What Is A Romulan?

  Legacy of Romulus hit Star Trek Online like a sledgehammer on glass-and STO’s hardware seemed to have been on the wrong end of that.  Despite the usual messes that plague major launches, it seems that the game is beginning to settle down, and people are already moving forward with advancing their Romulans in the game.

  I’ve managed to get through the Romulan content at this point, including the stuff I didn’t get to mess with while the expansion was on the test server-which is to say, everything that happens after the Nimbus series.  And what I’ve seen has impressed me.  Without going into specifics:  your character begins as a colonist after the destruction of Romulus a couple decades ago; the Romulan Star Empire has been undergoing a slow collapse, held together primarily by the will of Empress Sela (yes, that Sela for TNG fans) and the Empire’s secret police, the Tal Shiar-with the big name there being a charming guy named Hakeev (yes, that Hakeev for people who remember the Romulan Feature Episodes in STO).

  It’d be a pretty boring career, though, if you just played colony-building.  The name of the game is STO, after all, not MULE.  (Let’s see how many folks get that reference.)  Thanks to the intervention of the Tal Shiar and a mysterious-and apparently powerful-alien species, you wind up propelled off of your colony world and into the birth pangs of a new rival government:  the Romulan Republic.  Of course, the Empress doesn’t exactly greet this Republic with open arms….

  Some of the details are predetermined.  You know you can’t kill off Hakeev, for example, because the Romulan Feature Episodes dealt with his fate-along with Sela’s.  You are looking for a new homeworld to base the Republic, but not only has it been around since the last Season release, it’s on your map as “New Romulus” even before you get there.  But there’s plenty here to fill in blanks, and there’s plenty of intrigues as well:  because your prime opponent is the Tal Shiar, you can expect to be targeted for treachery or turning-and you will engage in that yourself.

  It’s already been talked about elsewhere on the whole “ally with the KDF or Starfleet” thing, and I won’t hash into that too hard.  I will say, though, that while the later missions-the ones that take place in Beta Ursae near Deep Space Nine and later-are headlined by the hierarchy of the characters of the two “major” factions, they do recognize that you aren’t actually in their chain of command, and you do tend to look at things from a Romulan perspective-albeit one that has chosen to work with said factions.  So even though your activity with the Romulan Republic goes into background until you get to the Vice Admiral level stuff for New Romulus, it’s still present.

  This storyline has caused a bit of a rift in the players of STO interested in the Romulans, though.  There’s a pretty vocal segment who are aghast at this story-they’re the ones who were interested in playing as the Tal Shiar, working with the Star Empire instead of working against it.  They decry the Republic as “just a generic race”-that the Romulans were never portrayed that way.

  So, I’m probably gonna offend them when I say, “so what?”

  Let’s leave aside the prospects that societies can change dramatically in the course of decades.  Let’s look at the Klingons for a minute.  If you go by how the Klingons were portrayed (and we’ll also ignore that they were portrayed VERY differently in the Original Series), you’d say that they’re all about battle, conflict, fighting.  If that were a fact, they’d all have starved to death because nobody would’ve had the brains to think about food.  (I suppose there’s always cannibalism…)  Someone has to do the farming; someone has to learn how to build stuff-and clearly, they did, because you can’t have an Empire without that.  Likewise, if all the Romulans did was scheme and intrigue and backstab everyone, there wouldn’t be enough people loyal to an Empire to start one.  We’ve seen everyday Romulans in the Unification episodes of the Next Generation; shockingly, they aren’t a monolithic culture.  What we see in the series is, honestly, a minority-starship captains and politicians.

Aid the Federation, aid the Klingons, but always the Republic-if you choose.

  The Romulans aren’t any more shoehorned into their roles than Starfleet is in their missions.  Or the KDF, for that matter.  There is no obligation for you to follow the storyline for the Romulans after you get to level 10 (the general area when you choose an allegiance to the KDF or Starfleet); at that point, you can do your own thing by going to the patrol missions or exploration missions, for example, or simple PvP; none of these require you to follow the storyline, and in fact, this was how the KDF lived at launch (except without the exploration or patrols).  In fact, if you want to get really technical, once you’ve made your first Romulan and done the tutorial, you don’t even have to do that.  It’s a safe bet that the Foundry will soon have a heap of Tal Shiar-aligned missions in it by players with the creativity and skills to make them.  In fact, if you want to minimize interaction with the episode structure, I’d say the would-be Tal Shiar player would just need to run maybe two missions:  the one that brings you to the point of choosing an allegiance, because player experiments show hideous game limitations if you don’t actually make a choice; and the one that begins an infiltration of the Tal Shiar (because that allows you the costume parts for a Tal Shiar uniform and the IRW prefix for your ship instead of the RRW prefix).

