Ark's Ark

Champions Online announces First Expansion

Slightly oddly timed during the Star Trek Online End of Beta Event, Cryptic have announced their first paid expansion for Champions Online.

Chronomancer:
Vibora Bay Watch
Weâ€™ve had a big secret here at Cryptic, and we canâ€™t hold it in any longer. Over the past few months weâ€™ve been working like mad on our first (untitled) expansion for Champions Online! The setting is Vibora Bay, one of the Gulf Coastâ€™s largest and most exciting cities. Itâ€™s a center of commerce, culture, tourism, and some incredibly strange goings-on. It maintains unusual traditions of mysticism and religion along with an eclectic group of inhabitants and frequent paranormal activities. Heroes constantly face threats of global proportions, but this time the crisis is greater than ever. The apocalypse has come, and it rides upon the half angelic / half demonic wings of Therakiel.

A web page is currently in the works that will feature screen shots, a video trailer, and detailed information on this level 37 â€“ 40 mega-adventure pack, so stay tuned for more information!

Daeke: I’ll cut off this speculation before it even begins. Vibora will be our first paid content expansion. I can’t talk pricing yet, but it will not be something on the scale of a full boxed game. It is a new zone, and will be priced accordingly.

I’m already being hard on STO, so I’ll skip the obvious remarks about a single-zone paid expansion for an MMO that five months ago launched woefully short of content, and continues to be. Oh darn.

Star Trek Online End of Beta Bonanza

Continuing on from Star Trek Online Open Beta LiveBlog Bonanza Part 12.

Or you could return to the beginning of our STO Open Beta coverage with Part 1.

7:59 pm GMT, Day, er, lets call it Day 15

It is the last day of the Open Beta! In three days time, on Friday, the doors will open for Headstart.

There have been a couple of smallish patches since last I wrote, but no patch notes. Might have just been hard to describe stability improvements, but I am somebody who likes to rummage through patch notes, so the lack makes me a little sad.

We’ve been promised some surprises before this parallel universe folds in on itself, probably starting in a couple of hours. I’ll be sure to keep you informed as to what the festivities entail!

8:42 GMT, Day 15

The events aren’t supposed to be starting until about 10 pm GMT, so I’m killing time pootling about in the Briar Patch, the area of space made famous by Star Trek: Insurrection. Lieutenant T’Rix takes an instant dislike to the area, possibly because it is also home to the largest honey-nut Cheerio in the universe.

Born and bred in a Briar Patch.

10:13 pm GMT, Day 15

And so it begins. The Klingons are attacking Sol. Unfortunately they have the same spawn point as the Federation. Coupled with their low numbers, this is not looking like a fun time to be a Klingon.

Star Trek Online End Of Beta Event Sol Klingon Attack 300x177

Another glorious Federation Victory!!!

Klingons are lasting seconds. Poor fellows. I do hope this isn’t the whole of the End of Beta event, because all it’s doing at the moment is demonstrating how ill-thought out PvP is in Star Trek Online. The zone-in point is, of course, filled to the brim with Federation mines. They have no chance whatsoever of getting a foothold.

I’m in Sol instance 77, btw, if you want to say hello! If you’re a Klingon, I suggest pooling your resources in one instance. Maybe things are going better for the Klingons elsewhere.

As I lack the necessary killer instinct to engage in mass-spawn killing, I have retreated a little distance away. Hoping that the tide will turn against us. Perhaps they’ll get some NPC assistance. Certainly can’t rely on a Dev turning up with as many instances of Sol as we have.

10:38 PM GMT, Day 15

I’m receiving reports that some Klingons have managed to get onto the station. It is only about 10 seconds at full speed from where you zone in to where you get asked to beam aboard, so this seems possible, especially as they might be getting onboard from a space instance less packed with Feds. Going to dock and take a look.

The station instance I arrive at has one Klingon spawning over and over again. Kind of like in space, but you can see the face of your victim. Going to head back outside.

Hmm, reports are that the Klingons are not surviving long enough to get the option to be able to leave the zone, so they’re stuck there. Tempers are fraying over there.

10:51 GMT, Day 15

*crackle*

Request for assistance *hisss* All Federation Vessels.

Can anyone hear me? It’s the Borg!!!!

Argh! It's like Wolf 359 all over again!!!

11:10 pm GMT, Day 15

Borg are appearing on our Space Stations, and in Sirius Sector space. What do they want? Why now? Nobody knows, but it probably has something to do with assimilation.

11:59 pm GMT, Day 15

Not what you want to see at your spawn point! Now we’re the ones being camped!

Star Trek Online End Of Beta Event More Borg 300x177

The arrival of the Borg Cubes

I’m not entirely sure what we’re supposed to be doing. These are instanced battles you get to from Sector Space, much like the regular ones you’d find elsewhere. The normal ones have goals, but these just seem to be us vs Borg.

00:35 am GMT, Day 15

Things aren’t going much better back on the Station! Endless waves of Borg are drubbing us soundly. Endless. Waves. Mindyou, we endlessly respawn too, so it is only fair. Beginning to get a little bor(g)ing, truth be told, as we don’t seem to have any goal, as such. It’s also a bit of a struggle fighting all these level 50 enemies in space and on the ground for little old me. Doesn’t seem to be a level-up NPC about like there as for the Champions Online End of Beta event.

