Posted by J.A. Laraque | 0 Comments

Star Trek Online: Expanding Universe Part 1

Red Alert, Team Cryptic has given us information on the upcoming content update titled Season I: Common Ground. More after the break.

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Posted by J.A. Laraque | 8 Comments

Star Trek Online – Developer Chat Breakdown

A few days ago Jack Emmert spoke on Star Trek Online in a Best Buy sponsored chat. Here is a rundown of what was said.

• The STO team plans to offer expansions though none are available yet. One of their goals is to offer more playable factions.
• There were about 60 developers involved in STO
• The core of the development team came from the City of Heroes and Champions Online team
• The do not intend to compete with World of Warcraft
• Most of the content was focused on the TNG and DS9 cannons with a little Voyager thrown in
• They plan to use ship fleets for the purpose to explore content and raid with many raids ready to go at release
• A future plan is to make it possible to “tap” into STO from the web
• No support for MAC (lawl)
• The game was in development for 2 years
• The game will have a teen rating
• They are working on more bridge functionality
• “You will be able to solo to your heart’s content”
• There will be a ton of social spaces in the game such as planets where you can go to in order to socialize and more
• There will not be any traditional crafting in STO
• Guilds are called fleets
• As for crafting: “Memory Alpha is the Federation’s science…hub? Depot? Players collect bits of information and take it to Memory Alpha. They can get cool stuff in return for specific things.”
• No custom CGI ships can be added due to licensing
• There is PVP and Klingons are a full on PVP faction
• Data wipe after beta
• No limit on disposable crew members
• “A player can change the nacelles, the engines, the saucer, the stanchions…and the colors (to a limited degree). Ships still look like Trek, but you can make your ship distinct.”
• As to how do raids and fleet actions work: “Right now, we’ve got fleet actions – where a whole bunch of people are needed to tackle tasks that open up one at a time. First you’ll need to take out the ships, then the mines, then the next wave of ships…That’s for space. Ground maps work similarly. Persistent maps with staged tasks.”
• Infinite races with their own alien gen tech, create your own race
• Each player is a captain of their own ship
• You can name your ship anything you want too
• You can purchase a lifetime subscription
• At launch there will be two character slots
• About 30% of the game occurs on the ground
• Updates and patches will be delivered the same as it was in City of Heroes
• Lifetime membership is $239
• There will be instance zones
• User generated content may be added in the future
• Ship controls are default WASD
• You can target specific ship systems
• A couple thousand exploration maps
• The Delta Quadrant will be one of the expansions
• 80 plus hours to reach the rank of Admiral
• No forced PVP
• Only death penalty is crew loss so far
• Mini-games and a diplomacy system will be added to the game in the future
• The “Mirror” universe is in the game in some capacity

So those are most of the highlights from the chat. I must say he answered a lot and didn’t real duck any questions. If you want to read more check out the full transcript here.

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Posted by Spooner | 1 Comment

Nov. 9th 2009 – For the Lore tonight! Pre-show starts at 6:45 EST

Tune in tonight at 6:30PM EST for the pre-show and enjoy our For the Lore Podcast. We do this every Monday and the show itself is available for download on Wednesdays (typically) via iTunes.

Today we’re going over the Star Trek and Star Wars MMORPGS. We’ll talk a bit about WoW and Dragon Age Originas as well as the ending to Borderlands.

Finally the round out the show’s live broadcast is a big round table debate, which really means lots of cursing and nerd raging, about Aion.

Now for some links!

THE SHOW PAGE

THE LIVE BROADCAST

A PICTURE OF MY DOG

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