  By playing the episodes, whether you’re Starfleet, KDF, or Republic, you’re consenting to being shoehorned into the story developed by Cryptic.  If you’re looking to be something else, it’s your choice.  Speaking for myself, I enjoy the idea of the Romulan people trying to take this chance to get out from under the thumbs of manipulation by politicians and treachery from the Tal Shiar.  I wouldn’t object to seeing more underhanded activity taken by the Republic-old habits can reassert themselves-but I’ve got no issues with being the good guy.  And hey-I’ll bet real money that there’s a number of RP fleets in the game who have made the other choice and are doing their best to serve the Star Empire even in its weakened state.  The episode structure is only a set of shackles if you let it be.

An STO Public Service Announcement

The Romulans are Here-If You Get Online

  Okay, I think it’s time for another reality check for some people out there.

  Yesterday, Star Trek Online launched its long-awaited Legacy of Romulus expansion-free (that’s right, free) to everyone who plays the game.  Don’t let those “Legacy Packs” and “Starter Packs” fool you into thinking you need those for the expansion-you don’t.  Everyone can play it.

  Well…unless the servers scream for mercy from all the people and run into other unintended side effects that only become visible when you’re in a Live environment.  Which is sort of what happened yesterday.  Getting into the game was a challenge by itself; then another challenge in selecting characters, and finally even just logging into the first map of the Romulan tutorial (and I presume, logging into any first map, since people were undoubtedly rolling Klingons or playing established characters too).  And then the servers had to go down a couple of times to try to resolve the situation.

  I think it took all of about two minutes after launch for the complaints and demands for refunds.

  For a freemium game.

  For a single day of trouble.

  I don’t know if it’s because I’m an old guy nowadays, or if it’s because forum posters act like they’re in their early teens sometimes, but I just can’t wrap my head around it.  You could possibly have a case if the game were down for multiple day stretches; you could possibly have a case if you were a subscriber in that situation.  And I have a hard time believing that all of these complaints are coming from subscribers when most of the benefits of the game come for free.  As I don’t have access to account information, I couldn’t say how it breaks down, but I would suspect that you’d have your free players in the largest portion, your lifetimers in the medium, and the subscribers in the lowest.

  But that’s beside the point.  Because the game wasn’t down for multiple days, and people were getting in if they got lucky, so the servers were hardly down, and the devs were working to all hours to get the servers to a point where they can handle the abuse.

  Thing is: this isn’t unique.  Hell, it’s not even unique to STO.  Put in a new expansion, and of course the servers are gonna go nuts.  A Live environment is, no matter how close you get with your test region, different than the test region.  For starters, it’s got a lot more people.  No matter how much you try to get people to stress test your test region, there’s going to be a lot more who aren’t going to bother because they want to be playing the live game instead of testing it.  Errors happen.  I’ve seen it in just about every MMO I’ve played, with few exceptions.

  It’s not like Cryptic hasn’t had problems with all their servers lately with the release of Neverwinter; given the craziness of what’s been happening with that, is it really a shock to see that STO takes a hit too?

  And don’t get started on the queues.  Even World of Warcraft has had queues when it had big content hit.  Subs and lifetimers complain that they shouldn’t even have queues; what they ignore is that the terms of agreement on the whole mess is that they are put ahead of the free players in the queue.  So you’re 95 out of 400 in a queue?  This doesn’t mean there’s 94 free players ahead-it means you’ve got 94 subs and lifetimers ahead of you.  It happens.

  This is not a limited time event.  Legacy of Romulus is here to stay.  It’s not like a Feature Episode that’s only here for a week before the next one (and technically, those were around for longer than a week-they tended to have their specials around until some time after the last episode released); it’ll still be there today-heck, I was online this morning finishing up the tutorial for the Romulans.

  Maintenance happens.  Emergency maintenance happens.  If this surprises you, then you haven’t been playing MMOs for very long.  Launch days for expansions happen-and they go a lot like this.  Relax.  Take deep breaths.  The game isn’t going to vanish overnight.  If something like this really drives you that nuts, then maybe it’s time to think about your dependency on an MMO.

  You’ve been waiting for the Romulans for months now (or for some, ever since STO actually launched).  A day or two more isn’t going to weigh that much on the scales.

