Posts Tagged ‘Star Trek Online’

As the chief engineer reports during the maiden voyage of the “Stargazer-E” (depicted above), the 10^th Rule of Acquisition states “greed is eternal.” 

The Stargazer-E is a heavy cruiser, and like all ships in Star Trek Online (STO) upon reaching the next full rank, the first one is free. Well…free only in the sense that you have earned enough merit by completing missions, both pvp and pve, to earn rank.  “Rank” in this case is Ensign, Lieutenant, Lieutenant-Commander, Commander, Captain, and Rear-Admiral with 10 grades in between each major rank.  As always, of course, there are those detractors, who will continue to insist that STO is a bad game based on a single, if not well thought out, justification “because they said so” – and believe you me their justification certainly is not well thought out.  As my character stood there at the promotion ceremony (depicted below) several thoughts ran though my mind…

The first, of course, is that you can tell when people are engrossed in the game when they bother with an optional promotion ceremony (there was a line to do this). The second thought was about the merit that is part and parcel, and least in some part, to obtaining bridge officers and their training.  If you want to requisition personal equipment for ground combat, as well as Star Ship equipment, you must earn medals such as medals of achievement, and medals of bravery. You can, of course, purchase lower level equipment from vendors or for sale by other players through the exchange. The quality of the game mechanic that uses Star Fleet merit (all you WoW players can think of it like honor…sort of) and medals is that they can’t be sold or traded. And that is where the 10^th Rule of Acquisition comes in to play.

Greed is Eternal…

Never underestimate the incredible drawing power of greed.  Richard Garriott once described World of Warcraft as being “a system of inventory management.”  This may be (and it certainly is) but the simple fact of the matter is that greed works. 

The 287^th Rule of Acquisition…

The 287^th Rule of Acquisition, which I shall unabashedly call Julie’s Rule, is An MMO is not just a game – it is a service and a business.  And as a business, the goal of the publisher of every mmo is to make a Dollar, Yen, Kroner, Won, Euro or any of the other myriad currencies.  As such it is obviously their goal to keep players interested in playing the game, even when they run out of levels.  The biggest hindrance to this of course is the players who rush to the level cap and say “so now what do I do?”

It is not enough I succeed…

If the gamer who participates in an mmo is to be kept interested there are several possibilities, the hardest of which is simply providing more to do.  That “more” can take several forms, such as actual game content, meaningless achievements (hey, at least you get a pop up window right), and the easiest way espoused by the 288^th Rule of Acquisition (which I call Pardo’s rule)…

It is not enough to succeed, you must been seen to succeed.

After all, what good is it to have obtained the “uber sword of uberness” if it looks just like any other run of the mill sword. The uber sword of uberness must look resplendent; it must shine like the sun, it must hum with power and inspire all who gaze upon it with envy (or at least awe).  Let’s face it, what people really mean when a game developer sells a cosmetic perk is that they don’t want anyone else to get it the same perk the easy way.  Players want to be able to engage in the age old (well maybe not age old as the tradition doesn’t go back much further then Ultima Online and maybe Meridian 59) tradition of bank sitting. Bank sitting is, of course, where players gather, a place where they go to be seen.  Everyone wears what grandmother used to call their “Sunday go to meeting best.”  This, after all, is why people earn the uber armor of uberness…not just be able to get even better armor but to show other players they have earned it.

The Uber Starship of Uberness

Recently the executive producer of Star Trek Online, Craig Zinkievich, announced the intent of Cryptic Studios (developer of STO) to expand the ship interiors available to players. This, of course, presents a tremendous opportunity for Cryptic Studios and where to take end game.

Anyone who has ever played Everquest 2 (EQ2) knows that one of the major pastimes is being able to purchase ever larger player housing.  But the outside of that player housing all looks the same. When I purchased a home on number 1 Antonya Bayle Lane I entered my house through the same door as everyone else.  The interior of that house was the same as everyone else who owned that same house.  What was different was how the house was decorated. The decoration system in EQ2 was second to none. You could put furniture anywhere.  It wasn’t like Lord of the Rings Online where you can only put certain bits and bobs of décor in a certain (and very limited) number of pre-set positions. Some of the furniture could be made of course, but much of the best pieces had to be earned. If STO where to take a page from this particular book and allow the uber (insert name of cosmetic ship or personal item here) to be earned but only with merit or medals so much the better. The drive then, or course, is for currency that can’t be sold by the ever infamous “gold sellers.”

