This one's been in the works for a while, and it looks like it's launching next month. Seems to be a pretty full featured Trek experience, complete with ship and ground combat, awesome looking uniforms and ships and, of course, /dance.

Giant Bomb are running a preview series of the open beta called Set Phasers to Fun. First episode is here: http://www.giantbomb.com/star-trek-online-beta-set-phasers-to-fun-part-01/17-1871/

Check it out!

Somehow, this'll probably be more fun than most of the Star Trek TV shows... but I've gotten into trouble for saying that before.

Now to find some way of modding Dahar into the mix...

>Now to find some way of modding Dahar into the mix...

Generally speaking, one does not really "mod" MMOs, unless one wants to get kicked out.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>This one's been in the works for a while, and it looks like it's
>launching next month. Seems to be a pretty full featured Trek
>experience, complete with ship and ground combat, awesome looking
>uniforms and ships and, of course, /dance.

Unfortunately, its lead designer is Jack "Statesman" Emmert, former lead dev on City of Heroes, who spent the first three or so years of that game's life resolutely striving to make it less fun in various ways having to do with adherence to his Design Vision. The crew over at Paragon Studios are still, in many ways, working to clean up the mess. (And then he went off to do the same to Champions Online, swearing to "get it right" this time, and now the team charged with maintaining CO are dancing the same dance.) As such, I have fairly low confidence in STO. I thought when it was announced, "Hello, that's a strange concept for an MMO. It'll take a very deft touch on the developers' part to make that work," and then, well. Based on prior experience, I sincerely doubt that Jack Emmert is the man to pull that off.

But, hey, I've been wrong before. Maybe it'll be awesome. I'll take quite a bit of convincing, that's all I'm saying.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Jan-15-10 AT 03:16 PM (EST)
 
EPU pal Eric Burns-White seems to love it.

Generally speaking on my end, the things that make Eric love an MMO are usually not the ones that make me love one, so I'll give it a pass. I'm also confused as to their target market-- hardcore Trek fans are hardcore enough that their love is only expressed in harsh, semi-logical critique, and hardcore space sim fans are playing EVE.

Ard Collier
that Janice chick
Usual Suspect and general menace

To be fair, even some of us hardcore space sim fans occasionally hope for a game that isn't Excel. :)

>To be fair, even some of us hardcore space sim fans occasionally hope
>for a game that isn't Excel. :)

You mean a simple, easy-to-play game, one without complications - like Star Fleet Battles? Or Attack Vector?

A modern version of Rules of Engagement would be pretty sweet. And maybe Breach as well.

Polychrome

>>To be fair, even some of us hardcore space sim fans occasionally hope
>>for a game that isn't Excel. :)
>
>You mean a simple, easy-to-play game, one without complications - like
>Star Fleet Battles? Or Attack Vector?

Or perhaps something where it doesn't take an hour to set up the game - like Federation and Empire....

S.

It's called "Starfire".

> Stuff about Jack Emmert and the shittification of several MMOs.

That's disappointing. I've heard some negative things about it too - most notably the inclusion of Klingons as a PVP only faction - but from what I've seen so far (the video I linked in the OP is now in its third episode) it looks pretty fun. I never spent enough time with EVE to get into it and I understand you had to be quite devoted to it to get anywhere. Hopefully STO will strike a nice balance between hardcore space-sim and fun MMO stuff. In total fairness, all it needs to do is be a good distraction until The Old Republic comes out anyway.

So far it's pretty balanced between the fun and hardcore. It feels kind of like two different games the way they are handling the space and ground combat.

The ground combat reminds me somewhat of KOTOR in that third party POV with a bunch of NPCs following along and taking orders(presuming you're playing solo). I can't think of a reference game for the space battles, but they are detailed enough to make tactical strategy necessary(shield facings, weapon arcs and cool downs), but not so detailed as to be mind numbing. So far my biggest complaint would be the rate of leveling, it needs to go just a touch quicker for the beginning levels IMO.

This is all keeping in mind it's still beta for another couple of weeks and there's been small patches almost every day so it's very much still a work in progress.

----
It would have been an accidental shooting, had he not reloaded... twice.

