Star Trek online has finally been officially announced by Cryptic Studios and it looks set to possibly be the biggest MMO ever created if we're to believe what was announced by Jack Emmert during the official Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, which was also Webcast.

Leonard Nimoy was on site to announce the game and a lot of information was revealed during the almost 45 minute-long Webcast. We picked out some morsels of goodness from the Webcast, but we still suggest you have a look at it, because there is so much information in the Webcast.

The game will be set in the year of 2409, set after the Nemesis movie. You will play as a star ship captain, although you'll start out with a small ship and leveling up will bring you bigger and better ships. The bridge crew will player controllable and levelable, although the rest of the ship crew won't be, but they will add certain bonuses, although not exact details were revealed of how the leveling and bonus systems will work.

Good news also includes the fact that there won't be any need of grinding to move forward in the game and there will be options for creating some kind of guilds, etc. The first two playable classes will be Starfleet and the Klingons, but Jack Emmert suggested that the Dominion and the Romulans would be added to the game at a later stage.

The game will be very customizable, everything from the looks of your character, the races and the ships can be customized to a certain degree. The ships are limited to the class of ship you have, but you can create your own races and you should have similar, if not better, character options as in City of Heroes.

There will both the space-based game play and planetary missions with away teams and you have to select which of your crew to bring on away missions. The space battle will be very tactical while the ground battle will feature both melee and range-based combat.

Although no exact launch date was revealed, Jack Emmert said that the game would launch within the next three years, so don't get too excited as yet.

You can find the Webcast here and a game play trailer which consists of actual game play here.