However it works out it is certain that those who denigrate STO simply because they have a burr under their proverbial tail will continue to do so. The rest of us will continue to enjoy the game including the raid content, the borg content, and the ship interiors when their time comes. Until then…

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted by The Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
    But, she with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but she would be one
    Who wouldn’t say so till she’d tried.
So she buckled right in with the trace of a grin
    On her face. If she worried she hid it.
She tried that thing that couldn’t be done…

…and she couldn’t do it.

The version of the old Edger Albert Guest poem is from an old Dick Van Dyke show – and in this case came immediately to mind as I faced what is possible the biggest, baddest boss in all of the virtual universes anywhere.  If there was a trick to defeating this thing Jim Kirk sure didn’t share it with anyone.  This boss appears in Star Trek Online somewhere around mid tier 2 as part of fleet action.

It is the Crystalline Entity. 

The Crystalline Entity is a boss the size of a moon.  The first time I faced down this monster 20 of us in cruiser class star ships, armed with Quantum Torpedoes, and heavy phaser cannons couldn’t take it down.  The lowest we ever got it down was 28 percent and that is after working on it for a solid hour and 10 minutes.  Of all the boss in all the instances in all the universes, this one is the biggest, the baddest.  My friends…this is one bad mama jama.

Welcome about the U.S.S. Grand Nagus Zek, Captain Moogie commanding.

As the brave crew of the Grand Nagus Zek realize, in the process of “boldly going where no one has gone before” there are other feet that may have trod the same sectors of space before us.  With that in mind, we have re-invented the famous phrase to insist that we “are going where no Ferengi has gone before”.   The way we see it is this, it may be that others have fought these same battles before us but it is the first time WE have experienced it for ourselves – it’s like experiencing a rerun of a holonovel.  It may be that others have experienced the same holonovel, it may be a rerun, but it’s first for us and we just love new experiences.

Kirk did it first…

We were sent to investigate the rumors that Klingons were creating a dooms day device.  Even if they did manage to create some sort of a planet killer, as a Ferengi, I just fail to understand it. After all where is the profit in that?   First there is the loss of all those resources when you blow up a planet. And what about all that money it takes to build a planet killing weapon in the first place? Klingons will never understand…the Ferengi way would be to simply buy the planet.

Oh well…order are orders I guess.  Upon investigating the system, we encountered heavy resistance from cloaked birds of prey and stationary phaser cannons. Here at last was a challenge we couldn’t buy our way out of – stationary phaser cannons.  We may have an old workhorse of a ship, but its sturdy and up to the task. Before long we managed to beam down to the planet and make short work of the Klingons and their Hargh’Peng “super” Torpedoes.

A few Klingons escaped, taking some of their big torpedoes with them.  Upon beam up our ever amazed, often irritating communications officer pointed out the obvious…the famed Dooms Day Machine was just ahead off our port bow.

Now it had occurred to us that the high and mighty Star Fleet had sent the Ferengi crew of the U.S.S. Grand Nagus Zek into a situation that must be certain death because they thought we were expendable.  It wasn’t as if they gave us a “Ship of the line” was it? No.  They gave us a constitution class star ship they dragged out of mothballs.  Well if it was good enough for James T. Kirk it’s good enough for us. Damn the quantum torpedoes – full impulse speed ahead!

It seems that James T. Kirk didn’t do a good enough job killing the Dooms Day Machine…perhaps he never really killed it in the first place? Maybe he made the whole thing up, hoping no one would ever catch on! Well never send a washed up admiral to do the job of a Ferengi.  Having saved the universe once again, one overwhelming thought occurred to us – we have GOT to get a Ferengi communications officer.

