Drow in Spaaaaace My first Dungeons and Dragons character, I had no idea about. She was a dwarf cleric, a Hobbesian cleric – solitary, poor, brutish, nasty and short. Healing was more fun when hirelings would do it, so I picked up a fighter level and made her into a melee cleric. I put points into whatever stats seemed good at the time. I had fun, but she was a horrid healer. No idea what I was doing. ...
Inside the Jem'Hadar bug ship. Update: There’s a thread on the Star Trek Online forums tracking this. Apparently the percentage for winning a ship from a red box is 0.65%, making the average number of boxes to open (and hence dollars to pay) 153. The Jem’Hadar assault ship is one of the most desired ships in Star Trek Online. It has pretty awesome stats for an assault ship, has a unique exterior and interior. The Dominion War was fought on the bridge of ships like these. ...
Yaulthoon, in the flesh? In the flesh, indeed. After crawling through the luxurious Harborview Lofts – entirely transformed into upscale accommodations for twisted monsters – we finally met Yaulthoon… in his mind. Nothing seemed quite real. We didn’t get to him right away, though. First, we had front row tickets to a fashion show. Fashion Forward Yaulthoon isn’t your garden variety boss. No. As the architect of the Harbinger of Madness, the creator of the Taken, the gardener of horrors, he’s proud of his works. Proud. “How wonderful it must feel,” he shouted at us. “Knowing that one of your old Stormreach friends might be a small piece of flesh within one of my artworks. I am envious!” ...
Is it a coincidence that brings me back to Star Trek Online just when Star Wars: The Old Republic arrives? I have no idea. I loved both Star Wars and Star Trek growing up. Star Trek was TV. Star Wars was movies. Star Trek was often thoughtful and slow-paced. Star Wars was action and adventure. Then the Star Trek movies came, started out with a slow, thoughtful movie. Which was then tossed away and it’s been action ever since. ...
May the force be with you Star Trek Online is giving away light sabers! Well, light lipra and light bak’leths. You don’t even have to sell your soul to the Jedi Council or the Sith Lords. Just talk to a Ferengi in Q’s Winter Wonderland. Unlike other melee weapons, though, these have an energy edge and don’t ignore shields (despite what the description reads). That’s one of the huge advantage of melee weapons in Star Trek Online; they go right through the shields and do damage to the now-unprotected flesh. Or flesh-like substance. ...
Evil is in the eye of the... Ulan was back from Mexico last night. How we missed your blade barriers so very, very much. Those little mechanized sawblades of suffering just tear through groups of mobs. We fed many mobs to the magico-metallic maw last night. We’ve taken a step back from Gianthold to focus on some easier adventures that grant actual xp. Gleek, our manager, thought that the Harbinger of Madness module would be just the thing to celebrate the group being all together again. ...
Execute for Incompetence I want to say right at the start that I am back playing Star Trek Online, and it was the new duty officer system that brought me back. Now I’m leveling my characters, running special task forces and in all senses am back in the game. But… duty officers. You bring up the screen, clickclickclick accept all the completed missions and reap the rewards, then clickclickclick send your duty officers off to perform more randomly generated tasks. You get small amounts of dilithium (the special gear currency), energy credits (the normal currency), general experience and experience toward the heading under which ranked the mission – diplomacy, exploration, marauding and such. ...
New Freeport I have a friend who is so into Rift. “You have to come back!” he said. “Ember Isles is amazing; the new warfront is awesome; the instant adventures are great!” I want to come back and see all this! Then he started playing SWTOR. I really still want to come back. Problem is when I log in, I have to figure out all the new stuff; seems the soul trees change every time. I have to remember how to solo and how to group. I guess the penalties for getting it wrong aren’t that high, and the new instant adventure thing could help get my feet wet quickly. I should check it out. ...
Rapture Raptor! I do WANT to play Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. I WILL play it. Just… not right now. I’m not in a good place with MMOs at the moment. See, I’ve just spent a month playing Skyrim, and it’s left quite an impression. I just don’t know if I can play a tightly scripted MMO when I’ve just spent 130 hours exploring a world. There’s just too much hype around the game right now. The hype makes it impossible for me to consider the title calmly, because, being the contrarian I am, I’d be inclined to hate it. It can’t possibly live up to its hype, but why should that matter? Someday I’ll sit down and watch all the Star Wars movies, or maybe play KotOR again, and then I know I’ll want to play SWTOR. Or someone will want to form a static group – because it doesn’t even matter what game it is, meeting once a week for a static group is reason enough to play anything. My time in DDO proves that. ...
Lava Caverns: Colossal Crystals With the dragons in Gianthold Tor apparently out of our reach and with Ulan gone for two weeks, the question of “what’s next?” has been hanging in the air in Team Spode HQ. We need a level or two to properly kill the dragons – or a better plan. We have tried all different combinations of resist gear, DPS, tanking and kiting, but we don’t kill fast enough or evenly enough. Anyway. We decided to work on the new House Cannith challenge dungeons for a change. ...