MMORPG

Team Spode left Three Barrel Cove behind, complete except for one level 7 dungeon we may return to once more of us are level 7. But we’d fought pirate monsters long enough. It was time to strike the barnacles from the scurvy mains’l, star the board and drink the port, drive the wharf rats out from under the saxboard, swab the bo’s’n and harpoon the gunwales, weigh the anchor and turn two sheets to the wind, and in all other ways, leave the pirate life behind us for awhile. ...

I didn’t even know Mars was even in the game. It’s kind of ironic that the first time I saw that dead world was from the bridge of a Klingon K’tanco cruiser. In Star Trek Online, the Klingons are meant to be leveled via PvP. There are dozens of PvP-oriented missions and commensurate rewards. I find PvP to be dull. I play occasionally, but never enough to level quickly. Instead, I’ve been leveling through the new Feature Episodes and working the new dailies. Those brought me very close to promotion to Commander. ...

Yesterday, Cryptic dropped the Enterprise Pack onto the Cryptic Store. For 1250 points, you can get a replica of the NX-01, the Akira-class predecessor flown by Captain Archer and crew in Star Trek: Enterprise, a show which doesn’t fully deserve its bad reputation. That also comes with the Enterprise uniforms, Mirror Universe versions of same, and the cat suit the Vulcan first officer T’pol wore. All these things are also available separately, naturally. ...

I need to tell you about the picture that heads this article. It was taken right after placing the last piece in the puzzle room in Goldthorn’s Retreat, for the quest A Ghost of a Chance. When Team Spode encountered the room while finishing up Three Barrel Cove last Sunday, we turned some tiles, nearly got the guy we were trying to free killed, and decided to kill a named in the dungeon for the key and a lesser reward. We moved on. ...

Time is a lot more resilient than people think. Free will? Free will is a joke. There’s a reason Starfleet doesn’t like people flitting back and forth through time – it’s because when you do, you realize what a sham this “reality” thing is. And by-the-by? The Federation and the Klingons have a secret slingshot mechanism set up around a star in the Eta Eridani sector. Pretty much everyone is going back and forth through time whenever they like. We’re not supposed to tell you about that, but we’re the Federation News Service, and YOU have a right to know. ...

We’ve been through the Stellarium, the Lunarium, the Floating Island, the Celestia Base Camp, the Grotto and half a dozen other mini-worlds in Celestia. Quests have been shoveling experience points at us, and we’re level 56 and starting to get some gear upgrades – most recently, school-specific wands that add an incredible boost to the new stat, Crit. Is Celestia everything I thought it would be? I’d have to say yes – a qualified yes. And I say qualified, because I’m not really sure what expect from expansions. ...

Last night, Team Spode continued our adventures in Dungeons & Dragons Online’s Three Barrel Cove. It’s the next step in the Barrel Cove series, and we can’t wait to get started on Four Barrel Cove. Yay, pirates! Well, these pirates put up a fight, this time. But what got us in the end wasn’t pirates at all, but a simple game of Chutes & Ladders… Two weeks ago, we’d started two longer quests, Galt’s Tomb (helpfully found by Spodal Attraction, AKA a Magnetic Monospode – Spode falling off a bridge and into the entrance), and after a little fun impaling ourselves upon the spears of pirate hobgoblins, the fire caves. Last week was an off week; we just did slayer and exploration quests. This week we were all together once more, and it was back for return engagements in the Tomb and the Caves. ...

After defeating a rogue hologram and a couple hundred Devidians in last week’s episode, “What Lies Beneath”, the Federation News Service traveled into the past to take on the deadliest enemy of them all – Starfleet! With some pluck, courage and help from an unexpected friend, we did manage to complete our mission. The wraith-like Devidians infest the Ferengi-owned Drozana station, which serves both the Klingons and the Federation from its orbit deep within the Klingon-Federation Neutral Zone. We’d tracked their incursion down to an interdimensional portal deep within the station that appeared to lead into the past. ...

There were Bad Things prowling the depths of Drozana Station’s maintenance decks in Star Trek Online’s Halloween-themed episode, “What Lies Beneath”. Well, what DOES lie beneath? The Ferengi who run the station have no clue at all. THEY aren’t stupid enough to head down to the lower depths. They can always find some suckers to do it for them if they just wait long enough – suckers like the hapless crew of the USS Monterey. ...

Around the end of October each year, every game world is taken over by the dimly remembered remainders of an old harvest festival, All Hallow’s Eve, AKA Hallowe’en. The ancients sucked at making abbreviations. Star Trek Online wants to remind us that there’s something scarier than the spectre it might join its cousin, Champions Online, in the “Freemium” payment model. The third episode of the Devidian arc, ominously titled “What Lies Beneath”, comes out Saturday afternoon, on the day before Hallowe’en (AKA Halloweeneen, I guess). Should be a fun adventure tramping around in the bowels of an ancient space station looking for blue, soul-sucking ghosts. ...