TC: One of the criticisms for how it doesn’t feel like Star Trek is that combat is so constant. You have a few non-combat missions, but most of the missions are basically centered around your combat model. To some fans of Star Trek, this might be a problem. Star Trek is traditionally about a different style of conflict resolution and yet an MMO tends to be about defeating things, killing them, blowing them up. Is this something you guys were aware was going to be a potential problem? Do you just see it as a necessary evil for an MMO?

CZ: I don’t want it say it’s a necessary evil for an MMO, and it’s definitely something we were aware of along the way. When you make a game like this, you can attempt to satisfy everybody’s desire. Some people just want to be the guy in the engineering room, some people just want to do diplomacy. There are all sorts of roles and all sorts of gameplay the Star Trek universe provides, and we could have taken a shot at providing something for everybody at launch. What we would have ended up with is a really broad experience, but probably not that focused and probably not that fun in the grand scheme of things, or in any of those roles. So we focused on the idea that you’re the captain of this ship and it’s during war time and this is what happens.

That being said, we did start putting down the seeds of non-combat. We did start putting down the seeds of diplomacy and exploration. And the great thing about MMOs is that you start off with these seeds and this focused experience, but what you get to do as game developers is keep adding to it, keep building all the things you dreamed of along the way. I don’t want to call it a necessary evil, but that’s the focus we chose. And it is kind of obvious. It’s like, okay, look, we need some more of that exploration, we need some more of that non-combat, we need that diplomatic feel to the game. Those are things we definitely plan on adding as time goes on.

Read the entire interview here.

There is a new interview out with the executive producer of Star Trek Online, Craig Zinkievich. I found the interview not simply entertaining, but thought provoking because of Mr. Zinkievich’s answers.  It’s simply a shame that the “unsilent minority” (as is so prevalent on the official forums) simply refuses to give credit where credit is due.  This interview tells of some the challenges faced by the Star Trek Online team, and some of the risks they took in the way the game was created – risks which seem to be paying off.

One of the quotes I found incredibly interesting discussed the challenge of designing a game where the conflict is resolved in ways that do not involve combat.  After all, that is usually how game design resolves conflict – at the end of a gun, or the tip of a sword. It is that non-combat resolution that I found so enthralling in one of my favorite Star Trek series – Star Trek Voyager.

Non-Combat resolution and Star Trek…

One episode is called “Death wish” where a member of the Q Continum is simply bored to tears with eternity.  It put me immediately in mind of the character in a Douglas Adams book – Wowbagger, the infinitely prolonged. Wowbagger is a character that accidentally becomes immortal as the result of an accident involving a particle accelerator, a pair of rubber bands and a liquid lunch.  The problem is Wowbagger simply doesn’t know how to cope with being immortal – and that is the problem discussed in “Death Wish”.

Not knowing what to do with himself (or perhaps having done it all) a Q simply wishes to die. Beyond the quandary debated in the show of the right or wrong aspect of assisted suicide, are the interrelationships of the people, and the resolution of the matter.  In the story Captain Janeway and Mr. Tuvok are taken to a representation of the Q-Continuum. There we see members of the Q Continuum who have literally not spoken to each other in millennium as they too have “done it all” and said everything to one another there is to be said. The conflict represented is literally a struggle with life and death, and one that we all face today.  In what seems to be so prevalent in the Voyager series, the conflict is resolve through debate and interpersonal relationships instead of at the point of a phaser. Along the way the “Q” that we have come to know as one the princple nemis of Star Trek the Next Generation, learns something about himself that even he denied.

In a show called “Unity” Chakotay discovers a planet that is inhabited entirely by “liberated borg”.  Coming as they do from entirely different backgrounds, they try and co-exist and find they cannot – there old grievances and inbred hatreds get in the way. In the end they re-establish a link and become one mind as the only way to co-exist.

In an episode called “Alter Ego” Ensign Harry Kim falls in love with what he thinks is a hologram.  He comes to Tuvok for training in purging emotion.   In attempting to assist him, Tuvok himself finds himself interested in the object of Harry Kims affections; a hologram that seems to understand Tuvok better than himself. Tuvok meets the hologram for the first time at a luau on the holodeck.  Tuvok, in attendance against his wishes refuses to wear the lei that is presented to him – and it is the “hologram” that points out the Vulcan sience officer is emotionally distancing himself from the rest of his crew at the party by being the only person at the party not wearing a lei.  When it is discovered that the hologram is really someone outside the ship controlling the holodeck, the resolution is, once again, through inter-relationships of the characters.

