MMORPG

The awesomeness burns….

KingsIsle is hoping W101 subscribers will log on to the Test Realm in the next couple of days, go to a certain area and just jump around, port there and back, and in general abuse the place. Plus, you get 100,000 Crowns to play around with (but only on the Test Realm, alas!) Here’s what Professor Greyrose has to say about it: We’ve opened the Test Realm for just a couple of days, and we’re asking you the players to test the limits! We want to see how many players can be in one area at a time, and the best way we can do that is to ask you to join us for a party at the Stormdrain tower! ...

Sure, I beamed down to Starbase Alpha as a starship, but pity the poor guy who found himself walking around in space without one. I wasn’t the only spaceship walking around on the starbase, either :) Welcome to Star Trek Online’s open beta!

In my first Star Trek Online open beta post, I gave a brief overview of the entire game. In the second, I covered the basics of character and ship customization. After that, I went over some of the beginning tactics you’ll be using in space combat. In this post, I’d like to talk about PvP. Where the Federation might waste time on missions of peace, mercy and diplomacy, facing only NPC ships, Klingons have no patience for such things. The only thing that gets them to put down the gagh and blood wine and get into their Birds of Prey is the prospect of seeing the explosions of Federation starships dot the starry sky like the ceremonial disruptor cannon firing at the feast of batlhjaj. ...

In the first post in this series, I gave a brief overview of the game. In the second, I covered the sorts of character and ship customization you can do. In this post, I’ll be showing off space combat in Star Trek Online. Thanks to Youtube’s awesome annotation feature, I was able to point out what I was doing as I went barco a barco on a hapless cruiser I surprised while patrolling an asteroid belt. ...

Every article about Star Trek Online is going to discuss the character creator. Cryptic is justly famous for the extreme customization it allows in its games. In City of Heroes, designing a hero (or villain) was a game in itself. Champions Online took that one step further, allowing you unprecedented ability to customize your powers as well. Star Trek Online has the challenge to allow you room to express your creativity, yet still keep you and your ship recognizably part of Starfleet (or the Klingon Empire). ...

That’s my ship, a customized Miranda-class light cruiser, warping away from Deep Space 9. I’d gone there to look at some advanced weapons from the Gamma quadrant I’d heard might be acquired, for a price. I wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t relax on the upper level and watch ships head through the wormhole while sipping on a Cardassian Sunrise. ...

I’ve just learned that Star Trek Online is now in Open Beta! The weekend closed beta patch is being backed out, I guess it wasn’t stable enough. There will be a less sweeping patch before Open Beta goes live. The title of this post is an in-joke referring to the odd, unexplained times when Leonard Nimoy’s voice would pop out of the speaker with his heartfelt congratulations. Tomorrow will be Star Trek Online day here on WestKarana.com. There’ll be articles throughout the day talking about the game’s basics, space combat, ground combat and the PvP-heavy Klingon Empire. ...

Thanks to everyone who commented on my semi-frustrated post Saturday about my cruddy DPS as a rogue newly come to Dire Maul East. Angry Gamer suggester changing my spec to Assassination, dumping my swords for daggers and relying on beefy crits to up my DPS. Myrix offered up a Combat-focused spec (as opposed to my Combat/Assassination spec), urged me to ditch my slow offhand for a fast one, and reminded me, with Rohan, to keep Slice-and-Dice up at all times. Gordon and Endelon worried that I was focusing too much on my DPS at such a low level (55). Many people thought the heavy emphasis on min-maxing in World of Warcraft hurt the pure enjoyment of the game. ...

Bhagpuss commented on my previous WoW article that he never really cared to know how much DPS he was doing in a group, and was just satisfied if the instance went well. I can kinda see his point. It’s a game, right? As long as you’re having fun, the game is doing its job. That’s one way to look at it. I, though, was a rogue in EverQuest. EQ rogues have a lot more going for them than WoW rogues; there’s a lot of things they can do that make them highly valued for their unique capabilities. They share with WoW rogues, though, the ability to do more single target melee damage than any other class. ...