Another Aside on Makeb and the Republic (and the Other Side)

  Worth mentioning that I’ve started doing the Imperial side of Makeb, and from the direction it’s going, there’s a pretty good reason why the conclusion of the Republic storyline seemed to have been negated.  Not going into details (for now) to keep spoilers away (I reserve the right to go into detail at a future date, though), but it does show the benefits of running content with both Imperial and Republic characters!

Aside on Makeb and the Republic

  Turns out that the big bad of the Republic storyline on Makeb turns out to be a lot easier if you don’t do it as a team.  Took it out this weekend and was treated to a pretty good set of cutscenes.  Of course, thanks to this being an MMO, some of the information that came out after that kind of undercut the moment.  I had a similar reaction to the end of the Corellian storyline on the Imperial side.

Makeb: The Republic Point of View

  I’ve been spending time on Star Wars: The Old Republic lately getting reacquainted with my Smuggler character-and having him working on the Makeb content.  And for the most part, it’s been pretty good.

  Full disclosure:  most of the time I’ve been operating, I’ve been teamed with a friend of mine, so solo experiences may vary.

  The general gist of the storyline goes along the lines of this:  the Republic is winning the war.  The Empire is being set back on its heels.  But along comes the Hutt Cartel, which is beginning to throw its weight around on Makeb.  Add to that the fact that the Empire seems to be nosing around too, plus mysterious groundquakes that are planetwide…well, your Republic character has been put into an “interesting” situation.  It puts you in conflict with mercenaries, Imperials, some really nasty wildlife, and what I like to think of as “dino-droids”.

That’s right. You read it right. “Dino Droids”. (My name, not theirs.)

  To go into more detail on the story would be to risk spoilers, and I’ll hold off on that, instead trying to concentrate on my own reactions to the Republic side, as well as some random observations on the wider details.

  As I like my Smuggler in the Light Side of things, the story seemed to fit nicely with his general attitude (although I often cried to my partner-in-crime “why am I doing all this for free?”).  Unlike other planets, though, Makeb seems to have a scarcity of side-quests; there are a number of dailies, to help build up Makeb Reputation, and at least a couple of heroics.  As I haven’t hit the Makeb Endgame yet, I can’t speak to what happens after the single-player storyline is completed.  And I have hit level 55, the new maximum level in the course of normal play; keep in mind, though, that I’m still a subscriber, so I don’t have to deal with that reduced xp thing that the free players do-this may impact their leveling speed.

  And, oh, let me just say that I despise encounters that if you are a tad slow, you end up as one-shot killed.  Folks who have gone through it all will understand.  I’ve no doubt I’ll get past it, but as a mechanic I tend to have serious hate.  That’s a personal hang-up.

  The planet itself is a nice one to see.  Lots of mesas where the action takes place, and that lends itself to nice imagery.  Unfortunately, it also lent itself to quick-cuts when traveling.  On the other worlds, you can see the planet as you hit the taxis (or speeders, or what have you) to go to new areas.  On Makeb…you see the start of your flight path, and the end-and nothing in the middle.  So instead of giving you the impression that you’re on a world, you’re getting the impression that you’re going on completely unrelated maps.  I know some folks are fans of this, because of the whole “don’t wanna waste time traveling”, but it put me off a little.

  Crafting got a bit of a bump, giving a new cap of 450 in each of the related skills.  There’s new stuff to craft, too.  The thing that people need to be aware of is that not all of the crew skill trainers are in the same area.  Some are on the orbital station over Makeb, and some are on the planet.  Since you don’t have to worry about huge travel time between the two (or loading time), it’s not too onerous of a thing.

  In general, my view of Makeb is pretty favorable.  I miss hearing my companions chatting with me or making remarks during the cutscenes, but at least they make occasional remarks on the planet during travel.  The voiceovers remain consistent, so no worry about having silent communication with the folks you interact with.  And for the Smuggler, at least, you still get the trademark wit.

  I’ll likely cover the Imperial side of things in a later post, once I’ve done more of it on their side.  But I’ve at least done the initial portions of it, and they’ve got a very specific reason for being on Makeb-and it’s not because they feel that the Hutts are bad….

This Hutt is, though. Really. And learn to hate his most prized toy.

Expanding

  Things have been on the quiet side as the MMOs I’m involved with have been hip deep in expansion development.  But things are coming to a head-and I’ve been poking my nose into some of them.