It is the non-combat solution to problems that makes Star Trek Voyager so revolutionary.  The entire No Prisoners, No Mercy team hopes to seem the seeds that are already apparent in the development of Star Trek Online grown.  It’s a big challenge but one I am sure that Cryptic is up to addressing.

The No Prisoners, No Mercy Team.

Side Notes

From the Eve Online forums:

A community is of course not one single entity, and consists of many different people. Reading all the media hype about Hulkaggeddon gives me a lot of laughs as well, but there is a very sinister side to it as well, that unfortunately brings out much darker aspects in some people. I wonder when enough is enough – is public threats about sexual abusing nuns enough? (Even though I know those are not meant serious, they can easily be taken serious by outsiders)

What scares me the most about Hulkageddon and similar events, is the unchallenged mass movement it often creates. Not in terms of spaceships, but in terms of the armies of seemingly ghoulish followers that chant the holy sacrament of “Nom nom nom, carebear tears”. While an army like that does not have any real physical impact, its so damn close to real life examples that it scares the **** out of me. And this is where comparisons to fascist movements are relevant.

-       Ben Harrigan, Eve Online forums

The subject of today’s article, some of the non-combat ways conflict is resolved in Star Trek Online, reminded me of the quote I found a while ago on the Eve Online forums.  What amazes me not merely about the attitude espoused by many of the participants in the event, but that they in turn, seemed not merely surprised at the outrage that followed but revel in it.  After all it is easy when you are safely in your room to say “nom, nom, nom carebear tears.”  However, as Sister Julie has often pointed out “Karma is Karma”. 

How easy it is to imagine that the sisters should not be entitled to outrage at the treatment of other players by griefers, not merely in Eve Online, but in any game.  Even more amazing are those players who then go through life with the attitude espoused by the chant until they encounter the situation in real life.  Tables have a way of turning.

The Webmaster

First confession…

My name is Molly.  Inside my dog house I have 5, 284 slippers – none of them matching. I am a slipper thief.  I just happen to like slippers and hey, the people I own already have alot of slippers. In fact they also have 5,284 slippers, and incredibly none of them are matching either.

Back when I was studying television directing they always told us that two things really sells a commercial – baby animals and children.  Now not everyone likes children but nearly everyone likes four legged babies.  And so we start out today’s article with the confession of a slipper thief.

Second confession…

Broken Toys calls the move by EA pictured above as “Exploit that IP my lord…discreetly” (read it here)  If I may be so presumptious as to defend EA for the Briefest of moments by assuming their role..

We confess – we are just trying to make a living here.

As much as I love Broken Toys and everything that Scott Jennings writes, and as humorous as the observation is I found myself saying, “Come on Scott,  the people at EA are just trying to make a living you know?”  Now I might sound suspiciously like a Ferengi when I say “What’s wrong with a little profit?”  However, too often people forget that before anything else a video game be it console or mmo, is about making a profit.   J. Paul Getty once said “Money is only dirty when it is someone else’s”.  It used to be that if you had told the average game designer or gamer that Free to Play would be not just accepted but welcome, that you would be looked at suspiciously in the least and more probably taken behind the barn and shot.  Now Free to play seems to be the wave of the future, at least for the immediate future.   The first mmo I ever played was Ultima Online back when you could say “What is World of Warcraft” and have people reply “I don’t know” without laughing afterwards.   I think the concept of  a strategy game set in Britannia could be a lot of fun…and if it keeps some game designers and publishers in business I am all for it.  After all, the more games that are out there to choose from the better off gamers are.

