Tuesday is typically not a gaming night for me; Tuesday is American Idol night! So you’ll find me planted in front of the television with a cat, a bowl of pistachios and a glass of Diet Coke, rooting for Crystal Bowersox. This year, anyway.
We’d discussed this awhile ago, but @Longasc asked me on Twitter this afternoon if I had a good picture of my Star Trek Online character I could send him; he wanted to (with my permission) have my character be a bridge officer on his star cruiser.
Definitely! I even offered to send him the costume file so that he could make an exact clone of my character. @BlueKae pointed out that the costume files are stored as head shots in the Cryptic/Star Trek Online/Live/Screenshots folder, and those could be sent around the galaxy like trading cards, to be redeemed at the tailor’s for a custom clone of someone else’s character.
@Longasc sent me a copy of his main, I sent him two copies of mine, one in her off-duty outfit, and the other in a Classic Trek science officer’s uniform. Later, @Arkenor of Ark’s Ark volunteered to send his character’s data around for any random transporter room to capture, and he was duly added to crews.
While still an ensign, William T. Longasc was involved in a mysterious transporter accident that cloned him. They went on to have separate careers. William Longasc went on to become a rear admiral in command of a number of ships including an immense star cruiser. “Tom” Longasc’s career took an alternate path. He hung around starbases, doing odd jobs and volunteering for dangerous away missions until he was sent to serve with me on the USS Monterey, the starship where the dregs, rejects and weirdos of Starfleet inevitably land.
Longasc-Prime wants me to point out that his transporter clone is very hard at work, and is eager to please.
With all the coming and going to and from the Mirror Universe, that alternate reality where the Terran Federation is evil, it was inevitable that alternate selves would occasionally meet. Tipa met her mirror universe twin on an away mission. When Mirror-Tipa saw that Tipa-Prime was in command of a starship while she was stuck in a dead-end job leaving portions of important data scattered on a half-dozen computers in every mining operation she visited, she turned on her mirror-friends, killed them all, and signed up with Starfleet. She was duly assigned to Longasc’s crew.
Longasc contacted me via emergency subscape communique tonight, demanding I come find out what the trouble was with my mirror self! Had she grown a goatee? Was she writing backwards? It was an emergency! he insisted, and so I took a runabout to his ship to see if I could help.
Mirror Tipa was on the bridge, sitting in front of her computer, but she refused to work. I asked why, she said she had DONE her job, leave her alone.
I took a look at her computer, read the data displayed there.
“We are engaged in classified research to reverse polarize tetryon emissions using the resonant harmonics of the deflector dish and the forward shield array. With this we hope to…. the rest is continued on the next computer.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” I told Longasc. “This is what computer techs DO in the mirror universe.”
“Told you,” sighed Mirror Tipa.
Arkenor’s data came out of the transporter as a very small being, almost like a creature out of Andorian myth. “He’s small, but strong!” said @Arkenor. “He could carry a cargo container by himself!”
Well, maybe so, but that’s why we have grav sleds. Looks like what mini-Arkenor could REALLY use would be a step stool so he could REACH his WORKSTATION. I’m sure he’ll be a fine officer, unless someone trips over him, or a Targ eats him on an away mission.
Note to self: Keep away from his Lucky Charms.
So, not a lot of gaming tonight, but I had a lot of fun anyway. This is what MMO gaming is all about – making your own fun, with friends. The best games give you a backdrop and then get out of the way. I wonder if Cryptic even knows what a great game they have? If they did, they would be shoveling the social, exploration and diplomatic content in far sooner than grindy end-game “raidisodes”.
Oh, I wanted to link to Red Letter Media; their “Plinkett Reviews” are hilarious looks at the gaffes and flubs in the Star Trek Movies. When someone was asking in Starbase 01 about buying some Romulan Ale and I pointed out that it was illegal to buy or sell Romulan Ale in Federation space, someone pointed out to me that that restriction was lifted in a ST:TNG episode, but that they had forgotten that tiny fact in a later TNG-era Star Trek movie. This same person, whose name I cannot remember, also wanted me to support Subspace Radio, so I am.