011 12:34PM SiriusScaper said

Posted: Feb 14th 2011 12:40PM Thac0 said

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