LAST EDITED ON May-18-12 AT 00:31 AM (EDT)
 
>Truss is EPU's man on the ground as regards STO right now, and his
>reports have also been pretty favorable - which, since we were CoH
>players together at the height of the "my God, Jack, what are
>you" era, carries a lot of weight with me. I haven't got the time
>or the money for another MMO - get right down to it, I haven't got the
>time or the money for an MMO right now, which is two of the
>reasons why my CoH account is inactive at the moment - but I won't say
>I'm entirely devoid of interest.

I noticed that this had also gone free-to-play shortly after I made that discovery about DC Universe Online, so I decided to give it a go as well. I enjoy it, though I have to say I don't see why it needs to be an MMO. I haven't encountered anything in it that wouldn't be just as good in a standalone game, plus there would be fewer ships roaming around sector space with misspelled, ridiculous, and/or inappropriate names.*

Still, it's a fun game, and the fact that it is so generally soloable is a welcome change from the "team up or get stuck" mentality that dev team exhibited in the early days of CoH.

I'm particularly amused that the tutorial presents your character acquiring command in basically the same way UF-G did it in Split Infinitive, except unlike him, you actually just get to keep the Challenger after the battle because what the hell, there's a war on. It doesn't go down this way because of the way the gameplay works, but I like to imagine that when Lt. Charles E. "Cosmonaut" Buchanan came out of Admiral Quinn's office that day, he and his newly acquired first officer, Ensign Tallasa, gave each other identical You Gotta Fuggin' Be Kidding Me looks for a couple of seconds, then went up to Club 47 and ordered very, very strong beverages. After the day they'd had, they needed them. :)

Mind you, then they went upstairs to the shipyard and their day got really surreal, but that's another story. Possibly one that deserves to be a story one day, à la "Employee 2814"; we'll see. Regardless, I enjoy coming up with bios for Cosmonaut's bridge officers, even if no one will ever see them but me. I'm not sure what that says about me, but there you are.

--G.
* Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Spankmonkey.** Its five-year mission..
** Actual example
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.