Trivia / Star Trek Online

• Accidentally-Correct Writing: Per canon, 24th century and later Romulan ships are powered by minuscule black holes rather than fusion or matter/antimatter reactors. Since at least Legacy of Romulus, when Romulan ships are destroyed, they collapse into their drive singularities. After collapsing, the singularities then explode into Planar Shockwaves that cause damage to nearby ships as a warp core breach would. The Planar Shockwaves are as unrealistic as they usually are, but a black hole of that little mass would theoretically decompose almost instantly and release its mass as energy^note This is theorized to occur because of Hawking radiation, much like a matter/antimatter explosion. Given E=mc², that's a bloody lot of energy.
• Actor Allusion: Averted. Ambassador S'taass was thought to be voiced by Charlie Adler, who has a history of both being a badass and being a reptile. Hell, the devs once indicated he was voiced by "Cobra Commander"! The real voice actor is named Sam Mowry.
• Colbert Bump: The Cynical Brit once tweeted his ship build from the STO Academy webpage. The immediate fan reaction brought the website down temporarily.
• Descended Creator: A couple full-time employees of Cryptic also did some early voice work for the game, though this ceased after Cryptic signed a contract with SAG-AFTRA to provide their voice work going forward; the game is only allowed to have a certain number of non-union voice actors and chooses to prioritize Special Guest appearances by non-union actors from the live-action Star Trek shows.
  • Christine "Kestrel" Thompson, the lead writer for the game, also voices Lieutenant Kyona, the Enterprise-F's tactical officer, in "Facility 4028".
  • Captain Kurland, the C.O. of Deep Space 9 in the game, is voiced by James "Borticus" Randall, one of Cryptic's programmers.
• Development Gag:
  • During one patch, the space station K-7 was accidentally removed. The in-game Game Masters claimed it was "Cloaked by Klingons" and that "Federation scientists were working to rescue it". Once it was re-added, a group of Security officers could be found interrogating a Klingon about how and why she helped to cloak the station. Similarly, due to all the confused newbies asking "Where's Sulu?", numerous NPCs across Earth Spacedock were given dialogue discussing his location. This addition didn't seem to help anyone; due to story updates, however, you no longer need to track down Sulu at all. Still, the immortal question lives on in the NPC conversations.
  • A bug would occasionally send characters transporting from the Klingon shipyard right back to the shipyard. With the release of Legacy of Romulus, the old transporter officer (a Klingon) has been replaced by a Lethean, and you will no longer transport from the shipyard to the shipyard. You can ask the Lethean where the old transporter officer went, and he'll say, "executed for incompetence," which is one of the duty officer missions available to KDF captains. For bonus points, this was directly taken from the witty note left by a developer on the release notes when this change was made.
• Dueling Games: With Star Wars: The Old Republic, a fellow Free-to-Play MMO based on a long-running soft science fiction franchise. STO came out first, but TOR was in a more complete state at launch, though the gap has long since vanished and both games are doing well. TOR also later added multiplayer space combat, while STO remains the first major MMO to have fully supported both space and ground combat at launch^note Later joined by Star Citizen. The Fandom Rivalry of their respective parent franchises is certainly there, though there are large numbers of gamers who unashamedly play both.
• Dummied Out:
  • When the "Cardassian Struggle" storyline was redone, Captain James Kurland's pre-"2800" appearances and the episode "Rapier" were removed. ^note This was likely due to STO now being a Screen Actors' Guild project, as Kurland and many characters in "Rapier" were voiced by non-union voice actors (including one of Cryptic's programmers). See Descended Creator above.
  • Captain Akira Sulu was a relatively important character before 2014, but every mission he was involved in has since been removed. Currently, he just stands around Earth Spacedock (according to Kestral, he's the station commander) and doesn't have any lines.
  • Ja'rod used to be a Recurring Character for the Federation character, but as of Season 11, he only appears in the episode "Turning Point" and in the Task Force Operations "The Cure Found" and "The Cure Applied".
