In recent months Perpetual Entertainment (Now called P2 Entertainment) has abandonned Gods & Heroes (despite being near completion), liquidated their assets, became embroiled in a legal battle with their PR firm Kohnke, and have now decided not to continue development on the much anticipated MMO Star Trek Online.
Source: Destructoid [ more info ]

Our pals at WarCry are reporting that the license and content for the game have been passed on to another developer, the code however has not. [ more info ] Now, I'm not an MMO developer myself, but it would seem to me that sets the project back significantly. And where that doesn't exactly mean the game has been zapped, for the time being it might as well be.

Initially I was going to draw a little Enterprise in there. But, on the heels of the Wavebird joke the idea felt a little played out. Besides, the text of the comic makes more sense if it's a fly that is zapped. So, I tossed a red shirt on him. That seemed appropriate given the inspiration for the game.

The Red Shirt thing is Brilliant!!

As a producer who works on MMOs I'll say this regarding the passing of the license w/out the code - they are looking at a MINIMUM setback of three years, most likely five. Unless they are going for the MMOfRPG where the "f" stands for Flash

As a secondary note - I like how you just casually say "I tossed a red shirt on him" as if it were a real piece of clothing that could be tossed around... cause I know my drawing of a shirt would take months :P

If they scrapped the project, it might not have been all that impressive of a game any way. Trek fans, though disapointed, may have been saved from a poor game.

Can't say I'm surprised really... To many MMO's popped up there over the last few years, there was bound to be some kind of balancing done by the MMO gods. Another Si-Fi MMO after SWG, just seemed to be a bad idea anyway...

I'd have done a pair of warp nacelles on the fly instead of wings, but I'm a bigger geek than most. Plus, the red shirt is still funny to me.

Me wanty Warhammer 40k MMO or MMORPG!!! For the Emperor!

And lol at the redshirt fly!

"I'm Toby, the Red Shirt, you just gotta have a Red Shirt"
"That is quite logical" - Robot Chicken

I have actually followed the progress of STO on and off for a while and I am actually glad that it won't be released by Perpetual Entertainment, from all the developer post and comments from the fan base Perpetual Entertainment was not doing the Star Trek license justice and it most likely would have been a flop anyhow, hopefully with a new company taking over the license we might see a good game come out after all, even if it will be several years delayed :P

Great Comic

The only clue about who the new owners are is "another Bay area developer". Let's keep our collective ears open and see if we can figure out who it will be.

*EDIT* I poked my nose over on the Star Trek message boards and took a look at the MMO rumor mill. It seems that the leading candidate is Cryptic Studios. I couldn't find any hard evidence to back it up, just this little snippet that says they're interviewing some of the people who worked on the Perpetual version of it.
Source: TrekMovie.Com [ more info ]

Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if say SOE somehow pulled this one out of the water as well. They seem to do that with a lot of MMOs

Aside from that, I guess it depends on whether or not the company that picked it up has a good engine ready to pick up and use. If they do, it would be a lot less time consuming to just write everything over to that, rather than trying to figure out the old code. If they gave the binaries, it only becomes easier from there.

At the very least I find it kind of odd that it does not have any info on where the game has gone, just "Another Bay Area Developer", whichever that may be. Also interresting that there is nothing on this on the website of Perpetual.

Oh, and I loved the red shirt as well, great call there!