Having enough curiosity and free time to give it a try when I saw it sale priced at $29.99, I bought the MMO Star Trek Online recently. Firstly, to address the setting. If you've seen the most recent Star Trek reboot film, you know that Romulus was destroyed and while attempting to prevent it, Spock accidentally traveled back in time, altering history and creating an alternate timeline. The game takes place in the post-Romulus destruction era of the un-altered original timeline. With the Romulan Empire crippled, the Klingons decide to expand their own territories. This creates a conflict between the Klingon Empire and the Federation resulting in renewed hostilities. Also, surprise-surprise, the Borg have begun to resurface.

Your first mission is actually as an Ensign aboard a Federation ship (Miranda-class like the USS Reliant in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) responding to a Borg attack. As you might expect, enough of your superior officers are killed that you become the senior officer and must "captain" the ship. You do so well, you are given permanent command of the ship (this game makes Kirk's rise to power seem very common in Starfleet). You are not actually promoted, however. You remain an Ensign acting as Captain. You recruit (purchase or receive as Quest rewards) a few other NPC's (also Ensigns) to be bridge officers for your ship. Different bridge officers have different abilities depending on species and areas of study. Bridge officers act a lot like what would be considered "Equipment" in other MMORPG's for your ship. Although your ship does have actual equipment slots like weapons, shields and the like (as do your characters and bridge officers).

Gameplay-wise, there are two ways you play the game. Ground based away missions and space based ship-to-ship combat. if you've ever played a Star Trek space battle game before (like Starfleet Command), the interface hasn't changed a whole lot there. Every vessel still has fore, aft, starboard and port shielding. You try and face your weakened shield away from your enemy while weakening the shields they have facing you to actually damage their hull and blow them up.

When running around doing ground away missions, the controls aren't much different than most MMO's. If you're familiar with WoW's controls, you'll have no problem running around and interacting. The major difference is that instead of other players filling out your group, your bridge officers make up your away team when you're playing solo. When grouped with other players, any unfilled group positions are filled by an NPC bridge officer. These officers are generally decent AI that you can give basic squad and individual commands to.

You level through various levels of Ensign, Lieutenant, Lt Commander and so on... I think I'm a Lieutenant Grade 6 right now. Although you start out as only having a couple Federation character slots, I recently completed a mission that opened up starting as Klingon. The Klingon level starting point is already advanced to the same rank as my Federation character that unlocked it. Races available to advance in the Klingon Empire include Klingons, Gorn, Nausicans, Orion pirates (the green skinned humanoids). Federation races are the usual suspects like Human, Betazoid, Bajoran, Vulcan and others. Both have a create-your-own-alien ability though. Character customization has quite a few modifiable traits (including bust enlargement for female characters).

My primary character at the moment is a Male Trill flying around with nothing but female bridge officers. Surrounded by women, everywhere he goes.

Would I recommend it? For $29.99 and the first month free... sure. I don't know that I'll continue once I actually have to pay the monthly fee, but I'm enjoying the game enough so far. It's got a fun single player experience even though you're surrounded by other players (at the early levels anyway, much like WoW). Missions are generally instanced with auto-grouping when others are present. They also have Fleets, rather than Guilds. It's pretty well done, though you can feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of stats that you aren't quite sure what they do. It's something I think Star Trek fans will have fun exploring and advancing through.