• Executive Meddling:
  • The developers have stated on the game forums that there are certain things they want in the game that they cannot add without the permission of CBS; for example, Tier 5 refits of lower level ship designs. They need CBS's approval before they can touch any ship class that was shown in the series, like the Constitution- or Akira-class ships.
  • After Cryptic signed a contract for voice actors with SAG-AFTRA, many non-SAG actors and/or their characters were cut from the game; Cryptic can only hire a certain number of non-union actors, and has chosen to prioritize non-SAG actors who appeared in live-action Star Trek.
• God Never Said That: The often mocked "Delta Rising is the best expansion EVER and the players LOVE IT!" quote was never actually said by anyone in Cryptic. The original quote was thanking players for making Delta Rising a financial success.
• In Memoriam:
  • Mark "H2Orat" Valentine, a video artist for Cryptic, lost a long-running battle with cancer in September 2013, and the forum agreed there should be some in-game remembrance made (ideas were floated ranging all the way up to a cross-faction Valentine-class playable starship). In the end, Cryptic spotlit Valentine's Foundry mission "The Rising Phoenix, Part 1" for the second time and added a memorial with an ever-burning torch to the Starfleet Academy map.
  • A second memorial was added to Vulcan and New Romulus on March 5, 2015 in remembrance of Leonard Nimoy, who reprised his role as Spock for the game. Additionally, plaques were placed in Federation, Klingon, and Romulan social hubs honoring other Star Trek cast and crew who have unfortunately passed.
  • Given when the mission "Delta Flight" was released, the USS Pratchett seems to be a Shout-Out to author Sir Terry Pratchett, who had died the previous month.
  • Players spontaneously mounted their own in-game candlelight vigil in Odo's security office on Deep Space 9 after Odo's actor René Auberjonois passed away in December 2019.
  • After Nichelle Nichols died in 2022, players gathered around Starfleet Academy and other in-game social hubs to honor her with raised torches.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The main characters of Star Trek: Lower Decks first appeared as DOFF characters in game. This was thus the first way fans discovered that D'Vana Tendi, one of the four, was Orion.
• Meme Acknowledgment: Borticus, one of the devs and the voice of Captain Kurland, has "Kurland here." as his signature on the forums. He's admitted that the role wasn't his best work.
• Milestone Celebration: The game has had events for each of its anniversaries, as well as free item giveaways since the fourth anniversary:
  • For the first anniversary, Earth Spacedock was updated to its circular incarnation, while the mission "The Vault", the first part of "Cloaked Intentions", was released.
  • For the second anniversary, players were given a Fleet-type Odyssey-class or Bortas-class ship after completing a special shakedown mission.
  • For the third anniversary, the Featured Episode "Temporal Ambassador" was launched, with Denise Crosby reprising her role as Tasha Yar and allowing players to obtain an Ambassador-class^note The class of the Enterprise-C, as seen in "Yesterday's Enterprise". or a Kamarang-class ship.
  • For the fourth anniversary, the Featured Episode "A Step Between Stars" was launched, with Tim Russ reprising his role as Tuvok, and allowed players to grind to obtain special Federation, Klingon, and Romulan ships inspired by the Dyson Spheres.
  • For the fifth anniversary, a new Featured Episode dealing with the Kobali was launched, with Garret Wang reprising his role as Harry Kim. Like the previous anniversary, a time-gated grind was used to obtain a Kobali-inspired ship. Additionally, the "Cloaked Intentions" Federation story arc was revamped to make it more in line with the current canon. It also introduced a new BOFF system, a Specialization line, and an addition to the Foundry.
  • For the sixth anniversary, the Featured Episode "Time and Tide" was released, continuing the Temporal Cold War-based storyline.
  • For the seventh anniversary, the Featured Episode "Of Signs and Portents" was released, continuing the New Frontiers arc, as well as a time-gated grind to unlock a Lukari Science Ship.
  • For the eighth anniversary, the Featured Episode "Scylla and Charybdis" was released, serving as the penultimate mission of the New Frontiers story arc. It too featured a time-gated grind, this time for the Denorios-class Bajoran Interceptor.