>Unfortunately, its lead designer is Jack "Statesman" Emmert, former
>lead dev on City of Heroes, who spent the first three or so
>years of that game's life resolutely striving to make it less fun in
>various ways having to do with adherence to his Design Vision. The
>crew over at Paragon Studios are still, in many ways, working to clean
>up the mess. (And then he went off to do the same to Champions
>Online, swearing to "get it right" this time, and now the team
>charged with maintaining CO are dancing the same dance.) As such, I
>have fairly low confidence in STO. I thought when it was announced,
>"Hello, that's a strange concept for an MMO. It'll take a very deft
>touch on the developers' part to make that work," and then, well.
>Based on prior experience, I sincerely doubt that Jack Emmert is the
>man to pull that off.
>

All in all so far, STO is at least doing well on initial stuff. I swear Cryptic believes game design should be tackled in the same way as most High Schoolers do the Mid Term Project (80% of what moves it from fail to passing (and on occasion high marks) takes place the Night Before it's Due).

That said, the biggest worry I have, which ultimately is what is Champ's current biggest failing is, is the lack of support and quality/speed of what support AFTER the initial stuff. And in Champ's case, there was fundamental underpinnings that weren't addressed. To use that quote from Have I Got News For You in a different context:

Healing.... we're running out!

Celestial class a very rudimentary patch and, well, we've yet to really see super expansion since.

Is STO so far actually decent to play? Yes. Excellent to play, I'm hoping it works up.

>I
>swear Cryptic believes game design should be tackled in the same way
>as most High Schoolers do the Mid Term Project (80% of what moves it
>from fail to passing (and on occasion high marks) takes place the
>Night Before it's Due).

This is known as "deadline oriented" and describes a lot of us out here in the geek sector :-)

S.

So I got access to the beta over the weekend. I'm having a lot of fun with it.

First of all, the atmosphere in the game is really great. The developers have really nailed the Trek vibe, especially in the sound design department. Everything just feels right - especially since the latest series of patches added Leonard Nemoy as the narrator (a little odd as he admits in the opening that yup, he's now back in time in a different dimension but hey, Spock still seems to know what's going down). Likewise, the graphics are really sweet, especially the explosions.

The gameplay is pretty strong. Space is definitely the game's strong suit. I never played SWG or very much of EVE but the space combat and exploration feels really great. It's kind of a cross between the naval battles in Sid Meyer's Pirates! and the resource management of TIE Fighter and thoroughly enjoyable. I probably won't get the time to sink my teeth into higher tier combat, which is a shame because some of the bigger ships look really fun. I ran into a Constitution Class last night - the rewards for ranking up seem very cool.

On the ground, the game feels a bit more generic. Sure there are commando rolls and some pretty unresponsive kung-fu but otherwise it feels pretty familiar. On the plus side, your bridge crew also serve as your away team if you're playing solo, which essentially lets you tackle instances by yourself. It certainly beats hanging around in warp space for half an hour spamming chat until a healer takes pity on you.

I'm having a lot of fun with it. Captain Crichton of the USS Protector and his loyal first officer Span have been a lot of fun to play, and if I had some more free time lined up in the next few months I'd probably drop the money to keep doing it.

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.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

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
-><-
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.

It says you're a writer. Nothing less and nothing more.

---
"Yeah, I'm definitely going to hell/But I'll have all the best stories to tell" -- Frank Turner, The Ballad of Me and My Friends

>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. :)

Heh the on-base club at TRACEN Yorktown Virginia used to be called Club 47 IIRC. Which brings back good memories of starting my weekend by waiting for other over 21 year old school attendees walking in and stepping up to the bar covered. It was always fun to hear the bell ring and get a free beer or two by sailors who didn't know better and a great way to start the night off right.

... I hope the sailors of the future bring that one back.

>... I hope the sailors of the future bring that one back.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there are no hats in the 25th century.

--G.
-><-
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.

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. :)
>

Given the way online gamers typically act, 'we're desperate for any officers who can command and not blow themselves up, no matter how eccentric' seems like it may be the case in-universe. Good thing the other belligerents are also scraping the bottom of the barrel, no?

Also explains the names, though some of them probably only sound dirty in GalStandard West.

�They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.�
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

>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.*

Having played older Trek games, like Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Command, I've found a lot of similarities. Main difference is that those games never felt a need to shoehorn an FPS/RPG scenario into every mission.

>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. :)

Only thing I could guess at is that Quinn decided that putting a rookie in command of what amounts to a cutter or frigate during a time of war was an acceptable risk, since it meant he could move more experienced officers into ships vital to the war effort. Probably never figured that the rookie would end up becoming the center of the universe (figuratively speaking).

>* Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the
>starship Spankmonkey.** Its five-year mission..
>** Actual example

Oh, if only that were the worst of it. After the fifth Normandy, the marvel of unique ship names and registry numbers lost its appeal.

>Having played older Trek games, like Starfleet Academy and
>Starfleet Command, I've found a lot of similarities. Main
>difference is that those games never felt a need to shoehorn an
>FPS/RPG scenario into every mission.

Well, at least there's precedent. Plenty of shore missions in the source material. Mind you, I don't remember a lot of phaser miniguns back in the day, but what're you gonna do. (Besides, they're hilarious. SAY HELLO TO MY LI'L FRIEND!)

>Only thing I could guess at is that Quinn decided that putting a
>rookie in command of what amounts to a cutter or frigate during a time
>of war was an acceptable risk, since it meant he could move more
>experienced officers into ships vital to the war effort. Probably
>never figured that the rookie would end up becoming the center of the
>universe (figuratively speaking).

"Sir, Buchanan's back again. He says he's retroactively saved the 23rd century twice and charted the entire Arucanis Arm, and he's wondering what you'd like him to do next."

"Good Lord. Give him a bigger ship and send him to deal with the Romulans."

Right now I'm actually trying to get him through Captain without changing up from his Commander-grade ship, because I don't like the cruiser-type options for captains. (You guys call a Galaxy-class an upgrade? Really?) If I pull it off, I can get him an Excelsior Plus and claim it's the same ship with upgrades. :) This may not actually work, though, because the Romulans are cheating bastards. (At least this is in character.)

--G.
-><-
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.

>Right now I'm actually trying to get him through Captain without
>changing up from his Commander-grade ship, because I don't like the
>cruiser-type options for captains. (You guys call a
>Galaxy-class an upgrade? Really?) If I pull it off, I can get
>him an Excelsior Plus and claim it's the same ship with upgrades. :)
>This may not actually work, though, because the Romulans are
>cheating bastards. (At least this is in character.)

Just make the excuse, if you have to trade up in the middle, that it was off for the refit during that time. :)

Given the rest of the handwaving in the game, that one should just blend right into the background noise.

>On the plus side, your bridge crew also serve
>as your away team if you're playing solo, which essentially lets you
>tackle instances by yourself. It certainly beats hanging around in
>warp space for half an hour spamming chat until a healer takes pity on
>you.

I realized this the other day. This approach allows Jack to have his 'you shouldn't be able to kick ass alone' attitude without breaking the game. It's like the developers were merely nodding politely while he was going on about his 'vision' and then actually getting shit done :P

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

I got a beta key this past weekend and played around.

It was fun, but I noticed it has a bit of a "oh, wow, I ran one mission and all of the sudden it's dark out" effect. :)

Mostly I was highly amused that I could create a ship named the U.S.S. Thomas Keller, with science officer Su'vide, engineering officer Robuchon, and tactical officer Bourdain. :)

I dont get the joke, BZ

Apparently, though, there is a Rightous Indignation out there, and the person who mentioned it to me thought the player might be an EPU fan but I didnt have the heart to point out to them that it was more likely homage to the original source. Guess this means we need to watch out for eeevil space toadies?

>I dont get the joke, BZ

Dark out in the real world, I think he means. In other words, giant soul-eating timesink.

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

>>I dont get the joke, BZ
>
>Dark out in the real world, I think he means. In other words, giant
>soul-eating timesink.
>

Yes, indeed.

If "I don't get the joke" is referring to my ship and it's officers...um...go try plugging "Thomas Keller" into Wikipedia and it should make sense.

>If "I don't get the joke" is referring to my ship and it's
>officers...um...go try plugging "Thomas Keller" into Wikipedia and it
>should make sense.

Oh, heh, that didn't even register to me as a joke. :D

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

Grr. I decided to try this again after looking at Gryph's posts lately and it DOES NOT like running at full resolution with my current video card. Anyone else got a GeForce 550 Ti who might be able to give me a hand?

Is anyone who's playing this in a fleet that's not full of spammers or drooling idiots that wants another vaguely casual player?

I'm in Starfleet Dental. We keep Drozana Station well-fumigated.

Shoot me a tell if you're interested in teaming up for some fleet defense sometime though. My account is @BeardedFerret - I play a Federation Tactical mostly and I've just started a Federation Science officer to start messing people up with tachyons.

