ZAM takes a detailed look at Star Trek Online's progress since "Season 1" and looks ahead at some of the popularly-touted features of the "Season 2" update, coming in July.

In May, Star Trek Online released its first content update, "Season 1," just three months after its official launch. As we noted in our recent editorial, "Star Trek Online: A Look Back After 3 Months," the developers at Cryptic Studios have made good on their promises of regularly adding new content, rooting out bugs and other gameplay issues and, most importantly, making honest efforts to deliver what hard-core 'Trek fans want to see in the game. In his regular developer chats and Q&As, Star Trek Online Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich always makes a point to remind players that Cryptic takes their requests and ideas seriously in the development process.

Four months after STO's release, we're beginning to see that Cryptic wasn't just spouting lip-service; taking a look back at ZAM's "Community Issues and Concerns" Q&A with Zinkievich in February, players will see that most of these commonly-requested features have either already been implemented, or officially announced for development in an upcoming patch. Regular players will be interested in reading about what's in store for later this month and "Season 2" in July, and those who left the MMO after the first month will find a lot of new content and overall convenience improvements. After the jump, we recap some of the major changes introduced since "Season 1" and explore what's coming up in July for STO's second major content update, "Season 2."

Shortly after STO's launch, many players were frustrated with Cryptic's lack of community interaction and intermittent status updates on its official website (an opinion shared by many Champions Online players, as well). In response to these growing concerns, Cryptic launched a new "transparency" campaign, promising to keep players apprised of ongoing development and increase its presence in the official forums. The developers also began posting regular "State of the Game" announcements, Q&As with the developers, an "Upcoming Events" calendar and the technical-oriented "Engineering Reports."

As intended, Cryptic's new campaign resulted in more efficient feedback from developers, while the events calendar and regular news posts allowed players to see everything on the "development table," as much as two or three months in advance. For example, the April 20 Engineering Report disclosed dozens of specific game issues, new content and development goals throughout several categories.

Features like the "Difficulty Slider," "Injury System" and "Full Space Auto-Fire" were listed in the "In Testing" category for Season 1.2 (now live on public servers). The "Under Investigation" section helps players confirm that Cryptic recognizes—and is working on—issues like chat/UI improvements, PvP balancing issues and broken missions, among other things.

Both the "State of the Game" and "Engineering Report" also give players that much-needed glimpse into future development and new content, like the complete revamp of the Memory Alpha crafting system (introduced in Season 1.1). If you haven't checked out Memory Alpha in a couple of months, it's worth a second glance; the system is getting much closer to what MMO fans consider a true gathering/crafting mechanic, with seven areas of research, skill-based progression and "R&D" and recipes to obtain.

Written by STO Producer Daniel Stahl, the Engineering Reports don't present detailed information about each bulleted issue or feature; the reports are mainly geared toward info-hungry players to provide a concise, "one stop" listing of all upcoming developments, neatly categorized in chronological order. However, the reports are still a valuable source for bleeding-edge game information; April's report highlighted upcoming "Season 2" details almost three months in advance, like the increased player level cap, new "off-duty" costume types and more player ship interiors.

The May 7 Engineering Report offers even more insight into the development schedule throughout the next couple months, but it's not the only source for STO players to learn about future content. Zinkievich's "State of the Game" posts and the "Ask Cryptic" developer Q&As offer more in-depth, substantial info about newly-released and upcoming MMO features, like the "Accolades" system and "Squad Support" in Season 1.2 (a.k.a. "Season One: Update Two"), which launched last week.