Star Trek Online End Of Beta Borg Station Assault 300x177

If you're looking for Sulu, he's right through that door.

Champions Online also had achievements you could unlock that would carry forward to the live game. I’ve not seen anything like that here. I hope I’m not missing one!

2:00 am GMT, Day 15

The Star Trek Online Open Beta is officially over, and thus so is my Open Beta liveblog. I hope it was vaguely useful to someone somewhere! What did you think of the Beta, if you were in it?

Update: I’ve posted my final thought on the current state of Star Trek Online here.

Oh Dear, Star Trek Online. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Would somebody please buy the Cryptic team a Next Generation boxset. Ideally force the marketing team to watch it too. I’m all for trying to attract non-trekkers, but there are actually quite a lot of Star Trek fans. I think we’d be a big enough demographic for them to do quite well, if they’d stop trampling on our childhoods Abrams-style.

That sound you can hear is Gene Roddenberry spinning in his grave.

I’ll be writing my final Star Trek Online conclusions some time between the end of Open Beta (to give them a chance, however slim, for a wonderpatch), and the beginning of headstart.

In the meantime, that advert pretty much tells you what you need to know about STO as it currently stands.

Qeynos declares war on Evony.

Oh Evony. We trieds to leaves yous alone and lonelies.

Arkenor says:

I wrote a little story, back in the day, about you stealing content from Civilisation, mostly because of the high regard I holds Civ in. Also because it was incredibly easy to prove what you’d done, and I am lazy.

That got picked up by quite a few sites, and was used as primary source material for many a tale about the internet. To this day most of our incoming links are to that post. Folks far more influential than we had picked up the banner, occasionally falling foul of frivolous litigation. We moved on to things more fun, because you, Evony, are not very much fun at all. Not to mention that you’ll steal anything that isn’t nailed down.

Yes the indeeds. We were letting bygones be goneby, and all thats.

But this time you’s gone too fars, Evony. You’s messing with my’s Queen. This is what is happenings to the peoples who mess with my’s shiny Queen Antonia.

Queen Antonia And Maltheas Beat Up Murrar Shar In Everquest 2 300x179

Nos to the stealings my Queenships images!

Yes, she always the underdresseds at bests of time, but that does not be givings you the right to be using hers to advertise for yous horrid game.

As spotteds by Krystalle, who is kindly lettings us display evidences of the infamous deedishness heres:

What, she was wearings too many clothes for you, so yous removeds even more? Also, she not glows like thats. When I call her the shinies glowies Queen, it was the metaphors!! You’s sos stupids!

I’s been speakings to her Queenliness, and the Council, and we’s not takings such mean insultings lying downs. This is the wars, Evony! Not being able to be leavings Norrath is going to make it the trickies to give you the vigorous hammer-cloutings yous deserve, but just yous be waitings! The magicals Concordium are workings on the portal spells as I writes.

I shall be stridings about yous world likes a mightyish colossus, smitings yous horrible tiny stolen bitmap cities with the full 3-dimensional furies. Like sos!:

A poorly made artist's impression of what Maltheas is going to do to Evony.

Repents you’s evil ways, before it too lates! Repents!!

Trojan Reports from sites (like this one) using Adsense are false positives.

Ahoy, dear readers.

A couple of you have gotten in touch today telling me that your virus checkers have been going nuts this morning when visiting this site. As I hadn’t changed anything overnight, I had a bit of a panic attack.

What it is (as I discovered after about 30 minutes of terror) is that the Kaspersky anti-virus software did an update overnight, which had a teeny mistake in it that gives an alarm for any website that uses google adsense (which is an awful lot of us). This is described over on the Kaspersky forum.

It is a false positive, and will be getting fixed by them as soon as they can get around to it. I apologise for any fright Kaspersky users may have had on visiting my site.

Squadron Leader Jack Steel and the Starblade – Season 2 launches….. NOW!!!

Jack’s Back, baby!!! The continuing adventures of Jack, Bilkins, and Yvette will thrill you and chill you, possibly, or at least mildly entertain you!

I’m really pleased with Season 2, which starts with episode 7. It is a quantum leap in quality from our first year. We learned a lot from year one, and our musicians and sound engineers have done an extraordinary job with the resources available. I am just a humble actor (cringing whenever I hear my lines) in this production, most of the hard work being done long before and long after I’ve left the studio.

If you happen to like our little show, do please share it with anyone else you think might be interested. Season one’s Episodes 1-6 are also available through the player below.

Episode 7 – Into the Aether

With his plans to subjugate the British Empire in tatters, Quaxorian agent Mordred Pendragon has fled into the depths of space to rendezvous with his alien masters. In close pursuit, Squadron Leader Jack Steel pilots the earthship Starblade, his mission simple: Stop the alien fleet before it reaches Earth and wipes out human civilisation.

Johnny Depp is not dead.

Part 2 of a series wherein my friends inform me someone is dead, and I tell them that they are not. This time they actually had posts on semi-legitimate media to point at. But nevertheless, he is not dead.

That the alleged CNN report that everyone keeps sending me (and that I won’t link to) is hosted on an Angelfire server might have been a bit of a clue. It’s no wonder phishers do so well.

Alexa