Third Confession…

First Bill Roper is a nice guy and anyone who doesn’t like that I say so can kiss my posterior.  Cryptic, in the form of Chronomancer issues a State of the Game on February 9, 2010 (you can read it here) Champions Online, ask Cryptic. Cryptic says, “O.K. we confess. We’re not perfect we made a mistake. We are listening to the community. You asked for the next Champions Online expansion free and we are giving it to you.” The “Community” (those not actually playing the game and who have likely never played it because “it’s Cryptic”)  basically say “We don’t care you are still a jerk.” (those still playing the game) say “Thank you for listening.”  The simple fact of the matter is that when Cryptic had problems with their “kitchen sink patch” they explained it.  Players wanted the Revelations expansion fee, and Cryptic said here it is…free.  Like it or not Cryptic is listening to the gaming community.

Fourth Confession…

When Tobold is right, he’s right.  Here is an excerpt from his recent article entitled “Working in Eve for $2 per hour” (you can read the whole article here).

“I would say that EVE has two major gameplay parts, one being a PvP game, and the other being an economic game. With me not being interested in the PvP part, I’m looking mostly at the economic part. And I would say that legal RMT makes the economic part look a lot less attractive. At the start of the game, when your character is still very weak and has no capital to work with, you will earn a lot less than $2 equivalent per hour. Thus the temptation will be great to jump-start yourself with the 300 million ISK or so you get in exchange for one PLEX. Thus if you think of your power in EVE depending on your skill points and your virtual wealth, you end up having bought both for real money. Skills don’t go up from gameplay, but go up with the length of your subscription, thus there is a direct skill points to dollars correlation too.” – Tobold

As much as it may irk Tobold, I couldn’t agree more – he has that part of the game “sussed”.   Hard Core Casual (whom the No Prisoners No Mercy team has admittedly run afoul of on a  previous occasion) had this to say:“The major problem about Tobold writing about EVE is the same one I get accused of when writing about WoW; not playing the game.”  He called this, as you will see “How awfully Keen of you Tobold” and followed that up with, “It’s the Keen kind of entertaining if you know what I mean.”

Oh yes we know exactly what you mean when you say “keen” entertaining as in “Keen” from “Keen and Graevs gaming blog.”

The sort of entertaining that’s interesting, witty, well thought out and all around entertaining.  If I may be so bold, the major problem that Hard Core Casual has about Tobold writing about Eve is the same thing he has about anyone writing about anything…they aren’t him.  In the mean time, dear readers, feel free to jump into the Tobold vs. Hardcore Casual fray – if nothing else it is always entertaining. And to quote someone we once read, when ever we read Hardcore Casual we just have to shake our collective No Prisoners, No Mercy team heads.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Call them bad guys, call them the antagonist, or call them the villain – they are what keeps a story from being as about as “exciting as Bucharest on a Monday night” (one no prize to the first person who can tell us where that quote comes from and where the term “no prize” comes from as well).

The Star Trek Universe has had every sort of antagonist from the bumbling Cyrano Jones ranging all the way up to the three depicted above: Khann, Shinzon, and the Borg Queen – and Star Trek Online (STO) has them as well.  In considering Jonathan Morris’  comments to our earlier article Re-Crossing the Troll Bridge I too am beginning to wonder if some of Cryptic’s detractors are playing the same Star Trek Online as we all are.

To wit (I sort of like that expression, kind of like the detractors are on trial) we are amazed by the crap we hear about there not being any story line in STO, the mistaken impression that all missions are alike, that they are all randomly generated, that there is nothing to do beyond the level of Lieutenant Commander and that ilk (there’s an expression that Mr. Scott might have used).  Have you ever even heard of Ambassador B’Vat? Have you traveled in time? Have you saved Spock’s life (as voiced by Leonard Nimoy himself)  and in turn had him save yours? If the answer to any of these questions is no then you haven’t run out of missions  And you also haven’t completed the mission arch “City on the Edge of Never” – and if you haven’t, my only guess is that Admiral Quinn doesn’t trust you with the mission because you have been bitching about STO so much.

[Webmasters Note: Warning, Warning Will Robinson, spoilers from the City on the Edge of Never story arch ahead]

I’m Captain Moogie. On my home world I was downtrodden by a race of misanthropic, misogynistic, small lobed backward gits that tried to keep me out of business, and out of clothes. The 48^thRule of Acquisition says “The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife” – and my smile is always very big. There is an old earth adage that says “speak softly and carry heavy dual phaser cannons” or something like that.

