Star Trek

Klingon meets Breen. Breen goes boom. Star Trek Online’s launch missions were a little weak. If you stuck to the main storyline, you got some pretty exciting missions, but as you got to the higher levels, the missions tended to devolve into “go here, kill N groups of X.” This is my main memory of the fight against the Borg that was the end game when STO launched. Accept mission, kill lots of Borg in space, kill lots of Borg on the ground. End result: boredom. ...

I, Krontar, wield the Sword of Kahless, in service to the Empire! I took it from the hands of the Emperor himself, Kahless. Together, Kahless and I braved the pits of Gre’thor and battled the Lords of the Dead. Klingons damned by their treachery, cowardice and dishonor to row ceaselessly the Barge of the Dead were redeemed and sent to Sto-Vo-Kor. I, Krontar, did this. Yet because my forehead is smooth, my deeds will not be sung in the Great Hall. I write them here that my sons will know of the bravery of their House. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

Last week, we discovered that the out-of-phase life-sucking Devidians – the “blue ghosts” – had followed a comet into the Klingon-Federation neutral zone and were using the humanoids of the Alpha Quadrant as a tasty buffet. This week, Section 31 operative Franklin Drake ordered the Federation News Service to investigate the Ferengi-run Drozana station. One of Drake’s undercover operatives, posing as a Dabo girl, had triggered an emergency beacon and requested immediate withdrawal. Though dubious about anything to do with Section 31, we are, after all, Starfleet officers first and correspondents second, and must do our duty when called. ...

skirmish: a minor or preliminary conflict or dispute. It is said that four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man. The same can be said of a Bird of Prey under warp when the disruptor beams run hot. Hot as the blood of a warrior; hot of the blood of your enemies filling your cupped hands. Hot enough to tear a rip through the fabric of space itself and show what peers from it the heart of a true warrior. ...