I’ve had the opportunity to play Star Trek Online for the past 2 weeks.  If you’ve played other Cryptic MMOs (City of Heroes and Champions Online), you’ll recognize the basic feel of the game.

The Good: Starship missions generally play well.  Good depth (for an MMO) with energy, shield, and powerup management.  There is some decent variety to be had in mission type between exploration ad combat missions.  Many missions feel more like mini-episodes due to sequences both on and off your starship tied together into a single mission.  Because for ground missions you are always at least have our away team to help you out, you don’t have to worry (for the most apart) for being the wrong type of character for a certain ground mission.  Grouping for PVE missions is fairly painless.

The Bad: Bugs.  While Cryptic has been patching at least daily as of late, it doesn’t seem likely it will all be adequately fixed by launch.  Also, there is still quite a bit of balancing to be done.  Fleet action missions (missions designed for 20 or more players) will add a lot once they work properly, but right now are an exercise in frustration.  PVP is still a work in progress.

Overall: If they can get the bugs under control, it looks to be worth a subscription.  Just don’t expect it to have as much polish as WoW.