In an effort to brigde those 30 years — including an incursion in 2387 seen in Star Trek XI — Cryptic Studio has been releasing short follow-ups to the main canonical story, written by Christine "Kestrel" Thompson.
These fictions, called "The Path to 2409", are presented in a year-by-year fashion, one to two webpages per year of events. Since releasing the year 2392, Kestrel is busy doing other tasks in the studio, so The Path to 2409 currently covers only the years 2379 to 2392.
Cryptic has also released a two-part video, called "Future Past", which second part covers very briefly the years 2395 to 2406.
This timeline is aimed at presenting Kestrel/Cryptic's additions from a canon approach, showing as many ties as possible between the regular series and the Star Trek Online background.
Few events are included outside of 2379-2409 in order to maintain the focus on this period.
Practical information
— You can't create an event after 2100. Period. So to make this 24th century timeline, I had to cheat: year 2379 becomes year 379. Don't freak out! Just imagine we miss the "2" because it's quicker to write/speak : )
Correct dates are, of course, always indicated in the titles and event descriptions.
— You may prefer using a 6-month zoom from 2379 to 2392, for clarity and comfort of reading. Otherwise you will miss events. Full screen is much better, too!
— If you embed the widget, make sure you give enough vertical space: that allows you to use wider zooms.
How was it crafted?
I've added a lot of links, distributed among several events to introduce the lore progressively, along with events and history. I tried to do that the best as I could, but it can't be flawless, the timeline being quite extensive.
I've handled sourcing with care, but there might still be mistakes.
I've paid a lot of attention to stardates. They're all indicated. When an event doesn't have a stardate, you will find the most precise dating available in its description. The year, in such a case, usually appears in the title.
You will sometimes notice that an event is dated as "2385" for instance, but is placed more precisely on the timeline, usually on a specific month. This has two possible explanations, none of them altering the chronology of events: either due to a conflict with an other event precisely dated, the event had to be placed more precisely than just by the year, since those are place automatically in july of their year; or it was moved for aesthetical reasons. In the latter case, no chronology is wronged in doing so, since these events can happen anytime in the year, thus picking a month isn't false, nor right.
Like this introduction and a few notes here and there, I wrote titles myself. It's my interpretation of bits and parts of The Path to 2409, and I can fairly agree it's not perfect. Here's how I did it:
1. I cut each year of The Path to 2409 into several events. Usually for this part I didn't think much, I just made a new event when the topic changes. I didn't want to add any form of interpretation at this point, I wanted topics to be obvious.
I also spent some time sub-dividing chains of distinct events -when possible- and calculating or approximating stardates for them.
2. Then find a relevant title. That means 2 things: it must be short to be read directly on the timeline, and it must "feel" as though a Jake Sisko, or a journalist, had written it. I thought of each event as a newspaper article.
3. Then put the event in place with the right earthdate, stardate (if possible), sourcing (always), links (progressively), and pictures/videos (if it "added" something, like put a picture on a name, show the game aesthetics, or explain a situation with a map).
4. Check and double-check everything, yet I'm sure many mistakes and inconsistencies are left, so that's where I can't do much more by myself, it's too extensive. : )
The events prior to 2379 were added with the idea of telling a bit about everything that was mentionned in The Path to 2409. Characters have dedicated events, just to show up a biography of them. Series also have a dedicated begin and end event, so you may know which series covers which period of time. Main events are presented, with as much video footage from the series as possible. There are a few (yet too much in my opinion) music-clips, but it means I didn't find any better.
(note: there is still much Voyager content missing)
For your information:
— The calculations to translate a stardate into earth time change in 2379. The events prior to to this date, including Star Trek Nemesis, were calculated on a late-24th century basis, common to TNG, DS9 and VOY. This basis considers 1000 dates as being one earth year, but the round stardates (55000, 56000 etc) are not sync with new year's day on earth: stardate 57000 is May 24, 2379. (see Trekguide.com here http://trekguide.com/Stardates.htm for more information)
However, in STO:"The Path to 2409", while 1000 stardates are still equivalent to one year, it appears that there is a different sync with the earth calendar, actually on new year's day. For instance, stardate 62230.13 is in 2385 according to The Path to 2409, while in Voyager it would be in 2384. Reasons or explications have not been given at this time - at least none that I'm aware of.
All stardates after 2379 are therefore calculated so that "xx000" is the beginning of the earth year (Jan 1) and "xx999" is the end (end of Dec 31). If fits, while traditional TNG calculations did not.
Also, you may notice that no date on memory-alpha includes the "may 25" shift when converting stardates into earthdates. Since I've done a lot of copy/paste from this otherwise excellent site, many years indication in the text might be a bit false, shifted into the future (it would say en event occured "late in the year" while it's happening in the middle of it.
Anyhow, in the timeline, events are correctly placed and in correct chronology, since I've converted all stardates according to Trekguide.com, which is a most reliable stardate calculation tool.
The Path to 2409 on StarTrekOnline.com: http://www.startrekonline.com/fiction
Future Past videos on StarTrekOnline.com: http://www.startrekonline.com/videos
The Path to 2409 on memory-beta: http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Path_to_2409
Star Trek Online, STO: "The Path to 2409" and STO: "Future Past" © 2009 Cryptic Studios, Inc.
STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. & Paramount Pictures.
