Made captain over the weekend – Have to say I’m absolutely loving the defiant class starship. This thing puts out some serious damage – with all my cool downs active I can rip through most ships before I even turn away to make another pass at the ship.

I’ll be making another video this weekend of just how amazing this “tough little ship” really is!

Its been a fun ride through the galaxy so far, gotten some really cool upgrades, no epics as yet though! Mind you saying that, if I did get an epic drop I would probably try to sell it on the Exchange.

I’ve also created 2 alts – 1 science officer (see below) and 1 Engineering officer. I plan to level these guys up after I’ve reached the level cap – I’m most interested in the science officer – I’ve sort of created a back story – The captain of the USS Cardassia – the first federation ship of all cardassians.

That’s going to be lots of fun from what I’ve seen other science vessels doing its pretty amazing stuff actually – such a new and interesting way to look at “healing”

I’ve also been on a bit of a spending spree and purchased a couple of the major cannon starships from the shows/movies that are currently available to me!

My Danube Class Runabout.

I’ve been Commander now for a few days, and my new ship is getting more powerful by the minute!

I promised some video’s so here goes!

First – Shortly after hitting commander I did a nice fly by around Earth Space Dock.

Then I popped to Starbase 24 to make sure some Klingons knew it was a good day to die!

Finally a nice HD video of me orbiting Deep Space Nine with the DS9 Theme in the background! How it should have been in game!

Brilliant! I’m only 3 levels from getting my hands on a Defiant class ship! I really can’t wait!

As you might have guessed from the last video I’ve changed the visual configuration of my ship – looking much sleeker and more powerful, wouldn’t you agree?

I found a planet that looks like Grizzly Hills in Northrend!

]]> http://retribution-paladin.co.uk/2010/02/star-trek-online-day-9/feed/ 0 http://retribution-paladin.co.uk/2010/02/star-trek-online-day-9/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Retribution/~3/fMO-89aI0wM/ http://retribution-paladin.co.uk/2010/02/star-trek-online-day-6/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:32:48 +0000 alex http://retribution-paladin.co.uk/?p=385 Captains Log, Stardate 63560.3.

3 Days have passed since my last log entry, and its been a bumpy ride. The crew and I have been bought together through thick and thin and we’ve made it.

We’ve battled the Romulans, Remans, and Hirogen in his sector of space, and its been tough – we even bumped into a Crystaline Entity. (wow I forgot how corny the first season of TNG was..!)

Obviously I took a few pictures to chronicle my adventures – not nearly enough though!

Rescuing the crew from a Runabout.

Fighting Some Romulans.

Me in my TNG Uniform I got with the Collectors Edition.

To seek out new life….with HUGE Heads!!

On the Bridge of the Retribution-A

Large Federation Fleet fighting a massive Romulan Fleet.

Promoted to Commander…

This evening I was promoted to Commander. The USS Retribution NCC-94155-A has been mothballed and my new command, USS Retribution NCC-94155-B, has been commissioned. Some pictures below of her.

My first full day at Lieutenant Commander yesterday was filled with intrigue and danger as we were ordered on a few secret missions into regions of space filled with Klingon’s!

First was a mission that sent me into the Briar Patch – made famous by Captain Picard in Insurrection. This was a particularly dangerous mission – Stay away from the clouds of Metreon Gas. Or use them to your advantage! Luring the Klingon’s towards you while staying at least 4km’s away from the clouds but making sure they get close then firing on them! BOOOOM!!

This was all a long line of missions where I had to save Mirral Paris, the daughter of Tom Paris and B’lenna Tores, the Kuva’magh, the Klingon that held the key to restoring the Klingon’s of the TOS era back to their former ridge-headed glory. Eventually that lead me to the Guardian of Forever.

The guardian explained that Mirral had been taken back in time to 2270 and that I had to go back in time to restore the time-line as history had changed – the Klingon ambassador who had gone back in time had used the star ship and technology to destroy the then smaller and weaker Federation.