  We had the release for the Rise of the Hutt Cartel release in Star Wars: The Old Republic last week, and I decided (based on comments I’d heard from people I trust) to plop down the ten bucks to purchase it.  And I have to say, I’m not sorry.  Just felt good again to see my characters in new situations.  And that includes the voice-work that’s pretty much TOR’s claim to fame; in fact, it’s a fairly good bet that the voiceovers were recorded at the same time as the work in the main game.  The writing is still true to the characters, at least to the ones I’ve seen for my level 50 characters-and true to the choices made at the end of Chapter Three for those characters.  My Agent, for example, is treated as the man who carefully removed all his tracks from every record (although apparently, that didn’t do as much good as he’d hoped); my Smuggler is still on good terms with the Republic bigwigs (I loved that one of his first dialogue choices of the expansion was “I didn’t do it!”); and my Inquisitor…well, he’s treated as an equal by the powers of the Sith Empire.

I didn’t do it!

  The story itself is different for the Empire than it is for the Republic, but the inciting point remains the same:  the Hutts have decided that they want to carve out their own bit of space, and put themselves on equal footing with the Republic and Empire-and the planet Makeb is a key point in this plan.  However, this move has gained the attention of the higher ups on both sides, and for different reasons, they send their best to Makeb.  The problem is that Makeb has its own secrets….

  A key attraction to the expansion is the upgrade of level caps from 50 to 55.  This has the usual problem of a new gear grind, which probably grinds the gears of the folks who did the gear grind with past Operations (Raids).  That’s an occupational hazard, but I imagine that having that gear allows them to deal with their opposition much easier than if they’d not had it.  But as a guy who didn’t do the gear grind, most of content is still possible with what was gained at the end of the road of Chapter Three.  That said:  I’ve only gone partway through the stories, and my highest level is presently 52, so I’ve got a ways to go.  Also introduced with the new cap were new caps to the crew skills-which include new crafting things.  I haven’t done much with that yet, but there are new recipes to learn, and new schematics to reverse engineer.

  There are also a pair of “mission items” involving Macrobinoculars and Seeker Droids, which I have yet to delve into, but are apparently related to returning to older planets to do stuff.  I approve-the planets shouldn’t be ignored.  Some of them have a lot of area that could be expanded upon without much work.

  At the same time, I got a closed beta invite to test out the new Romulan content for Star Trek Online’s Legacy of Romulus.  (I can say this because there is explicitly no NDA; three cheers for free advertising, right?)  So I’ve spent some time on the test server seeing what life is like as a Romulan colonist.  Well, until the Tal Shiar decide to blow it up.  Nobody likes the secret police of the ruler of the pieces of the Romulan Star Empire.

From colonist to starship captain. And destined to be a mover and shaker.

  The storyline for the Romulan captains have a certain resemblance to TOR, actually.  Your initial bridge officers you meet in missions, and they join your crew for their own reasons.  The plot is a bit more personal than it is for the Starfleet characters at low level.  There’s a cost, though, to the players:  these bridge officers do not appear to be modifiable at all.  It’s necessary for the plot of the early arcs of the Romulans.  On the brighter side, though, some missions appear to have Romulan bridge officers as rewards who are customizable, so I presume when certain stories reach their end, you can dispose of the old and bring in the new.

  Of course, along the line, your Romulan has to choose who the fledgling Romulan Republic must ally with-that is, someone who isn’t the Romulan Star Empire.  (It’s possible you may have trust issues with the Tal Shiar.)  And if you need to counter the Tal Shiar, you need someone big:  like the Klingon Empire or the United Federation of Planets.  Your choice between the two determines some of the future activity in the arcs, as well as your access to their resources-like their bridge officers, duty officers, starbases, fleets, and ships.  They’re so trusting, aren’t they?  I sort of disagree with that direction, but that fight was a lost one from the beginning.

  Fortunately, should you prefer to avoid playing with the toys of Starfleet or the KDF, you have your own to use-the Romulan Warbirds are all available as you level up.  The Romulans don’t get the same variety of ships to choose from-unless you count the additional choices they get from being allied with one of the two major powers in the game-but the ones I’ve played do pretty well.  With the Romulan ships comes a new mechanic-use of a Singularity Core, which not only powers your ship and impacts its warp speed, but also can trigger special abilities for the Warbird.  For the KDF and Starfleet, they’ll be getting new Warp Cores-although I don’t know if they’ll have special abilities to work with, or if they’re all passives.

  The work done on the Romulan faction has been impressive, and I’ve enjoyed playing through the first ten levels of storyline; I haven’t had the chance to go much further yet-hope to this week.  Even though there’s some polish and tuning that needs to be done-throwing some of the opponents that they do at low level is sick, which would make life hell for a non-veteran player-it’s clearly some of the best stuff the devs have cranked out yet.  I’m really hoping the KDF’s new content matches this.

