The Magic Touch

Early this morning, long before the sun even thought of making the valiant attempt at sending its rays of sunshine through the thick layer of clouds that seems to hang over the Midwest like a pall, we sat sipping our morning coffee. As you can imagine the conversation often turns to theology mixed in with a bit of gaming – and this morning’s bit of pondering was on just what to call our liberated borg” that will come with the lifetime subscription.

5 willgetya 10?
10 willgetya 20?
7-11?

The first two options, of course, come from a “Dead Like Me” episode last night were Rube is teaching someone how to run “the old shell game.”  While we contemplate what may become a cumbersome task of finding a creative name for our borg, our conversation also strayed in to the territory of yesterdays big patch over at Cryptic Studio’s Star Trek Online (STO).

It might not be the proverbial magic patch but it definately has a heap-load of magic fairy dust in the lines of it’s code. This is the first time we have seen anything in patch notes as being “150% sexier” but we will have to admit that many of the new changes were indeed “150% better looking – and perhaps a bit more.

Some magic touches…

Before anything else, I have got to say what fun it was to have Lenoard Nimoy give a little summary when the player enters a new sector of space. It definately added another layer of immersiveness to STO. While we are not big fans of the look of sector space, we accept the reasons behind it and no matter what anyone says the look of sector space does have the same style and concept of astrometrics.  As we have said earlier on this cite, if the alternatives are the mind numbing hour long and more virtual voyages from Eve Online we will take Cryptic’s Sector Space look every time.

Such a rush…

At the start of every new game or expansion of an existing game there is a rush that would dwarf any any of the land rushes in America’s “old west”. That rush is, of course, the rush to the level cap.  The big news for all you people who level so fast you could set a land speed record is that now is your chance as the level cap for open beta has been removed. This means you have between now and January 26th to hit the level cap for the game.  What this means for us, however, is a show of confidence that Cryptic studios has in thier game – so much so that they are willing to give everyone access to their entire product.

When it comes to Richard Bartles division of gamers by types we here on the No Prisoners, No Mercy team fall squarely in the explorers category. This is why we are so happy to find two new zones to explore for our Federation characters: the Cardassian and the Romulan sectors. There is nothing quite so exciting in any of the Star Trek movies or television shows as when the Star Trek Enterprise, the pride and joy of the fleet, the enormous ambassador class ship meets a Romulan “Warbird” that could bring the enterprise on board like it was a shuttle craft.  Just thinking about moments like this makes being blown out of the sky worth while (that and knowing we will quickly respawn afterwards).

Among the other improvements that caught our eye are the fact that players who leave a pvp battleground will now have to wait to re-que. More than once we have found ourselves wandering around looking for Klingons who have logged off early (and yes that is a taunt to all you Klingon players out there).

The central part of any Star Trek movie has always been the ships themselves.  Many are the officers who long to serve on board the renown U.S.S. Enterprise.  Part of the Star Trek experience (for that is exactly what is taking place here) is having officers vieing for positions as part of your bridge crew. In fact when we logged on last night one of the first events that took place are three officers requesting transfer to our flagship (yes I said “flagship” because you can have more than one ship).   We engaged our transwarp drive and soon found ourselves in the personnel office of Earth space dock reviewing candidates.  If, like us, you are fond of trying out all the ships out there, for each has its own characteristic and role, you will find that they have their own compliment of bridge officers that are allowed. The science ships (they make us drool every time we see one because they look like they are moving just standing still) allow extra science officers.  If you find yourself flying a cruiser you will find yourself in need of an extra engineering officer instead.

Another change we are looking forward to, especially since we come from such a large organization of gamers (The Older Gamers with about 14,000 members) we are looking forward to the first chance we have to don the guild uniform, and walk across our bridge looking out at the view screen which will have actual stars now instead of just being a black void. We are also looking forward to the improved ground combat performance with our guildies and our bridge officers. We look forward to having one of those scheming Ferengi as a bridge officer but we have other designs where Ferengi are concerned.

What we are hoping for in the furture is the ability to play a Ferengi and make a living by plying the virtual space lanes as a captalist.

More later.

See you online,

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team