Obviously Pete has posted a creation video... but we've no idea if it's any good.

Reports please gentlemen!

'tis good. You get to captain a starship, and go shoot stuff both in your ship and on the ground. both ship and crew's equipment are upgradeable. The sounds and some of the smaller touches 'feel' like star trek, but there's enough customisability for it to be interesting. Eurogame did a hands-on which was pretty decent: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/star-trek-online-beta-hands-on

Hmmmm and how do you get access to the Beta?

pre-orders get access guaranteed (though it closes this week), but you also get access early to the game (think it's around 4 or more days)

I have been playing for about 2 weeks and like it very much. It's not as hard as Eve to pick up and it's in space :-)

Much prefer Space stuff to orc's goblins etc.

Hmm, pretty sure I replied to this already.... I'll type it again.

I do enjoy STO but I've given it a break for a few days because of the connection issues many of us were having.
It was quite common for my ship and character to experience the "rubber-banding" effect.... where I'd move forward 10 yards or so and then be snapped back to my original position after a few seconds because of latency.

I much as I enjoyed watching the Star Trek nerds getting tormented but the Star Wars nerds ("Where do I buy my R2 unit?" - "What level do I get my lightsaber?" "how do I mine for fish?" etc) I decided to wait a while and finish off some other games (Gears of War 2, Burnout Paradise, etc).

TL;DR Version:
Good game, not yet.

Gave this a stab, mainly persuaded by the sheer enthusiasm of Mark. I have to say that I'm very impressed with it.

Mr. Tal. What other MMO's have you played?
(I'm aware of PlanetSide and maybe Everquest?)

Planetside.... god I'd forgotten about that. That game was such a let down - as it could have been awesome but got boring really quite quickly.

Everquest also - you're absolutely right.

getting v bored with WoW, this may be the next thing, any idea what the subscription is gonna be?

Yes Shak, it's in our little catalogue thingy:

http://lowstress.co.uk/games.php?m=viewarticle&article=42&game=STO

So there's articles etc that get updated when something news-worthy comes along.

10pm GMT tonight there is a big "End of Beta" event, prior to the servers closing at 2am (which, before any asks, I have no intention of staying online till).

Personally I think Flashy and his new cruiser ought to make an appearance.

I should be there, I really want to let lose with my new ship and say goodbye to the crew. I wanted to get online last night but had issues with a laptop I was trying to get working.

So - night out on Friday got cancelled due to the weather. Got home, had dinner, thought I'd fire up Star Trek Online. Steam immediately spazzes out starts re-downloading the files as they were at the launch of the beta.

Left the update running overnight (European servers are getting hammered, so I'm seeing maybe 10% of the speed my connection is capable of), checked on it just now and it's bloody well downloaded some 21GB of files (when the install is only 9GB) and still doesn't work.

Verfiy files reveals that some don't match what Steam expects and so we're downloading AGAIN.

RAGE

I know someone who had something similar with Steam: a game in his account would automatically get deleted every time he closed Steam, forcing him to re-download 3-4 GB every time he fancied a spin. Not sure he actually solved it either, just gave over playing.

What the hell had it downloaded extra then, did you check that out? The same files over and over again?