  • For the ninth anniversary, Cryptic launched two new Featured Episodes, starting the new Mirror of Discovery arc with "Para Pecum" and "Illusion of Communication". It also featured a time-gated grind for a Vulcan T'Pau-class scout ship from Star Trek: Discovery.
  • For the tenth anniversary, Cryptic released the Featured Episode "The Measure of Morality" in two parts, the TFO "To Hell With Honor", and allowed players to earn the Khitomer Alliance Battlecruiser.
  • For the eleventh anniversary, the Featured Episodes "Knowledge is Power" and "Leap of Faith" were released, and players could earn the Temer Alliance Raider.
  • For the twelfth anniversary, the Featured Episode "Red Shift" and TFO "Iuppiter Iratus" launched, and players could grind for the Jarok Alliance Carrier, which completed the set of featured Khitomer Alliance ships.
  • For the thirteenth anniversary, Cryptic released the Featured Episode "The Fujiwhara Effect", the TFO "Bird Cage", and the “Jupiter Station Showdown” and "Khonshu Khaibit” patrols. Players could earn the Compiler Science Dreadnought.
• Missing Episode: Season 8.5 removed "War is Good for Business", partially due to player complaints. Season 9 removed "State of Q" and "A Light in the Dark", rewrote "Fluid Dynamics" into a radically different story, and consolidated "Asset Recovery" and "Collateral Damage" into a single episode ("A Gathering Darkness"). The fifth anniversary update condensed the original Romulan Mystery Arc from eleven missions to four, merging "By Any Means" and "S'harien's Swords" into "By Any Means", turning "Taris" into a combination of its original version and "Ground Zero", and adding two new missions while removing the not-well-regarded remainder^note Including "Divide et Imperia", which was largely hated by the playerbase..
• No Export for You: Like any other Perfect World-published game, residents of the former Soviet Union cannot play. In addition, the people of East Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and South Korea are also barred from playing.
• Older Than They Think: The DOFF mechanic of randomly-combined names, job specialty and personality traits is reminiscent of the first Star Trek Collectible Card Game released by Decipher in the mid-90s.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Since James Doohan had passed away well before production of the game started, a replacement voice had to be brought in for the no-longer-present Guardian of Forever, and his accent slips through quite often.
  • Majel Barrett was ready, willing, and able to provide the voice for various combat notifications and alerts, but died late in production, and a replacement, Lani Minella, had to be brought in for the announcements at Prison Facility 4028 during "The 2800". Thankfully, Minella manages to sound almost exactly like Barrett.
  • Lieutenant Kyona of the USS Enterprise-F was initially voiced by lead writer Christine "Kestral" Thompson during her appearance in "Facility 4028". From "First Contact Day" on she's played by Adrienne Grady of Priority One Podcast.
  • Due to Cryptic getting SAG-certified, many voices were swapped out for new ones. The first to be confirmed was Lian McIntyre, who replaced Jon St. John as Chancellor J'mpok.
  • In the Vaadwaur's original Star Trek: Voyager episode "Dragon's Teeth", Gaul was played by Robert Knepper. In Delta Rising, his voice work is provided by Liam O'Brien.
  • Montgomery Scott is voiced in all his appearances by the original actor's son Christopher Doohan, as James Doohan died in 2005.
  • Vic Mignogna's performance as Isaac Garrett was patched out in April 2021 and replaced with an unknown actor after Mignogna's Role-Ending Misdemeanor.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Kyona's second voice actor Adrienne Grady is the community manager for Priority One Podcast, a fan-run podcast.
  • Vic Mignogna, who plays Captain Kirk in the Star Trek Continues fan series, played Captain Isaac Garrett in the TOS Starfleet origin story prior to April 2021.
• Recycled Script:
  • The Star Trek: Discovery-era Federation tutorial "Graduation Day" is for all intents and purposes the exact same mission as the normal post-season 8 Fed tutorial but with Discovery-era ships and characters: in both cases, you graduate from Starfleet Academy and get your first assignment as XO of a light cruiser on a training cruise, only to be attacked by Klingons and have to take command when your CO is killed.
