Star Trek Online launches today. In fact, you could be playing right now. So the question you have to ask yourself is, "Is there room in my life for a massively multiplayer online game that isn't World of Warcraft? And, wait, isn't this just World of Warcraft in space? I mean, look at that screenshot up there. It's like the Auction House in Ogrimmar but without so many gnomes!"

The answers to these questions are "sure you do", "no", and "that's not a question".

After the jump, I'll tell you what Star Trek Online does that other MMOs don't.

Boots on the ground, nacelles in the sky
Star Trek Online is split between ground combat and space combat. You still do the usual MMO routine of pressing a button for a skill and waiting for it to refresh, but it's very fast-paced and it's almost never a matter of standing toe-to-toe with one monster until you deplete its hit points. These battles are almost always between two groups, where facing matters and each side has a variety of different attacks and abilities. It's a bit sloppy and sometime comic during the ground battles, but it's pretty darn epic in space.

With bots like these, who needs friends!
Ground missions are built for five characters. But let's say you're playing solo. Maybe it's late at night. Maybe your friends are off in some other MMO called World of Warcraft. Maybe you just like to take your MMOs like you take your single player RPGs: alone. In that case, the other four slots can be filled by your choice of officers, who acquit themselves admirably. They'll use skills and items and generally kick ass and take names without you having to hold their hands.

Is that an NPC vendor in your pocket...?
You can buy and sell stuff from your ship. Need more healing potions shield batteries? Got too many pots of Romulan stew? Just use your starship's replicator! Anytime, anywhere, you can trade spare loot for space bucks and vice versa.

PC phone home
You know when you finish a mission and you have to find the guy who gave you the mission to turn it in? How much time would you save in an MMO if you didn't always have to run back to town? You'll find out in Star Trek Online when you finish a mission, hail Starfleet, and instantly get your reward. And there aren't even any long distance charges.

Spend as you go
In a typical MMO, you earn experience points. These do you absolutely no good until you hit whatever magically determined threshold makes you go up a level. At that point, you get some reward. But in Star Trek Online, you directly earn skill points as you play, which you can immediately spend upgrading your character and his crew. At certain magically determined thresholds, you also advance in Starfleet rank to unlock more abilities and better starships. But along the way, you're constantly getting points to spend.

Death, where is thy sting?
At this point, there doesn't seem to be any penalty for dying. And I don't mean the penalty is minor, like a few space bucks to pay for a cloning fee or whatever. I mean, literally, there doesn't seem to be any penalty. You simply respawn and pick up where you left off. Furthermore, all the missions have generously placed checkpoints that let you back out and resume the mission at a later time. For an MMO, Star Trek Online is weirdly forgiving. On one hand, it doesn't give you a sense of very high stakes. But on the other hand, people who suck aren't going to get frustrated.

Photon grenades on Tuesday, suppressing fire on Wednesday
In most MMOs, you learn a spell. Then you will have it always, along with all the other spells you took. But Star Trek Online takes a different approach to what special things you can do, letting you freely swap out spells (it reminds me a bit of Guild Wars in this regard). For instance, during ground battles, you take your choice of "kits", each giving you certain abilities. A grenade kits lets you throw photon grenades to stun enemies and smoke grenades to help stealth. But a firearms technique kit lets you lay down weapons fire that weakens enemies. You can equip whichever one you like on a mission, but you only get one at a time. It's the same with space combat. The officers you choose for your science, engineering, and tactical stations determine what special things your ship can do. My Klingon engineer lets me repair hull damage quickly, but my Bolian engineer gives me an ability called Emergency Power to Shields. Needless to say, the Bolian spends a lot of time sitting in the engineering chair on the bridge while the Klingon spends lots of time in his quarters playing Minesweeper.

Tribble tickling
Put a tribble in your inventory and it'll multiply. Before you know it, you've got tribbles for everyone in your crew. Do you know the soothing effect of a tribble's gentle trill? Star Trek Online does. Put a tribble in each crew member's inventory slot. Between battles, everyone will pull out a cooing tribble and pet it to heal up. It's pretty darn precious.

Tomorrow: ship envy