Bvat, the Kuvah’Magh, saving the Enterprise, saving Spock, finding out where Klingons got ridges and how they lost them… what a long strange ride it’s been. And I have the feeling it’s only getting started.

It all started with a mission to a place called The Treasure Trading Station, to rescue a Klingon informant.  Every time I think about it I still laugh…a Klingon who needed rescuing by five Ferengi. That’s where I first heard about B’Vat or “ambassador” B’Vat.  This guy’s a pip alright.  I still have the recording of what the informant had to say about this guy:

“He’s smart and he’s a planner. Wheels within wheels. He has half a dozen things going on, and I barely know the half of it. Ancient weapons, time travel, outlawed science…if there’s a way to get what he wants, B’vat will do it.  Things normal people wouldn’t even consider, B’vat already thought of it and figured out how to make it work.”

Me? I figured that rescuing Miss Prissy Pants would be the last time I ever heard of this B’Vat guy. Hah! Not even close. I ended up chasing him across time itself.  On the other hand I will take any chance I get to let loose of a little fire power.

Now if you’ll pardon me I have some gagh I would like to try while it is still alive. We can continue this story later.

(posted by The Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)

Just when you think it is safe to go back on to the forums the as…er…unenlightened individuals start creeping out of the woodwork.  (One name that pops into my head is meat head, meat hook, meaty greasy hands – something like that).  In any case, try and compliment the Star Trek Online team at Cryptic for all their hard work and the trolls take it as a personal opportunity to show all around them just how horrible the game is that they are, for some odd reason, still playing.  These are the individuals to whom the glass is not only half full of toxic waste, rather than merely half empty, but for whom the glass is buried somewhere beneath a mountain of crap that would take a team of Shirpa climbers a year to summit. Hopefully the trolls will soon find another bridge to hide under and let the rest of us enjoy the game.

Along with the picture above, I also found a nice little story to go with it.  I wanted to reprint the entire story here just incase it went away from the web site I found, you can read the original story (same as below) here:

Nanny Goat Gruff and the Internet Trolls

Jan 23rd, 2009 | By Stephanie Zvan|

Once upon a time, there was a nanny goat who lived to wander from field to field, tasting the grass and bushes as she went. It was a simple life: wander, taste, chew, wander again. Sunshine and air and a million flavors were her world.

Meanwhile back at the Tribble ranch many of the rustlers who where angry and said they weren’t going to play star trek online any more have actually “not played star trek online” any more. Of course there is also the possiblity that they decided to let Klingons be Klingons and let the rest of enjoy our game in peace.  However it works out, the den of inquity that is normally a hive of scum and villany has actually been an interesting place to go for information, especially if you take a gander at the Star Fleet Academy sub-forum here.

The most interesting revelation of late is that it is actually possible to be a Tribble Rancher in the game. All you need is a tribble to start with (the common ones drop at random…I get mine from dead Klingons).  Drop the tribble in your bank vault, leave a little food for them to eat (you can buy it on your ship with your replicator – the button is on your inventory screen).  When you come back a short while later (in my case about an hour) and you have more and varied Tribbles.  Now if the cute little gits had a market value I would be all set.  What I have done with  my Tribbles is give them to members of my away team.  The result is that when the shooting stops, the Tribble cooing starts.

There is a wonderful guide to Tribbles on the forums created by Miuramir and is available  here. In an effort to preserve said information I will also include a copy after the break.  The Star Fleet Academy forums also include links to Suircata’s Ship charts and Suircata’s Star Charts.

I have also found a little gem describing just how to create a Cardassian, in a little guide that was not, saddly,  “Stickied” at the top of the forums. I will include this little gem after the break as well.

But all is not fun and games in Tribble Town…

I am happy to report that in Tier two several times this morning the team I was on where beaten soundly by the Klingons.   Why happy you might ask?  Because that means either 1.) The Klingons are much better at fighting now or more likely 2.) The  Star Trek Online team over at Cryptic has been working at balancing pvp.  And as anyone who enjoys good pvp knows, pvp that isn’t a bit of a challenge isn’t fun pvp.