  There’s also major changes to the interface’s look and feel.  I’m of two minds on that.  On the one hand, more customization is good; on the other hand, I’m old and set in my ways.  I’ll adapt.  (Not like a Borg, though.)  This includes the character creation process, which takes a lot of getting used to.

  I’ll pause for a moment for a rant, now.  One of the things that has gained a bunch of screams on the forums has been the advertising for “Legacy Packs”, which are basically bundles of stuff on the C-Store.  There is a big misapprehension that people seem to have making them think that it’s needed for the expansion-or that it IS the expansion.  It is not.  It is not a bunch of freebies for vets or lifetimers, either.  It’s about bringing the Romulans up to par with the KDF in terms of available C-Store ships and perks.  Nobody says you have to pay 100+ dollars for these packs.  They’ll hit the C-Store individually at their appropriate pricing in Zen.  These packs are for the folks who must have everything immediately and at a discount on what they would cost altogether on the C-Store.  The stuff vets and lifetimers are looking for will be different-the devs have already stated that they are working on the 1000-day veteran ship for the Romulans, and I would be very surprised if lifetimers weren’t given the ability to create a Liberated Borg Romulan or Reman (probably not both) to match what they can do for the KDF and Starfleet.  Folks who are lifetimers who insist they should be getting either of the available Legacy packs for free are either misunderstanding what the packs are, or are sadly deluded.

  So there’s the tale of the expansions.  Two very different games putting up new stuff, and if you like either game as they are now, you’ll like ‘em more with those expansions-even though the Romulans are still a month away, but the tradeoff is that you don’t pay for them.

What is a Faction, Anyway?

  It’s something that shows up in an awful lot of MMOs.  It’s in World of Warcraft.  It’s in Star Wars: The Old Republic.  It’s in EVE Online (in a typically more complex way).  It’s in Star Trek Online.  It was in Star Wars Galaxies and City of Heroes (although it took a while for it to happen there).  It’s in DC Universe Online.  It’s in the Secret World.  If a game includes PvP, the odds are good that it has factions.

  Ideally, the factions are roughly equal in effectiveness.  If they aren’t, the game risks having players gravitate hard to the one that is better.  This causes all kinds of problems.  Likewise, if you develop content for one more than the other, the population of the lesser is going to match the level of content it’s getting-which is to say, it’s gonna drop.

  Not all games have factions like that, however.  Lord of the Rings Online has its Monster Play, but everyone’s main character is on the side of the good guys; nobody’s working for Sauron (as far as I know, anyway).  Champions Online has only one faction as well-there are no player villains like in City of Heroes.  There are likely others that escape me at the moment.  EVE Online could either be said to have four factions, or hundreds, when you add in the assorted alliances.  Star Wars Galaxies had two factions, but there were a healthy amount of “neutrals” who worked the fringes, and profited from both.

  Recently, Cryptic announced its Legacy of Romulus which was introducing a new Romulan faction-at least, that was the assumption.  But with recent revelations from the “Ask Cryptic” on the subject, it calls into question the meaning of a faction.

Q: (midniteshadow7) Will the Romulan Faction have their own Fleet System, Starbase, and Holdings? Will there be any new Fleet Holdings?

Dstahl: This is an important question that needs a detailed answer.

The Romulan Republic was created from the ground up as a complete new faction. They have their own backstory, their own exclusive missions and episode series, exclusive costumes, faction-exclusive social hub, unique playable species, a full ship progression line from level 1 to 50, unique HUD UI, and more. What they don’t have are their own Starbases. There are many reasons why we’ve made this decision and here’s one of them.

During one of the episodes in the Romulan Republic storyline, the Federation and Klingon Defense Force will challenge Romulan captains to choose sides in the Federation-Klingon War. This permanent and personal choice forges a very important alliance. Once this decision is made, individual Romulan captains will gain many benefits through their alliance, all the while remaining their own independent faction. Romulans still continue their own independent mission journal and storyline after this choice, remaining neutral within the Romulan faction, but the choice has an impact on their progression towards end-game.

In many ways, Romulans will have the best of two “worlds” – theirs and their ally’s. Not only do they have their own exclusive stories, ships, and costumes, but they gain many benefits of their ally. This includes access to a variety of their allies’ ships, rewards, and hubs. While Romulans can’t wear the actual uniform of their ally, they do gain unique costume options, such as a Romulan Republic/Klingon Uniform variant, for example. So when a Romulan creates a Fleet, they are creating a Fleet that is open to Romulans of a chosen allegiance as well as members of that allegiance. Vice-a-versa, they’re also free to join existing fleets of their chosen ally.

