I am sure this has been discussed before. It seems whenever I am in a nebula exploring 'unknown' systems, I will often come upon colonies whose inhabitants we already seem to know.

Yesterday I was exploring a nebula and my mission was to reset some alien devices that were causing hazardous emissions. The inhabitants also informed us that parties of Dref (I think that's who they were) were beaming down and we needed to deal with (i.e., kill) them.

Now, I can see Starfleet helping out a new species in distress by examining and resetting some alien devices. Fine. Good way to start a relationship. But no way am I going to start fighting another unknown species just because the first unknown species says they are bad.

The thing is, the information was presented to me by my bridge officer as if we already had knowledge of them. To me, 'unexplored' means we haven't been there yet. We don't know who or what is there. We shouldn't have any information at all. I realize this may seem kind of 'picky'.

Now, once in a while I can see going to an unexplored system only to find colonists from some species we do know. We just didn't know they were there. And, since we know about them, we may also know that they have an enemy who has tracked them there to do no good. But that should be the exception.

You just expect too much from a MMO. Show me MMO where is a good storyline and quests - I just know about Age of Conan Tortage (tutorial area), but that is just a short part. Otherwise than that, MMOs really lack good story and are oriented other way, thats what I think. If you want good story, you better play a singleplayer game.

Are you seriously asking all the players who want a good story to cancel their sub ? Who are you working for ? Bioware ?

Haha, they dont need to cancel sub. Singleplayer games have very limited duration after all - like a week or two. They can play singleplayer for story and quests and MMOs for combat, PvP, socialization, trade etc. Just dont expect MMOs to be good in the story/quest part. And if you speak about Bioware, yes their games are finest example of good story and quests.

While I agree that you cannot expect the same depth in an MMO than in a single RPG, there is still room for improvement. Frankly, "beam down - press FFFF - beam up" is not the best they can do. There are a LOT of interesting ideas for missions on the forum (I'm talking about easy to implement ideas, not crazy stuff which need to redesign the entire Cryptic engine).

We know about these species because the same crew that came in to drop the nav beacons learned about them.
That's the 'pre-exploration' group.

Then they should be called scouted sectors not unexplored.