STO – That Was the Head Start That Was

And I spent most of that head start not being able to log into Star Trek Online for various reasons, not always the fault of the game.

Sure, at one point I spent long time looking at this message.

Then there was the case of the message in the launcher explaining that the server was down when the server status indicator said the server was up.  And it was up.  The danger of using the news feed on the launcher for transitory messages I suppose.

I was certainly not alone in having trouble getting into space.

And then there was a point on Saturday when the server was up, but my daughter wanted to go do some quests in the Outlands to get her Deathknight another level.  We did that and we watched a movie. (Shanghai Knights, because we like Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson and enjoyed Shanghai Noon the weekend before.)  And then I had to let her play with the character creator.  I went and read a book while that went on.

But eventually things seemed to settle down.  There were a couple more updates.  And by late Sunday afternoon I was able to spend a decent stretch of time concentrating on the game and… well… figuring out what was going on.

It would have helped if I had done the “go talk to the so-and-so at Earth Spacedock” missions (quests) first.  But there was Commander Sulu (no, not that one… some relative I’d guess) ready with a patrol mission to go oppress miners again, so I put off, yet again, learning that I could just open a hailing frequency to Starfleet to finish a mission.

Were I designing, I might have put those guys in the same room with the Admiral and perhaps had Commander Sulu stand somewhere else.

And yes, I spent so little time in-game during the open beta that I hadn’t figured that out yet.  There are all sorts of things to find.

I went about looking into skills, filling out my bridge crew, and running some missions.

I’m going to have to figure out how to get a group shot with my bridge crew.  While I am mildly adverse to playing a female character myself (if only to avoid retribution for the metric tons of crap I’ve given others for doing that) I have no problem setting up a bridge crew that looks like an outer space episode of Charlie’s Angels, complete with a Vulcan Bosley carrying the medical tricorder.

And you should see them kick butt on away team missions.

Once things had settled down I found the game enjoyable.  Ship combat works for me, and the ground combat went from something I wanted to avoid to something I started to enjoy.  I did feel like perhaps I wasn’t inline with the spirit of the prime directive when I found that success on the ground often lay in shooting first and rifling the corpses for loot.  But those Klingons… and Orions… were not really sociable when I tried introducing myself before shooting.

I also found Potshot (and Mrs. Potshot) in game where we continued our downtime obsession of figuring out the perfect fleet name.  There have been many amusing ideas, but no clear winner as yet.

All in all, enjoyable once I could get into the game.

Was it like that very first weekend of EverQuest?  Or even EverQuest II?

No, I did not feel compelled to play every possible second.

Things have changed since 1999.  There are other options when the server is down.

And I am not as OCD about games as I once was.

Okay, that last bit is probably a lie.  I just haven’t figured out what to obsess about yet in STO.

But I know I’ll be playing this game for a while.  Adventurer Historian spotted the liberated Borg headset in my previous head start weekend post.

Happy early birthday to me from my wife.  Thank you sweet heart!

And GameStop’s automated system called me up to let me know my pre-order will be available for pickup tomorrow.  It appears that none of my local stores are among the ten that will be opening up at midnight for the big launch.