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. ...
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. ...
Entering Earth Spacedock Cryptic has a friend in Netflix. The Internet movie streaming giant recently obtained a two year license to offer every episode of every incarnation of Star Trek (aside from the animated series) for instant viewing by folks in the United States. There’s not one Trek fan who isn’t gonna watch a few episodes and not want to get into the bridge of a starship of their own and mix it up with some Klinks and Rommies. Star Trek Online absolutely delivers on that. With their Foundry, you can even potentially create some episodes of your own. I was watching a Voyager episode, “Message in a Bottle”, which features a fight where a Nebula-class starship is chasing a stolen experimental assault ship when Romulan battleships decloak and start firing and then Federation starships catch up and then there’s a grand old battle. If STO wasn’t down for maintenance right now, I could have whipped up that exact encounter in about half an hour. ...
Cutting the Cord After last week’s epic episode, “Coliseum”, those of us at the Federation News Service were intrigued to see just how they could possibly top that nod back to the high point of the Star Trek franchise – the very beginning. Maybe they could have stayed in a retro mood, and maybe it would have been better if they had. “Cut the Cord”, the finale of the “Cloaked Intentions” arc, instead took its cues from “Star Trek Nemesis”, the movie that finally killed the Star Trek franchise. Nonetheless, it was still a fun, if literally on rails, experience. ...
Vanity, thy name is Reman shields You can’t think of “Star Trek” and coliseums together without thinking immediately of the original series episodes “Bread and Circuses”, where the Enterprise crew beam into a 20th century version of the Roman Empire, and “Amok Time”, where Kirk and Spock battle to the death on the planet Vulcan. (The director of “Bread and Circuses”, Ralph Senensky, blogs about directing that episode – a must read! Includes bloopers!) ...
In the first episode of “Cloaked Intentions”, the third Feature Episode arc, we visited a semi-abandoned, giant space station called “The Vault” deep within the Romulan neutral zone. There, we met Obisek, a Reman rebelling against the half-human Romulan empress Sela and her scattered empire of refugees. In the second episode, “Mine Enemy”, we followed Obisek’s suspicions to a hidden Tal Shiar (Romulan intelligence agency) base deep within a mining colony inhabited by the rock-like Horta. ...
This one's for Longasc This post is just about my two Star Trek Online characters, the Andorian science captain Tipa D’zoph, and my old-style Klingon tactical captain, Krontar. Hot on the heels of fellow Federation News Service editor Blue Kae, Tipa D’zoph was appointed Ambassador-at-Large to the scattered races that rim the Alpha Quadrant, and speaks with the voice of the Federation in these matters. I have not been working seriously on the ambassadorship for several months, even though I’ve gotten close, mostly because grinds BORE me. The occasional first contact mission, worth double the normal diplomacy XP, are fun, BUT… the exploration missions that require you to go scan flowers that look like Greek columns or to run through abandoned bases piecing together log entries from computer consoles just don’t do it for me. ...
Mine enemy? Mine enemy is Cryptic, who, for the second feature episode in a row, couldn’t handle the press of people wanting to do the episode the moment it went live. I guess they should make some sort of queue system, somewhere… The swarm of starships outside mission systems is just amazing. This is your money, Cryptic; this is why we play. PLEASE make the servers work on FE day! ...