When we were transported back in time by the Guardian the crew and I found that the Enterprise was being attacked by the ambassador and 2 K7 class Klingon vessels – quickly we saw them off and the Ambassador fled the area – Commander Spoke hailed us and we were quick to respond that we were there to help – but didn’t want to give away too much to him.

I’m now Leuitenant Command 3rd grade (out of 10) – Well on my way to Commander which I should hopefully make by the end of the week!

The servers went down for an hour and a bit last night again, as things started to get busy – I’m hoping that Cryptic sort this out as tomorrow there’s the potential for even more people to get into the game.

They introduced a queuing system similar to Aeon when it was busy – but no-where near as bad.

If you do ever decide to play the game, dont go on the forums when the servers are offline – the amount of bitter twisted selfish people on there moaning about how they should be online and not anyone else, or griping about how they should get their money back or they’ll sue Cryptic! I mean seriously – its not even that bad. I think they might be good to make a European server to help spread the load then at least they might not have to deal with too many people sitting on 1 shard. But I guess you cant start second guessing how many people will be playing your game till things settle down.

Personally I hope this game keeps going for a while – I’m really enjoying it so far! A little too much actually! If thats possible. Who am I kidding – of course it is!

I’m really glad i decided to go with the escort class as my starting ship – I’ll be trying to make a video later on of a typical space battle and uploading it to Youtube. Not sure how Fraps works in the game yet so fingers crossed!

On a side note, bumping into the Enterprise like that and hearing Spock talking to me was simply epic. Towards the end of that mission the Enterprise turns up to help out again again and for the smallest second I felt like I was there… Cryptic have managed to capture things of the shows that I didn’t think possible in a game.

Yesterday I made the rank of Lieutenant Commander, but it wasn’t easy! I was thwarted at 8pm till midnight by the server! I was minutes away from being promoted and the server went down for emergency maintenance – I’m not sure what happened – no read anything official as yet, but all is not lost – I made it.

Now my Reliant vessel is put out to pasture and is renamed USS Protection.

My new ship is a cross between Saber and Rapier class escort ships. She’s faster, quicker and with 4 forward facing weapons, she’s Deadly.

I give you the USS Retribution NCC 94155-A.

She’s devastating compared to the Reliant i was using – its great to be back in this ship after loosing here in the beta cleanup. Now begins my long slog to Commander and my 3rd tier vessel – The Akira class.

Here are a few pictures of my antics around the quadrant from yesterday prior to getting my new ship.

Even given the 4 hour outage last night – STO has had the cleanest launch of any MMO I’ve had a part of – its stable, and more importantly – loads of fun! See you out there!

6pm last night Cryptic activated the servers, and after 5 mins or so I was able to log into the game and create my first Character on the live servers.

You start the game as a Federation Ensign on board your first ship – Miranda Class – USS (Insert Name you chose) in the middle of a massive battle with the Borg!

Quickly you’re told to rush to the bridge where the captain needs to see you! Once there, he orders you across to a nearby ship in need of help! Off to the transporter room!

Wow that transporter pad is BIG! A few seconds later I’m aboard the other ship – ready to meet up with their Emergency Medical Hologram who’s the highest ranking officer left on board. The Borg have oddly been killing all the senior officers on the ship…curious…I hope my ship’s crew will be ok??? So after I learn how to use my tri-corder its off to help some of the crew.

I bumped into some Borg on the way – took quick action and finished them off pretty quick with my phaser. That showed em!

Moving through the ship quickly helping to fix sub systems, and restore power to the crippled starship I beamed back to my ship to find that a Borg boarding party had beamed across while I was aboard the other ship and had killed all the officers! Oh no! And, by some bizarre twist of fate, I was now the highest ranking member of the crew!

I was now in command of the USS Retribution. My first job was to quickly beam off some hurt people from stranded ships nearby before they blew up, then meet up with another ship who repaired my major systems on board and then it was off to fight the Borg! A quick battle ensued – the Borg were having some problems it seems, but needless to say – the Federation won the day!