  • "Storm Clouds Gather" at the start of Victory Is Life is a rehash of "Second Wave" from The 2800 with the Dominion replaced with the Hur'q: the player plays diplomat on Deep Space 9 at first, then has to go to space and fight off a sudden attack through the wormhole. The main difference is that Deep Space 9 isn't captured this time.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: After numerous allegations of Vic Mignogna sexually harassing fans and fellow voice actors, his performance as Isaac Garrett was patched out and replaced with an unknown actor in April 2021.
• Role Reprise:
  • Chase Masterson reprised her role as Leeta, as well as her mirror universe counterpart.
  • Denise Crosby returned as Natasha Yar for the 3rd Anniversary mission featuring the Enterprise-C, "Temporal Ambassador". She also reprises her role as Sela in several episodes and gives Romulan captains level-up notifications.
  • Michael Dorn returned as Worf for the Featured Episode "Sphere of Influence" and (after a short delay) his scenes in the early Klingon missions.
  • Tim Russ came back as Tuvok for the Featured Episode "A Step Between Stars" and much of the Delta Quadrant arc.
  • Leonard Nimoy voiced Mr. Spock, who provides much sector space exploration narration, Federation level-up notifications, and appears in some Federation missions.
  • Garrett Wang, Ethan Phillips, Jeri Ryan, and Robert Picardo returned in Delta Rising as Harry Kim, Neelix, Seven of Nine, and the Mk I Emergency Medical Hologram, respectively.
  • Season Ten saw Robert Duncan McNeill reprise his role as Tom Paris, Lisa LoCicero's likeness and voice used for his daughter Miral, and Aaron Eisenberg's return as Nog from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
  • Tony Todd plays General Rodek (Worf's mindwiped brother Kurn from TNG/DS9) in Season 12.
  • Season 13.5 had J.G. Hertzler reprising his role as General Martok from DS9, as well as providing level-up notifications for KDF captains.
  • Matt Winston reprises his role as Daniels from Enterprise in Agents of Yesterday.
  • September 2017 had LeVar Burton returning to the role of Geordi La Forge from TNG for a special mission commemorating the series' 30th anniversary, as well as several other missions in Season 14 onward.
  • The "Victory is Life" expansion in June 2018 brought several DS9 alumni to the game, including Alexander Siddig as Julian Bashir, Nana Visitor as Kira Nerys, Armin Shimerman as Quark, Salome Jens as the Female Changeling, Andrew Robinson as Elim Garak, Max Grodénchik as Rom, Jeffrey Combs as Weyoun, and René Auberjonois as Odo.
  • From Star Trek: Discovery, Mary Wiseman appears as Cadet Sylvia Tilly and her mirror universe counterpart "Captain Killy", Rekha Sharma reprises her role as Ellen Landry as well as the game-original character Adet'pa, and Mary Chieffo voices L'Rell.
  • The Year of Klingon expansion saw the hiring of Robert O'Reilly as Gowron, as well as his game-original grandfather Aakar.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • Cryptic is allowed to use anything from the TV shows and prime timeline films, because CBS owns the licenses to them. However, the Kelvin timeline was off-limits (though they were allowed to use the story details up until the Jellyfish and Narada left the prime timeline, since they appeared in the Countdown comic series), and Cryptic has to negotiate for anything from the Star Trek Expanded Universe. Cryptic also had to negotiate to use the Guardian of Forever in its former appearance at the end of the "Klingon War" storyline, since the rights to "Star Trek S1 E28 "The City on the Edge of Forever"" belong to a different copyright holder. At least three ships had been put off-limits for usable or upgraded versions, the confirmed ones being the Enterprise-J from Star Trek: Enterprise's Temporal Cold War episodes, the Constitution-refit from the films^note While there is a Constitution-refit ship in the game, it's only Tier 2 and CBS refuses to allow them to make a Tier-5/Fleet variant., and the Star Trek: The Original Series Romulan Warbird^note Similarly to the Constitution refit, a Romulan Warbird exists in-game, and the Romulan captain starts with one, but it's only available as a T1. Apparently some kind of agreement or change happened with the lawyers before Agents of Yesterday, however, as that expansion included both a visit to the Kelvin Timeline and usable ships from the films, including a Tier 6 Kelvin Constitution. And then Cryptic introduced the R&D-only prize T6 Light Cruiser/Warbird set, which gave players the mythical endgame Prime Universe Constitution!