Our goal is to encourage existing Fleets, many of whom have spent countless hours on their Starbases, to stay in business and welcome in New Romulans instead of splintering to go “do it all over again”. We want captains to group with Fleet mates who decide to start a Romulan and entice them to ally at end game. This not only works thematically, but it also keeps the conflict focused on the Klingon/Federation War.

Now that many established Fleets are finishing their Tier 5 Starbases, we expect to see established guilds enticing all the New Romulans to join their cause in exchange for access to the best ships and gear the ally can offer. In the future, we will consider unique Romulan Starbases. For now, the New Romulans are just getting their feet on the ground and must look to the planet New Romulus as their new home and rely on the Starbases of their ally for support.

Also, a new Fleet Holding is in development, but will be launching after the release of Legacy of Romulus.

  Later questions confirmed that in a PvP environment, the Romulans would side with their chosen allies, instead of  being considered their own side.  Their Duty Officers will come from their chosen allies as well (although apparently there are Romulan ones, but whether or not they are usable solely by Romulans is an open question).

  So:  is it really a faction?  What is a faction?

Are you going to tell these people that they don’t represent a faction?

  They can’t make Romulan fleets; or rather, they can make Fed/Rom or KDF/Rom fleets, but not Rom/Rom fleets.  I presume that if you ally with the KDF, you can’t join a fleet if it’s Romulans have joined the Federation.  They can’t fire equally on the KDF and the Federation.  They can’t have their own starbases.  At this point, I’m half suspecting they won’t even get their own homeworld (not Romulus, obviously, since it got blown up); I’m hoping to be wrong there.  To be a faction, you’d think they’d need to be able to stand on their own feet.

  But….

  The Romulans have their own ships.  Presumably, only the Romulans will be able to use those ships.  (We’ll ignore the details that they will also be able to fly the ships of their chosen allies.)  They will have their own episodes/missions that are unique to themselves.  Obviously, they’ll be able to make characters who are Romulans (or Remans, or a unique alien like the other factions).  They have their own uniforms, some of which admittedly are only available if they choose Federation or KDF.  In other words…in spite of not having the trappings of the standard factions, they will have their own distinct identity.

  While I’m somewhat disappointed in the decision to make the Romulans the way they are, I have to admit that there is in-game justification.  The storyline in the game has more or less hammered the Romulan people, both with the Feature Episode series that introduced Obisek and with the story of New Romulus, where D’Tan and his people are trying to create a new homeworld for the Romulan people without the mess that their Star Empire became.  And the “regular” storyline in the game didn’t treat the Romulans too well either.  At this point, they are not the mighty Romulan Star Empire that they were in the original series through Voyager’s episodes.  This is Rome in decline-but with the hopes of something better waiting in the wings.

  But to get there, they’ll probably need help-and both the Federation, who is known to help out old enemies if they reach a hand out in friendship, and the KDF, which is always interested in bringing new blood into its empire, are happy to supply what is needed.

  Just because you need help, though, doesn’t make you less of a faction.  For the Romulans, it’s not a theoretical question:  it’s the key to survival.  If D’Tan and his followers have their way, it will lead to a new beginning for them, and with the help of two great powers, they may once again grow into something great.  And if the Tal’Shiar have THEIR way…well, it’s a lot easier to stab an “ally” if their backs are toward you.

The Romulans Are Coming!

It’s here!

Romulus and Remus are gone. You are one of the survivors, struggling to survive in the aftermath of unspeakable destruction.

These are dark and dangerous times for your people, as the Tal Shiar crack down on any dissent and mysterious beings unleash terror throughout the far-flung colony worlds.

You will be the one to reshape an empire. Gather allies, go undercover and find the proof that will rally your people to revolt.

Together, you will rise up against an oppressive regime and demand freedom. You will fight for your people.

You are the Legacy of Romulus.

  Only a very short time ago, the big countdown reached zero on the teaser site for Star Trek Online, and it stands revealed as the next major publish:  Legacy of Romulus.  And the big news (to the surprise of some) is that yes, the game is indeed introducing the Romulan faction to the game.  That means that you can create a Romulan or a Reman-although I’m a bit surprised that the Hirogen aren’t on that list-fly the warbirds, and generally try to recover from the destruction of Romulus and the splintering of the Romulan Star Empire.

  But what does this mean?