But there is a dark shadow on the horizon and that belongs to power levelers – team set your phasers on aggravation.  There is a pathetic trend I have encountered more often, and that are teams of suicide intent power levelers.  Since you get some experience for losing as well, teams of Federation players go out to battlegrounds intent on losing as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, once you are in the same battleground with  said cretins you can’t join another if you leave.  So your options is to put up with it, try and fight the battle on your own (five against one odds) or quit the game and log back on to reset everything.

The sad fruit of the power leveler’s efforts were apparent when a group of us where waiting for an instance to restart so we could fight the “Crytaline Entity”.  Before the instance reset, a rear admiral drops out of warp and makes the instance his home…Killing the Crystaline Entity repeatedly before anyone can get in a shot.  This seems to be little more than a player, having reached the upper levels found himself or herself in need of people to impress by their virtual prowess, or should I say stupidity, at having managed to buypass most of the game. Now I could care less how fast players level up, I only begin to care when they begin to ruin the game for other players, myself included, in the process. After all, this may be Star Trek, but there are still plenty of banks to sit in front of – all of which seems nearly as foolish as the spammers who ofter to play the game for me if I will pay them. 

Amazing.

I bought a lifetime subscription because I enjoy the game so much and said spammer thinks I should pay him to play the game on myaccount? Still, given enough time I am sure that the good folks at Cryptic will get the gold spammers/power leveling service spammers to crawl back under the rock they crawled out from under in the first place.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Read the rest of this entry »

[Photo credit: the amazing artwork we used for the backdrop for today’s column is from a company called “The Light Works”.  There are some of the most talented artists I have ever seen. There work is amazing. If you haven’t gone out to see their web site it is a must.]

“Here, have a cookie. I promise when you finish eating it you’ll be feeling right as rain.” Gloria Foster as “The Oracle” in The Matrix

If there ever were a place that can be described as a “hive of scum and villainy” the official forums for any given game will often embody the phrase.  There are, of course, exceptions. Still, it is little wonder to me that Mark Jacobs, former head of what used to be called “Mythic Entertainment” (I am not sure what they are calling themselves these days) initially refused to have official forums for Warhammer Online. We have had a number of community managers on the show lately, most recently from Quest Online Studios and in an upcoming show the community managers from Funcom.  As a result we have been fortunate to talk with each of them about the work they do for their companies.  The overwhelming impression I get is that such a job must truly be a “labor of love” – especially where Cryptic Studios is concerned.   Reading through the official forums for Star Trek Online (STO) during closed and open beta I got the feeling that the community manager must feel like someone dipped them in blood and dropped them in a shark tank.

The comments range from helpful to hostile, and as expected, there are more trolls then there are under bridges in fairy tales.  Most interesting are the comments made by those individuals who regale us all with how horrible Star Trek Online is, and then continue to play it.  I can only suppose they do so as a form of self discipline – sort of like self flagellation.  Mind you, I play STO because I enjoy the game and have been waiting for it to see the light of day for quite some time.

I was pondering this thought as I was making the rounds of the No Prisoners, No Mercy news feeds when I came upon something written by Keen from Keen and Graevs entitled “Astral Ships: As Amazing and Unique as You Can Imagine!” As I read through the article, a sentence or two struck a chord – you can read the entire article here:

It’s different than something like STO or even Darkfall where you can sail ships.  The depth that this type of gameplay can add to exploration is immense.  While Allods has done an extraordinary job, I can’t help but imagine the power this could have in future games.

Who would have thought that Allods Online, a free to play game, could accomplish what so many have wanted for years? 

Let me say at the outset that I have played Allods, enjoyed it, and agree with everything that Keen has to say on the subject of Astral Ships…with one small exception.  I can’t say that the experience that Keen describes is what I have “wanted for years.” Tobold once described Alganon as “not making a very good WoW”, to which I responded with “it also doesn’t make a very good Air Craft Carrier Nimitz.”  Both the forums and the “Blogosphere” are filled with seemingly carefully considered assessments of Star Trek Online and the game that Cryptic has not created, rather than consider their artistry (and make no mistake it is art that has been created) on its own merits.