  • This also extends to non-canon ships. While the game does have Extended Universe ships, including the Vesta-class and the Luna-class, Cryptic has gone out of its way to state that the legal red tape is such a hassle that they'll just be making their own ships once canon ones run out.
  • In early 2015, as a new Featured Episode starring Gaius Selan was about to come out, news broke that his actor had been sacked due to PWE and SAG deciding to leave the few non-SAG spots for the game's voice acting cast for non-SAG Star Trek actors, essentially writing out all the STO cast members who were not in SAG.
• Schedule Slip: Perpetual Entertainment's original Star Trek Online turned into vaporware. The company never seemed to make any headway (and were rumored to have taken on the project for less than savory purposes), and finally went bankrupt. The project was transferred to Cryptic, who opted to start over from scratch. It was six years between announcement and release.
• Throw It In!: The minor Klingon character B'Eler was reportedly scripted as male, but a miscommunication led to her getting a female character model while talking about having a female mate. The playerbase approved of the accidental lesbian Klingon and Cryptic later brought her back for "House Pegh", this time with aforementioned mate to make a Battle Couple.
• Trolling Creator: The devs are known to be this. From causing Borg invasions during live podcasts in game, making fun of their own bugs and lots of Easter eggs.
  • One that they had to explain because people were getting angry was about a lockbox on top of a stack of crates in the Starbase Incursion fleet event. Since the mission takes place in your own fleet's Starbase, the joke was about the fact that everyone had stashes of lockboxes tucked away.
    Tumerboy/Tacofangs: The idea for this map had been set, but its flavor had not been. The visuals for this map went through a few revisions on what it could be (i.e. lab, computer core, etc.), on the drawing board before it was finally decided on storage/cargo bay. Someone said to fill it with crates. With all of the lockbox debates going on, and all of the people declaring that they just collect but never open any of them, in my mind, this is the storage bay in your starbase where everyone dumps their lockboxes. I figured every crate was filled with lockboxes. It was meant as a little nod, a wink, a joke. Perhaps in poor taste, but that's all it was meant to be. Originally I had the holo-crate in the center be a lockbox, but figured that was too blatant, so I moved it off to the side, out of the way.
  • One that caught everyone off-guard was the "Sphere of Influence" mission. With the talk of Season 8 and the Dyson Sphere, players were convinced that "SoE" would lead to the first encounter to those inside, especially the Voth. Instead, players get a firsthand look inside the Iconian Gateway System and learn of the Iconians' plans. Only a minor action sets you on the path to Season 8.
  • After people found out they could fire weapons on the first beta build of the new Earth Spacedock, the devs decided to land 50+ Elite Tactical Drones, 150 Dahar Masters and a Borgified Gorn on the testers for blowing holes in their new shiny ESD (as a prank). Cue an ass-whooping on the beta testers for about half an hour.
  • For April Fools' Day 2015, Cryptic made a big deal about a Star Trek Online: Rebirth. What actually happened was they brought back the original release build of STO on the Redshirt testing server as a joke.
• Troubled Production: The game concept was originally owned by Perpetual Entertainment and given a set schedule for launch. However, two years into development, Perpetual had plenty of pretty concept work, but no actual gameplay^note And it's been said that Perpetual was only doing this for shadier reasons. Either way, CBS was angry at the waste and gave the license to Atari and Cryptic, forcing the companies to rush out the game (though Cryptic luckily had the easily compatible engine from Champions Online to use). However, even that wasn't enough, as the game was bleeding players while Atari used the money the game brought to pay off their massive debts. It wasn't until Perfect World Entertainment bought Cryptic that the game would flourish.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: A mysterious Twitter account started posting mysteries and riddles for players to solve (though directed at one of the community posters). Many people suggested that it had to do with the Augment plot that was mostly dealt with in the beginning of the Federation storyline, but no one has come forward about it at this time. PWE and Cryptic said wasn't anyone in their offices and later posts had the Community Managers biting back at them. In the end, it turned out to be a contest with small prizes by STOked.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Perpetual Entertainment's version of the game would have been substantially different, with more bridge simulation elements rather than the standard MMORPG design. The Borg and the Gorn were considered as playable races.