<fx type="googles" target="Starfleet Dental" />

Eek! :)

I'm just about to ding Rear Admiral* after maybe a fortnight of fairly casual play. XP generation rate seems ridiculously high from dailies and Duty Officer missions...

@larilille here (and you wouldn't believe how far down my list of online handles I had to go to get a handle that wasn't already taken.

S.

* Starfleet clearly doesn't believe in Commodore as a permanent rank...

Gonna necro this to let those of you with an Excelsior know that the Fleet Excel was released in the last patch-- more shields, more hull, and most importantly, another console slot. :)

Your fleet will need to be at least tier 3 to get it, and if you have the normal Excel from the c-store, you will need a single fleet ship module (either buy it from the c-store or shell out on the exchange) and around 20k fleet credits.

Also, dilithium is in a nosedive on the exchange, so if you want to convert your stash into C-points, now's the time.

Other STO players on the forum may know this already, but the Ambassador class is supposed to be released quite soon (as in, supposedly, within the next month).

When I get mine, I'm christening her USS Iowa. (True, she won't be the first USS Iowa in STO, but I might be the first to name her specifically after a fanfiction name for the ship class. Is this getting into weird meta territory?)

>Other STO players on the forum may know this already, but the
>Ambassador class is supposed to be released quite soon (as in,
>supposedly, within the next month).
>
>When I get mine, I'm christening her USS Iowa. (True, she won't be the
>first USS Iowa in STO, but I might be the first to name her
>specifically after a fanfiction name for the ship class. Is this
>getting into weird meta territory?)

When they finally do introduce the class, think the scramble will be to see who can be the first to get one and name it USS Excalibur. For those in the audience who haven't read Trek novels, the Excalibur is the ship featured in Peter David's New Frontier series, first as an Ambassador class, then as its Galaxy class successor.

I thought about doing that, then decided on USS Cortana, to follow the famous sword motif.

And to those who don't know, Feb 14th is the last day to get an end game version of one of these for free. After that you'll have to shell out one way on another for the super end game version, which is 20 bucks in real money, though there are options around you paying the 20 bucks.

Hmm, that sounded more sinister than I intended.

So, on May 21st, we're getting a whole new side, along with expanded content for 1-20 on the Klingon side.

http://sto.perfectworld.com/legacyofromulus

Yep, it's the Romulans. One nice touch: Romulan players will be able to choose to ally with either Feds or Klinks and fly their ships too, in addition to their own (and also join respective side's player fleets, which is nice if your buddies already have a max rank fleet).

>So, on May 21st, we're getting a whole new side, along with expanded
>content for 1-20 on the Klingon side.
>
>http://sto.perfectworld.com/legacyofromulus
>
>Yep, it's the Romulans. One nice touch: Romulan players will be able
>to choose to ally with either Feds or Klinks and fly their ships too,
>in addition to their own (and also join respective side's player
>fleets, which is nice if your buddies already have a max rank fleet).

This sounds really cool. I'm thinking about coming back to the game and making a Romulan called Pontius Pilate.

>This sounds really cool. I'm thinking about coming back to the game
>and making a Romulan called Pontius Pilate.

I wash my hands of this game.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

>>This sounds really cool. I'm thinking about coming back to the game
>>and making a Romulan called Pontius Pilate.
>
>I wash my hands of this game.

What I have written, I have written.

LAST EDITED ON Apr-11-13 AT 08:49 AM (EDT)
 
>>>This sounds really cool. I'm thinking about coming back to the game
>>>and making a Romulan called Pontius Pilate.
>>
>>I wash my hands of this game.
>
>What I have written, I have written.

Give us Barabbas!

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

>>>>This sounds really cool. I'm thinking about coming back to the game
>>>>and making a Romulan called Pontius Pilate.
>>>
>>>I wash my hands of this game.
>>
>>What I have written, I have written.
>
>Give us Barabbas!

Stwike him, Centuwian, vewy woughly.

>>>>>This sounds really cool. I'm thinking about coming back to the game
>>>>>and making a Romulan called Pontius Pilate.
>>>>
>>>>I wash my hands of this game.
>>>
>>>What I have written, I have written.
>>
>>Give us Barabbas!
>
>Stwike him, Centuwian, vewy woughly.

vewy good fwiend on Wemus, etc.

--G.
-><-
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.