However the victory was bitter sweet – my captain was dead, and all the other officers. I was quickly promoted to captain of my vessel and began my voyages around the alpha quadrant!

…To Boldy Go Where No MMO-Player Has Gone Before…

Yes that’s right folks! Its here! Star Trek Online has finally come to the masses. Starting in just under 30 minutes the headstart of the latest MMO from Cryptic begins.

I’ve been playing the open beta for 3 weeks now and I’ve loved every minute. Cryptic has managed to capture the magic that made Star Trek the show/movies special.

The beta was loads of fun – I managed to make myself to Lieutenant Commander 5th grade before they shut down the servers on Wednesday in preparation for the head start. I’ve logged into WoW twice in that time and that was only to chat to a friend for a bit. Warcraft has lost its edge for me as we get closed to Cataclysm – even the draw of being able to finish the Arthas story line was not enough to pull me away from STO.

The site will be changing a little in the coming week or so – I’m going to still write about WoW but I think it’ll be little to none until Cataclysm arrives.

I’m going to update a few of the graphics around the above theme/pictures I took in the beta. More posts will follow my exploits in the Alpha quadrant as I work my way to Admiral and into the end game content.

Here follows some nice screen shots I took from the Beta – coming soon will be more stuff from the live servers.

I hope to see a few of you out there!

Lets start from my first impressions of 3.3

5-man Dungeons – I cleared all 3 heroic dungeons last night with a group from the guild the hardest part of this was the first boss in the 2nd instance.  That nasty piece of work in there wiped us a couple of times before we figured out what the crack was with him. You really have to move fast when he starts casting that explosion as the the range on it is quite large. So watch out!

25-man ICC – Independent entered the instance and were greeted with the one thing I’ve not seen properly in a raid since Black Temple/Sunwell – TRASH! Not just any trash – really hard trash! Trash we had to actually thing about pulling and not just sending in a tank to AOE tank the lot of them. These dues hit hard, and fast! and The most odd things are linked to them! So just watch what you’re doing in there with your pulls.  Lord Marrowgar was relatively easy – we got him down on our 3rd try once people figured out what was what – not much trash on the way to the 2nd boss thankfully. 

Lady Deathwhisper is a real wake up call to people I think – everyone has to be on there game in there – especially the Melee and mages.  We had a fairly strong melee group last night and once we figured out what we were doing with the adds and avoiding the nasty zombie dudes who hit for 60k. (ouch!!) We had a few attempts on her leading up to 23:00 when we usually end raids.  at 22:50 we started what was to be our last attempt  – We’d worked out Phase 1 – gotten Lady Deathwhisper’s shield down and gotten her down to about 20/30% when she enraged. So we started – we were doing really well – her shield was going down faster – melee were controlling the adds and things were going well…..then….

“WTF??? LAG!!!”

“Nooooooooo!!!!”

“I think I’m DC’ing”

Vent errupted in the above and we were all logged out to the character screen.

“Everyone back in fast – we give this 1 more try before we finish”

Blizzard had kindly reset the instance server with us in it – and in doing so the trash had respawned infront of Lady Deathwhisper! D’oh!!

This brought our raid to an abrupt and very annoying end! We had her!! 2 more minutes and we’d have gotten her down! Tonight she wont be so lucky!

Other things I’ve not 100% experienced so far is the LFG system. I joined the LFG thing to try it out, but was called into a guild run before it had a chance to do its thing – however our party leader used it to call in a dps for the last instance as we lost one – and it bought in a well geared warlock from another server – no problems – he was a nice guy too – knew his stuff as he’d been on the PTR a lot it seemed or at least done it on normal mode a few times that day – his comment to us at the end was quite amusing though:

“I thought it was on normal mode for a minute there cos you guys were burning through it so fast!”

I’m eager to give the LFG system a proper try tomorrow night or over the weekend when I get time to do so.

We completed our weekly raid quest when we took down Marrowgar – love the rewards for that: 33g, 5 Emblems of Frost, and 5 Emblams of Triumph. Wish it was daily!!!