  Well, among other things, it means that both Starfleet and the KDF are going to at least be temporarily losing players as they will certainly (presumably) want to play the new content-a full leveling experience from 1 to 50.  Some of these will have been waiting for Romulans since day one, so they may never return.  Others will return to their “home” factions once they’re “done”, while some will likely bounce around all three.  (Like, say, me.  I’ve got four max level KDF and Starfleet characters each, so why the heck not do the same for the Rommies?)

  Other little tweaks:  it looks like the character creator interface is going to mutate; I’d expected the third faction to be the reason behind redoing the character creator-it was the only way I could see that they could justify the effort-but the style is much more in line with the TNG LCARS interface (at least for Starfleet), which should make some purists jump for joy.  Does this mean the menus and other interfaces in the game will follow suit?  Who knows?  There also appears to be the long-requested ability to “retrait” your character, allowing you to change the choices made at character creation to specialize your character.

  So the Romulans are coming.  But what does this mean for the long-maligned Klingons?  A full leveling experience for the Romulans is the proverbial slap in the face, isn’t it?

Pretty interface….

  Well, too soon to say.  What is known is that their new page claims that you can level a captain from Starfleet, the Romulans, AND the KDF from 1-50.  This may or may not mean you no longer have to get to such and such a level to create a Klingon character-details are still sketchy and early.  This may or may not mean there will actually be content to fill the 1-20 levels, not to mention gap fillers for beyond that.  But still…it’s reason to be hopeful.

  On the other hand, it’s also possible that the Romulans will find themselves in a similar position as the KDF-too few missions, or missions that are Starfleet but twisted slightly to make them palatable for the Romulans.  How will they deal with the Feature Episodes, for example?  Or will they even be able to?

  Lots of questions, and there’s a couple months ahead where we’ll start learning the answers.  But there’s no doubt that the devs were serious when they said this was going to be “bigger than a Season publish”.  We’ll see if they can back that up with action.

Under The Sea No More!

  I haven’t spent a lot of time lately in Champions Online; maybe I had some early burnout from trying to manage too much there, and needed some time away from it.  It didn’t help that the big “mega-event” hyped by the developers there turned out to be just a few missions-admittedly rewarding Questionite, which can be used to get some higher end gear or get traded on their exchange for Zen (which itself can be used to buy stuff on the C-store or Z-store or whatever it’s called this week).  But as far as being satisfying content?  Iffy.

  That changed a little bit with an instanced mission inside of UNTIL’s HQ to keep the antagonists of the invasion-the Lemurians-from getting their hands on a bunch of dangerous power objects locked away in their vaults.  (Azuria from City of Heroes would be so proud.)  While it wasn’t exactly awe-inspiring, it did represent something new, even if it’s temporary-the entire event will presumably recur in the future, but we don’t actually know when or under what circumstances.  It may end up similar to whatever schedules they use for the Blood Moon event.

  Of course, the event could hardly end without a capper.  And man, we got one.

He’d like to meet you. Oops, sorry-I meant BEAT you.

  The final stage of the event is done via the Alert system, which is the fancy way of saying it’s a PvE queued event.  It’s good for 10 characters, and you’ll need them.  The Lemurians, after gathering their resources, have invaded Millennium City in force, striking from above and below ground.  Not only do you have to rescue the citizens of the city, but you also need to deal with finding the Mayor (and the Mayor), get the anti-aircraft guns working, and try to stop a magical ritual that will summon the Bleak Harbinger.  Try being the operative word, because it wouldn’t be really superheroic without having to deal with the biggest bad around.

  And the Harbinger is huge!  Honestly, I’m pretty sure (but not 100 percent sure) that it’s bigger than the Mega-Destroyer, which is a pretty big opponent to start with.  You have to deal with periods of invulnerability while Lemurian air support tries to keep you busy.  So you’re alternately fighting the Harbinger and the Lemurian fighters.  The fighters are probably why it’s recommended you have the recently-implemented vehicles with their weapon systems; of course, vehicles can only be obtained with real money-either by C/Z-Store purchase direct or with lockbox keys.  Or, amusingly, if you get really lucky with a reward in this Alert.  But no fear!  Flying characters with max ranks can hold their own, and UNTIL has thoughtfully provided spare advanced hover-disks for characters who have neither flight powers nor vehicles.

  I’m told that this event has been a bit hard on a graphics card; forum posts indicate that there is definite serious heating going on with it.  My own card sounded like it was forcing the fan to work a bit overtime, but it handled the event okay-no surprises with my graphics encountered.  My biggest complaint is that I couldn’t see any warning just before the Harbinger goes invulnerable again-because when he does, he hits everyone near him for massive damage.  It could probably be blocked if one knew it was coming.  Now, it’s also possible that I simply missed the cues-there are so many status conditions on the thing that it’s possible one of them was involved.  On the other hand, it’s not like items take damage in this game-so not so bad.

