Sheriff makes a good point. Secret developement prevents fan imput and that gets me worried about some things:
1) Cryptics CEO (or whatever he is) tends to have a 'vision' of how a game should look. While this worked well for his city of heroes/villains games, it may be a noose around STO's neck. Many players complain that for a long time Cryptic would imput what they think is fun, not listening to the suggestions and complaints of players.
2) Cryptic released marvel styled games thus far which is a style developed in the 60's, 70's. TOS was from that period also. While there are nostalgic TOS fans, most gamers are younger people (considering gaming became immensely popular 10-20 years ago) whom prefer LCARS to buttons and streamlined designs to the old pie-dish-on-hull design. TMP might work, but TNG captivated the gamer generation.
3) We've seen what lack of fan imput did to a game like Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) from Sony Online Entertainment. Without fan imput, bureaucrats and people up high changed SWG to what market research tought to be most popular. This involved overhauling their game entirely which instead ruined it for the players who played it so long. If Cryptic would decide to ride the bandwagon of the markets popular products, I hope they pick a TNG or post TNG theme. There would even be a remote chance that they'd extort the new Star Trek XI era, to have a game following up the new movie, I personally hope not: The new movie is neither TOS style or anything familiar, it's something new, reimagined.
Concluded is that fan imput is important, to release a game which the gamer wishes to receive. Of course the gamer is not just the Star Trek fan, but I think it is important that a theme is picked which would please the larger crowd. While Star Trek to the older fans would recall images of TOS, I think that to the younger gamer generation the words Star Trek summon images of Picard, Riker, Sisko and Janeway. I'm curious if we will get a media announcement timeliy instead of having to swallow whatever Cryptic may develope in secrecy. It may be sweet, or very bitter in the latter case.
