Star Trek Online versus Black Desert Online – First Quarter

The second wild card matchup kicks off today with a contest between two MMOs – Star Trek Online and Black Desert Online.

The Pre-Game Warmup

Star Trek is a big part of my fandom, but I still haven’t leveled a character much beyond level 20. Perhaps it was because most of my gaming was during the first year of the game, where the ground combat was less than optimal. I’ve heard plenty of tales about how it’s improved over the years, and while ground combat was flawed, I did enjoy the starship combat.

Black Desert Online is another MMO that I’ve played a bit of but never got very far. I liked some of the early game stories but ran into a difficult time when I started dealing with some of the cities. If I recall correctly, there was a significant benefit to owning housing, but I never dove into the game that far. If BDO wins the tournament, I will certainly find out, and I’m actually interested in finding out more about the game.

Star Trek Online came out in 2010, and I was in on the early rollout. I played in Beta and even got one of the special Borg characters that Amazon provided since I bought the game from them. As the ground combat had issues, it ended up with a 66 Metacritic score when it came out, but I’m pretty sure things would be different if the score was rechecked a couple of years after the initial release.

My favorite part of the game was the starship combat because it was reminiscent of the Star Fleet Battles tabletop game and the Star Fleet Command video games that I loved. While I have not played much of the game, I’ve heard there are some cool ships that have been introduced over the years, and I can only imagine the fun times available to starship captains.

Black Desert Online was released in 2016 and still looks beautiful. Developed by Korean developer Pearl Abyss, the game even has a mobile version (that I’ll have to take a look at some time). I wonder if the mobile version connects to the same accounts as the PC version – that would certainly be cool.

I played a bit of the game and enjoyed the action-based combat but ran into a few issues with some of the combos. There are console versions of the game that supposedly allow cross-platform play, and it came in with a Metacritic score of 73 for the PC.

The First Quarter

Star Trek Online kicks things off with a Metacritic score of 66, which means it can pull in a maximum of 27 but also has a significant opportunity to score below the baseline 25 points by rolling less than 50 on the RNG dice.

Black Desert comes in with a 73, which gives it a chance to score 27 as well, but it has a greater opportunity to score above the 25 points thanks to an extra 7 points on the Metacritic scale.

The Rolls

With a random roll between 1 and 66, Star Trek Online ends up with a 37, which is pretty good. Higher than the 33 halfway mark means STO is putting up a strong fight, but BDO has a slightly higher midpoint of 36 and rolls…7. Ouch!

The Score

After the first quarter of their contest, Star Trek Online leads BDO 23 to 20.

Wrapping it Up

I have to say that I am happy with the result of this first quarter since I’m pulling for Star Trek to win this battle. Of course, this is just a wild card fight, and even if STO wins this contest, it has a long road to climb to reach the finals. With 3 quarters left to resolve, BDO has plenty of opportunities to come back and pull out a victory. We’ll see how it goes.

Next up, I’ve got the 2nd quarter of Forza and Divinity, and then I’ll head to the Wild Card for the Under Division as we set Disco Elysium against Death Stranding.

RRGM 2 | Elephant 5 | 2022.89 | Star Trek Online versus Black Desert Online – First Quarter