  All told, the event was worthwhile.  It did have growing pains-it was delayed a few times, not the least of which was to answer player complaints that once again, the alert was forcing players to level 30, which impacts rewards-and that’s important when a game of this age has little endgame or things to do at max level.  So it got retooled for level 35+.  And honestly, I think it’s better that way.  It’d be good to have more content for lower levels, but it shouldn’t come as a result of the Alert system; it should come as permanent story content.

  Which makes the imminent “Ask Cryptic” responses something worth waiting for.  Last week, the developers finally opened themselves up to questions about the game, and will respond to them in the next day or two.  Unsurprisingly, most of the questions tend to generally ask “does the game have a future, and just what does that future involve”?  The answers, I think, are going to be examined very, very closely.  But the fact that there is an “Ask Cryptic” imminent seems to indicate to me that there is a definite future in mind.  We’ll just have to see if it’s a future the players are willing to go along with.

Factional Issues

  One of the longest running issues with Star Trek Online is a fairly fundamental one:  the Klingon faction.

  Full disclosure:  I prefer playing Federation.  I’m more into the “boldly go where no one has gone before” than I am with “and conquer them”.  But I also hate to deny myself portions of the game worth playing, so I have as many max level Klingon characters as I do Federation ones.

  In an ideal world, these factions would be somewhat equal.  But it’s apparent through the lifetime of STO that the Klingons are the red-headed stepchildren.  The Feature Episodes are primarily written with the Federation in mind; sure, the Klingons can play, but it always seems to jive with the Federation viewpoint more than the Klingons.  It gets worse with the joint missions; these two factions are at war, but apparently they can drop all that for “bigger problems”.  Admittedly, those bigger problems include Borg and Undine and others, so that’s an excuse.  On New Romulus, though, the Klingons would be more likely to try to conquer it than help them become strong.

  It’s even worse than this story bias, though.  The Federation gets the lion’s share of C-Store offerings; new ships regularly appear on the store for Starfleet.  In the last year, there has been exactly one ship class released for the Klingons; seven for the Federation.  (Actually, I tell a lie; I went back to the 2012 anniversary to count-otherwise, the Klingons wouldn’t have any.) 

This is the face of Not Happiness.

  The developers would tell you that Klingons just don’t sell well.  And there may be a point to that-they have the spreadsheets, after all.  But the deck is stacked:  you buy the game (well, now just download it.  I’m a dinosaur…), and you can immediately create a Federation character.  You can’t create a Klingon, though-not until you get a Federation character to level 24.  At which point you can make a Klingon at level 21.  Why is this?  Because there isn’t enough Klingon content in comparison with Federation to create a solid leveling path from level 1 to 50.  And this was actually an improvement:  originally when the game came out, KDF started at level 6, and had even less content than they do now.

  The Klingon players have been fighting for equality in STO practically from open beta.  Which brings us to this.

  Looks like something big is coming in May-and information is a little over two weeks away.  And it’s obviously Romulan.  Now, it shouldn’t be too surprising to hear that there is a group of players who are chomping at the bit for a Romulan faction to enter the game.  Which means this teaser is going to end up potentially angering someone.

  The would-be Romulan players would want something at least similar to what the Klingons have now; of course, they’d prefer a full faction storyline similar to what the Federation has.  If either happens, the Klingon players are likely to be infuriated; after all, that’s content development time that should have been spent bringing the Klingons up to snuff.  On the other hand, it could just be an announcement of the culmination of the story developing since the early days of STO where certain big bads finally make their official debut after being teased in episodes and missions-which would annoy the would-be Romulan players, since so many seem to be pinning their hopes on this teaser.  I’m kind of leaning towards the former than the latter, though; the developers of STO have hinted that what’s coming is “bigger than a Season”, which is their usual name for major publishes, and they are talking about revamping the character creator-which, honestly, doesn’t need it.  Unless it’s being set up for a new faction.

  If that’s the case, I expect the Klingons to go to full warfare mode.  I’m dubious that there are more Romulan fans than Klingon fans, and I’m fairly sure that this could well be the last straw for many of the Klingon players.  The lead producer has frequently said that his goal is to complete a fully fledged Klingon faction in the game-but here we are, three years into STO’s lifetime, and the Klingon Players have a long list of promises made over that time which have yet to see fruition.  I predict that the moderators of the STO forums will be working overtime in a little over two weeks, because I believe there will be a lot of venom-laced posts if things go the way I think they will.