Star Trek Online

Star Trek Online is a massively multiplayer online game from 2010, developed for PC by Cryptic Studios and published by Atari; Perfect World Entertainment later took over its operation and further expansions. The player creates their own Starfleet or Klingon Empire officer (the Romulan faction was added later), commands their own ship, which they gradually upgrade and replace with more powerful classes, and rises through the ranks across missions set a few years after the film Star Trek: Nemesis. The game differs from classic MMORPGs by alternating third-person ground battles, where the player controls the whole away team and its equipment, with space combat, where the player directly steers the ship's maneuvering, distributes power between systems, and aims individual weapon systems. The game has been free-to-play with an optional subscription from the start, so its base content is accessible for free and players only pay for cosmetic and convenience extras.

The 2010 PC version is the original and most extensive platform for the game — it is the only one to offer the Foundry tool for community-made missions, complete options for building and naming ships and crew, and the fastest pace of updates, since new content, including major expansions, always releases on PC first, while the later console versions for PlayStation and Xbox received it only with a delay and a more limited range of user-generated content. Mouse and keyboard controls also allow for more precise aiming in space combat and faster switching between crew commands than controller ports for consoles, which is most noticeable during hectic battles against multiple enemy ships at once.

Why play: The PC version is the clear choice for anyone who wants to play Star Trek Online with the newest content, the Foundry tool for custom missions, and precise mouse-based ship control, without waiting for the console release of expansions, which arrive on PlayStation and Xbox only after a delay of several weeks to months.