>>>>>>This sounds really cool. I'm thinking about coming back to the game
>>>>>>and making a Romulan called Pontius Pilate.
>>>>>
>>>>>I wash my hands of this game.
>>>>
>>>>What I have written, I have written.
>>>
>>>Give us Barabbas!
>>
>>Stwike him, Centuwian, vewy woughly.
>
>vewy good fwiend on Wemus, etc.

Welp, that's the first officer sorted.

And another officer, come to think of it...

"He has a wife, you know..."

In other news, Crystalline Catastrophe is back for a couple of weeks, and they revamped it to be far, far easier. Instead of healing itself, the Crystalline Entity now has a phase where it absorbs incoming energy damage and then a short time later lets out an AoE based on how much damage it absorbed.

I've seen this blast murder multiple people before, but for whatever reason my flexcelsior can tank it right to the face and only lose shields on one facing.

The blast will only take you out if you're already low on health, usually, depends on ship and captain. Overall thought I agree much more fun that it used to be.

As for the Romulans, the whole "ally" thing goes two ways. One side, it lets you use the special powers and whatnot from the other two factions, other side, not to many actual Romulan ships, fleets, and officers, you actually have to take an "exchange" officer from your ally, and have to join a Federation of Klingon fleet. Also, there might be an issue with not being able to team up with other Romluans after making a choice of allies. So, in other words a Klingon allied Romulan might not be able to team up with a Starfleet allied Romulan for missions and such. That might be a bug, it might end up being "working as intended." Almost all end game content is void from this, anyone can team up, so they might just write it off.

But as for the missions and stuff, I got lucky and got in closed Beta with no NDA, so I can say the new stuff for Romluans is MILES beyond anything else in the game. The Romulan ship interior is beyond cool (the engine room looks like a PG rated one from Event Horizon). The missions are well written, and engaging (there is a brain washing one that almost had me cursing at the screen, in a good way). And there is a definite continuing story here (haven't finished it yet since there are still coding stuff). Simply put, this is what I wanted with this game from the beginning. And it looks from early views that the Klingon side is getting a similar treatment for lower levels, which means that for once, the Starfleet side is the one that seems left out. Which I'm okay with.

The other interesting Romulan factoid I picked up after some weekend reading is that while you'll be able to fly some ships from your allied faction, you won't be flying their Tier 5 ships. So no Romulans in Escort Carriers or Excelciors. Presumably this means Cryptic are giving themselves scope to sell Scimitars and the like down the line.

I'm actually pretty ok with this. I'll be able to keep my pretend Grand Admiral Thrawn flying a white Vesta while Pontius Pilate cruises around in a warbird.

I started playing this a few weeks back, a week or two before Legacy of Romulus dropped, and I've been having a blast.

I think one of my favorite bits so far is how, for the Romulan starting characters, instead of trying to justify flying around a thoroughly antiquated design by saying that inside it's perfectly modern (see, for example, the NX-class, or the TOS Constitution-class), the old T'liss-class, TOS-era Warbird you get for your starter ship is, in fact, old enough to have been the primary Romulan warship when it was made. It's essentially a miraculously still-functional old beater of a ship that Satra (the second boff you're given, for doing the first quest after the tutorial) says something about how it probably should've fallen apart around you long before she came on board.

Mine even has the big bird painted on the underside. (My Rommie is still level 6, though, and I'll probably cap out my KDF alt before I think about putting time into the Rommie.)

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

> TOS-era Warbird

Seriously? I mean that class was nearly 100 years old before TOS....

Maybe I should log in to STO again :).

S.

>Seriously? I mean that class was nearly 100 years old before TOS....
>
>Maybe I should log in to STO again :).

I'm enjoying it immensely right now, much more than I was enjoying WoW in the last couple of months of my sub. It remains to be seen how much I'll still be enjoying it after I've done all of the episodes on my KDF and Rommie alts, leaving just the endgame, but so far I haven't found the New Romulus stuff to be unbearably grindy just yet. (I am, however, making it a point not to feel compelled to do all of those dailies every day.)

I didn't particularly care for Nukara, though. The repeatable quests there feel a bit too WoW-ish.

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

Apologies for the threadromancy, but I feel it's worth noting to this audience in particular that STO's Season 8 is a few weeks away and as such, the content is starting to hit the test servers.

The content for Season 8 takes place in a Dyson Sphere.

See you in the game.