It is a common mindset of course.  We each have our own experiences and it is that environmental conditioning that makes us part of who we are.  We each have our own definition of what we consider a “good game.”  There is an expression in Buddhism that says “there are many paths up the mountain but they all lead to the summit.”  The paths that lead to what we each look for in a game may intersect in places and they may not.   There are places in the creative process where both CCP and Cryptic Studios intersect.  But there are also places where they are widely divergent and I am grateful for both.

More than anything else, Star Trek Online brings to its participants the Star Trek experience. Cryptic does that very well.  Perhaps that is why I enjoy the game so much…I play it for what it does do, rather than focus on what it doesn’t do. There will, of course, continue to be those individuals who try to persuade others to see the work done by Cryptic Studios on Star Trek Online in a negative light.  To those individuals I will give the same advice that the Oracle gave to Neo in The Matrix – in fact it is the same advice that someone gave one of the forum trolls in STO:

“Have a cookie. I promise when you finish eating it you’ll be feeling right as rain.”

See you online.

Julie Whitefeather

(posted for Julie Whitefeather by The Webmaster)

Life and death in the solar winds – you can see it above in the picture from late closed beta. My ship is the Tier One Federation ship you see above…the one that is still in one piece.  Now being a project manager rather than an astrophysicistI have no idea if said solar winds actually blow through space or not.  The only blowing through space I am certain of is the space immediately following our Boston Terrier. We call her the gaseous anomaly, and with good reason.  But blow the solar winds do and right through the pvp arena in Star Trek Online.  This particular arena is one of my favorites. In the picture above you can see a Klingon Bird-of-Prey appearing (or disappearing) right after having blown a Federation ship to bits.

The reason for the picture above brings to mind an issue. Keen from Keen and Graev (a former guest on our show) has a nice discussion on death penalties in general which you can read here.   Where Star Trek Online (STO) is concerned the death penalty has been one of debate during the closed and open beta.  Mind you the official forums of any game is sort of a dangerous place to go for any sort of a decent discussion on an issue.

The discussion seem to range into areas such as “STO can’t even call itself an MMORPG” to people happy the way it is all the way up to things such as insults based on dubious parentage and being told to “know thyself” in the biblical sense. If you are one of those individuals who think the death penalty is fine like it is, it seems that the executive producer for Star Trek Online agrees with you and here is why:

“Well, first and foremost, it’s a game. We thought of a whole bunch of different ways to do interesting things for respawn, but it really came down to getting players back into the action. You don’t lose your ship [if it blows up]; you just respawn at the beginning of the map with a little damage done to your systems. But overall, we don’t want you to spend 80 hours getting that Sovereign class vessel, get owned, and then lose that ship.”  – Craig Zinkievich

Personally, I couldn’t agree more.  One of the more irritating aspects of Eve Online is the risk of “losing it all” in one match (and that usually happens in Eve Online PvP).   There may be some people who feel that particular aspect of game play gives Eve Online it’s “white knuckles” feeling. While that may be true, what it generally means is the person with the biggest gun wins, and the match is almost never a fair measure of anything but time spent training and money spend on ships.  I do understand that there may be a bit of balancing to do where the pvp is concerned, and that is only natural as it is, after all, only the first day of the official launch. In the end, the pvp in Star Trek Online will be more of a measure of tactics taking place on a level playing field and that means alot more fun.

It was not that long ago Keen made a comment in a beta impressions article wishing whoever took Ferengi out of the game…well lets just say that the wish would have been very painful had it actually been carried out.  Well Keen will be one happy man today as he will no doubt find out that he and his brother can go back to role playing Ferengi.  The only catch, of course, is that it will cost 80 Cryptic points to do so.  Since Cryptic points currently run 500 for $6.25 that mean it will cost all of a dollar to play your favorite character. Is  it worth it? If you like Ferengi is sure is, and if it helps keep the game in the black I am all for it.  Now through in the ability to make a living hauling goods and defending those goods with your freighter and I will be the first one in line. Until then you will see my Liberated Borg online.

See You Online,

Julie Whitefeather

(posted by Webmaster for Julie Whitefeather)