One thing that did irritate me a bit – the cost of the saronite reagent you need to start the Shadowmourne quest line – 23 emblems per item – as I don’t think I’m going to be getting any of the drops any time soon from guild runs as they get put straight in the bank – we’ll see how that pans out. Oh and btw Shadowmourne…..*drools*…I want that sooo bad!!

Not seen the battered hilt drop yet in the 5-man – although I hope to get that soon enough – that sword is pretty nice – even as an item to just have and keep in the bank alongside some of my old armour from TBC/Vanilla WoW.

Independent have made a few changes to the DKP system now that ICC is here – the leaders are trying to encourage people to be online for the 4 days we raid and ready to raid.  By doing so you will be rewarded with gear – DKP earned will be minimal: 2 for being there for the whole raid start to finish, and 2 for bosses.  People will be given gear based on an attendance level. Not sure how this is going to work - time will tell..

So last night was rather eventful – the busiest night I’ve had in wow for what must be 2 or 3 months. I took my first steps with the new raid group and it was rocky at first but seemed to be good in the end.

First we started at TotC 25-man normal.  I died early on – OH NO!!! That thankfully was my only real facepalm moment – A few days ago I was running a friend through ZF and I’d put Righteous Fury on. Yep you guess it I left it on and forgot about it – consequently I drew aggro from the tank and SPLAT! I made my apologies to the GM – I was nervous as you like, thankfully she was ok and told me not to worry.

So we moved through there, then onto Onyxia then to VoA. All cleared in just over 2 hours. A hard-mode Ulduar run was almost put together, but we lacked 1 tank and a healer – not enough achievement whores in the guild it seems! Doh!

It was a fun couple of hours, the guild are a fun bunch, and I saw a few more people in there I knew last night that had come from Rage. I also spoke to a few people from Rage who hadnt realised I’d moved on and I was a little sad for a bit, so I logged my Horde Death Knight and completed my the Argent Tournament – just need some more rep with Argent Crusade and home cities to complete the Crusader title. 

So it was a fun night, and I really enjoyed being back in a guild that want to progress with things and not just sit around happy to do 10-mans all the time due to lack of sign ups. I’m really looking forward to seeing some real progression night again in the up-coming 3.3 and in TotC Heroic 25-man as well.

I was lucky enough to get to bid on some loot last night as well – which made all the difference to my evening – I’m severely lacking in gear compared to some of the DPS in the guild so a few updates will make quite a difference – there are 1 or 2 other ret-paladins in the guild who are way geared better so I was really struggling to keep up with some of the DPS classes in there. Seems my absence from raiding is really showing – I’ve barely played firelight these last 2 months and I’m really rusty. Plus I’m playing with a new interface that is taking a little getting used to. (Spartan UI if anyone is interested – Will post some pics later if I get the time)

All in all last night was a real blast, I got the feeling back that I’d been missing – While I was particularly quiet on ventrillo all night, it was fun just listening for a change and getting to know peoples voices.

One of the guildies has posted some really funny video’s about Independent on You Tube – I’ll dig them out and post them up here later also.

I hope all of you are having fun in WoW cos I certainly am!

Watching the guild slowly fall apart these last few months has been a little upsetting and its taken me a long time to come to the decision. After I /gquit I had a number of whispers from the few people who I consider some of the best friends I have in game – added them to my friend list.

I’ve joined a guild that’s been around a little while called Independent – they’re a 4 night a week raiding guild with proper rules in place and penalties as well as bonuses for commitment to raiding 3/4 times a week. Tonight I should get my first run with them and see whats what.

Turns out this is where a few people from Rage have gone to as well – see a few good guys in here that I’ve missed in the last few weeks/months. Which is a bit of a bonus!

I will be making more of an effort to write about my experiences as 3.3 comes out and over the next few weeks while I get settled into Raiding with a completely new team of people. Exciting times head I think!

Wish me luck.