I was completely surprised and then totally okay with it. I just want them to cement themselves to one ideal. Either make it super-canon Star Trek, or making it super-gaming-fun-time Star Trek.
I want fun, but I want something that is recognisably trek. I don't want to play an MMO that is a generic sci universe (which STO was creeping towards). Those dinos just don't fit. The 1st shot in the blog is actually pretty good. They seemed dangerous, yet ominous. The dinos in #2 however looked dangerous on a physical level (i.e. they could tear a man in half) but didn't give the impression that they could do anything other than that. Oh, and lets not forget the seemingly functionless glowy bits of metal on their backs. The whole thing just seemed lazy to me. As if the boys and girls at cryptic had simply gone "Fuck it, lets put dinosaurs in STO!!!".
It made me think of this scene from 30 rock
The whole episode actually. it showed a corporate exec desperately clawing for ideas to pitch and at the last moment throws in "FIREWORKS!!!!!". In fact, a sentence in the devblog (#4) lends weight to this idea.
At one point our Lead Designer, CaptainGeko, said, ?all I want is dinosaurs with frickin? laser beams on their heads!? We all chuckled
Now the 3rd shot (the one with the 2 mechs) isn't as bad as the second. They do look like the waifs and strays that didn't quite make the cut in mass effect, but they do seem a little more plausible and fitting than the straight up lazy ass dinosaur designs in shot #2. I'm not too fond of the smaller, lighter coloured mech but the darker, larger one isn't too bad at all. The smaller of the two screams "barbie girl" to me while the bigger of the two seems much more like a predator. The front of it's main body is reminiscent of a large eagle, with that little gold bit right down at the front of it acting as a beak of sorts. That said, they both seem rather too clean, rather too krogan/mass effect/generic robo-stompy-stompy-anime-ish. But this at least is a reasonable starting point.
those feet though...and the little bob tail on the barbie girl... gods they have got to change those :/