  • The Romulan PC was the second choice for the Romulan flagship RRW Lleiset. Seriously. The player could have been the Romulan equivalent of Picard! They ultimately decided on the player keeping their ship so they're not bound to do boring flagship stuff.
  • Originally, Harry Kim was supposed to be the one leading the charge in "A Step Between Stars", his PTSD being helpful when dealing with the Undine.
  • Jeri Ryan and the Cryptic devs both tried to get Seven of Nine to wear something that wasn't some sort of catsuit for her reappearance. This didn't stick until her canon redesign in Star Trek: Picard.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • During recent streaming events, Community Manager CaptainSmirk had been giving away codes for freebie items. After he come to find out that the freebie codes were being distributed onto the forums, Twitter accounts and the Reddit /sto/ board, he mentioned that those things will be kept closely guarded more often.
  • When Delta Rising dropped, players were told that they could play other missions while leveling up to 60. Many players found an exploit that not only allowed them to plow through patrol missions in Tau Dewa to level them up faster, but also to farm dilithium after reaching the ultimate level cap. Cryptic quickly put a stop to that.
  • This has actually been quite a problem with the forums since mid-2014, as players have caused initially innocent-looking threads to devolve into attacks on Cryptic, going so far as to compare the devs to Nazis and send out death threats. Popular threads such as "What's your beef with the Galaxy Cryptic?" and "DOOOOOOOOOOOM! The Game is Finished! Everything is Doomed! Thread" were shut down because of these issues.
  • For a while, Cryptic had contests involving ships and their designs/names. However, the "Choose the Next Enterprise" contest went massively pear-shaped: there were multiple accusations of plagiarism and discrimination by Cryptic (non-US residents were barred from the contest for legal reasons; several entered anyway, including a couple who ended up as front-runners in the polls). And then CBS vetoed the fan-picked winner in favor of a design that wasn't even in the Top 20, the Odyssey-class. The resulting backlash essentially guaranteed that player-submission contests like that would never happen again. (The 2015 Federation carrier contest involved Cryptic-created designs.)
• Word of Gay: According to a bio written by Cryptic's lead writer Kestrel in Star Trek Magazine, Commander Samuel Winters, XO of the Enterprise-F, is gay. This never comes up in-game.
• Word of God: The dev team often puts out tweets about stuff they intended to convey in-game but never made explicit, such as Akira Sulu's position in Starfleet as of Legacy of Romulus (he's the actual CO of Earth Spacedock; Admiral Quinn just has his offices there). ThomasTheCat's color guide also confirmed something about the Odyssey uniform color scheme that was implied in-game but not actually stated: Starfleet Intelligence personnel have their own divisional color, black.
• You Sound Familiar: While it's routine for MMORPGs to reuse voice actors for multiple characters, there are several standouts:
  • For a long time, you couldn't hardly turn around without running into a female character voiced by Lani Minella: in addition to taking over as the Federation Computer Voice after Majel Barrett's death, she voiced both Admiral T'nae and Enterprise-F CMO Phillipa Matthias, among many others. However, she lost her job due to Cryptic's decision to sign on with SAG-AFTRA.
  • Dave Rivas voices both Captain Va'Kel Shon of the Enterprise-F and Tal Shiar Arc Villain Hakeev, possibly the two least-similar characters you could pick.
  • In addition to reprising the role of Ellen Landry from Star Trek: Discovery, Rekha Sharma got a second role as Klingon recurrer Adet'pa beginning in Season 20.
  • In Season 20, Arc Villain Aakar (previously an Age of Discovery character) was recast as Robert O'Reilly and redesigned to look like him. Later in the storyline, O'Reilly reprises his original role of Gowron (who turns out to be Aakar's Identical Grandson).

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