It's the Champions Online game engine in the Star Trek universe. The beginning missions are actually pretty interesting and fun. However, it eventually devolves into combat mission after combat mission. You will be able to take out entire fleets of ships as a Miranda class cruiser (the same level based system every other MMO uses).
You'll have lots of fun with this game for a week. Depending on how many MMOs you've played before, this may last up to 3 weeks. By then, you'll be out of content except for randomly generated missions. Keep in mind that you play part of the game as your avatar, and part AS A SHIP.
If you've played Champions Online, I'd stay away from this. If you haven't, I'd still recommend waiting 6 months for the price to drop down to $30 or less and for them to add some more content to the game.
http://www.massively.com/2010/01/07/star-trek-online-pre-orders-topping-direct2drive-sales/comments/24514102/
You can google for more gems like that. Open beta will, of course, reveal more varied opinions, but very few people who have actually played in the beta love the game (at least WAR had fanboys that were in the beta). All games will have trolls and fanboys, but the ratio is pretty skewed against STO's favor, as you can see by checking out the mmorpg forums:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/352/view/forums/forum/880/General-Discussion.html