Cryptic Studios, the makers of MMOs including Star Trek Online and Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG Neverwinter, have confirmed a number of layoffs due to the ongoing “comprehensive restructuring” of megacorp owner Embracer Group. The “personnel changes” at Cryptic make them the latest Embracer-owned developer to suffer job losses in what continues to be an unrelenting year for thousands of those working in video games.
]]>Star Trek Online turns you into the captain of your own starship. This MMORPG neatly captures the essence of years of Gene Roddenberry’s hopeful, futuristic space romp, rolling in plotlines from the TV shows and movies to create a bizarrely playable blob of nerdy entertainment. It pits you against the Borg. It lets you visit Deep Space Nine. You can even battle the powerful and scary Crystalline Entity that wiped out Data’s homeworld. As a Trek fan, I enjoy Star Trek Online far, far too much.
]]>Long-running sci-fi MMO Star Trek: Online’s Ascension update transports us to the Mirror Universe once again on September 13th, and it’s a doozy. Devs Cryptic Studios have only gone and revealed The Next Generation’s wunderkind Wesley “Shut up” Crusher as the storyline’s big bad. Cower from the arrival of Mirror Wesley while watching the trailer below.
]]>Unless you're in one of those international versions of Big Brother that are still going on, you've probably noticed that we're in the midst of a pandemic of something called the Covid-19 virus. I can tell it's serious because my dad's American girlfriend isn't allowed to visit him, which means he's bored and phoning me in the middle of the day. Haha, I joke. But he is 70, and has a weak heart, plus he's immunocompromised on account of catching Lyme disease from a tick once (which is exactly the sort of ridiculous thing that only happens to country dads).
If you're anything like us, you're now at home, staring at the walls of your living room because of this social distancing thing. But it's not just you. In fact, all of RPS is now working from home for the foreseeable future, too. So in the spirit of camaraderie, I've pooled some suggestions for video games to play while we're self-quarantining. We've got some multiplayer ones, some board-gamey ones, and, of course, a healthy dollop of free ones.
]]>When Star Trek Online launched into 2010, Star Trek was dead as a TV show, living on only in rebooted movies which seemed not wholly fond of the shows. Ten years later, two Treks are boldly on the go - and the MMORPG taps both of them for its latest contentblast, named Legacy. A new quests call back to Trek old and new, revisiting some aliens from The Original Series with the help of Seven of Nine (with her new jacket and 'tude off Picard) and Michael Burnham - both voiced by their television actors. Ten years is a long time in Trek.
]]>Deep Space Nine actor Aron Eisenberg passed away this weekend. He played Nog, the put upon nephew of Quark the bartender and the first Ferengi to join Star Fleet. In Star Trek Online, he's made captain.
Nog's a wholesome character in a deeply wholesome show, which is partly why I found the in-game vigil players held for Eisenberg so touching.
]]>Star Trek Online is getting good mileage out of Discovery co-star Mary Wiseman. In their next big update on January 23rd - Mirror Of Discovery - players of the free-to-play MMO will be able to visit the mustache-twirlingly evil mirror universe in several new Discovery era quests. Yes, that means we get to meet Cadet Tilly's comically villainous counterpart, the feared Captain Killy. Yes, really. Killy was missing (presumed dead) in the TV series, but the game now confirms that she's alive, well and a great opportunity for Wiseman to chew on some scenery.
]]>I liked Star Trek: Discovery, and reckon that Mary Wiseman's performance as Sylvia Tilly stole the show so I'm rather chuffed to see that both have been beamed up into Cryptic's free-to-play Star Trek Online. Rolled out yesterday, the Age of Discovery expansion features that slightly gritty Nu-Trek look, a series of new quests to do at the behest of Cadet Tilly (voiced by Wiseman) and some interesting changes to progression. You can even create a Discovery-era captain with a ship to match if you're willing to start fresh. Engage with the launch trailer below and the patch notes here.
]]>Well, there's one way to remind me that I'm getting older: tell me that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is 25 years old. Despite also being 8 years old, Free-to-play MMO Star Trek Online is still looking pretty good, all things considered. The TV show's anniversary today marks the launch of its first major expansion in some time, delivered as a free update. Victory Is Life brings us back to Deep Space Nine, and beyond the wormhole into the Gamma Quadrant in a new story arc featuring a bunch of the original DS9 cast.
]]>Even by Blizzard's standards, The Mean Streets of Gadgetzan is taking the piss. In case you missed it, which I know you didn't, but work with me here, it's the newest Hearthstone expansion. The trailer is wonderful. The setting is a corrupt crime-town full of gangsters, hoodlums and mugs, all fighting for cash and control in a tongue-in-cheek mix of Lord of the Rings and Bugsy Malone. I'd love to play a full adventure/RPG/heck even shooter set in that world, not just play with a new set of cards using it as a theme. In just a minute of charismatic art and a fun song, Blizzard fleshed out Gadgetzan with more love and more detail than some games manage in their entire runs.
But, uh, here's the thing. This is what Gadgetzan actually looks like.
]]>Today, a little bit of heresy. I'm going to talk about adventure games. Specifically, about a thing I've always loved in them, when they offer the chance - that sense of being given a ship and a universe to explore. I get a shiver when I look at the star-map. I feel proud of my usually low-resolution, 256-colour VGA vessel. And yet, jump genres to something like RPG or strategy and the moment is just gone. Why does No Man's Sky, a game that actually supports that wanderlust, not give me anything close to the same thrill that something like Space Quest V still does, even knowing that Space Quest V is a) limited to a handful of worlds, each only a few screens in size, and b) makes your cool ship a garbage scow full of people who pretty much hate you?
I don't know, but I love this screen. This, more than any Galaxy Map, is a screen that whispers "You can go anywhere. Do anything. The universe is yours..."
]]>It's Star Trek a-go-go lately, with every dang series hitting Netflix UK last week and a new movie out in a fortnight. Not wanting to be left out, free-to-play MMORPG Star Trek Online [official site] today launched a new expansion which crosses over with The Original Series and Star Trek Beyond and other things in ways that would be baffling if you treated these timelines as a serious history rather than plot devices to tell fun stories. (Please don't explain timelines to me. Any of them. Anyone.) They've even got Walter Koenig to play Chekov again.
]]>I'm on the road at the moment - not literally, that would make typing very dangerous - so unsurprisingly I've been pondering travel. Also regretting taking too long to see The Martian, and again being stunned by what Americans consider chocolate. But I can't think of even a tenuous connection between those and RPGs, so travel it is - and in particular, the rare joy that comes of not simply going somewhere new, but feeling that sense of distance behind you and a whole new horizon lying ahead.
]]>HO HO HO. Christmas is practically upon us, and games eveywhere... well, mostly online... are joining the party. Whether they call it Winter Veil or Frostfell, it's a chance to deck the hubs with bonus XP and let everyone from elves to orcs don Santa hats and hand out treats to the good little wizards and barbarians. Here's a few of the events going on around the worlds over the next week or so. Is there something cool happening in one of your games that you think folks would find fun? Wrap it up nicely in a comment and leave it under the tree. By which I mean the article. Sorry, that metaphor seemed to be going in a better direction at the start of the sentence.
]]>There's no prizes for predicting this Christmas' biggest movie... but once everyone's seen Alvin And The Chipmunks in The Road Chip, there's a good chance they'll consider checking out the new Star War as well. What better time to check in on The Old Republic and... actually, no. For as Yoda once so vaguely commented, "There is another." I've been meaning to take a look at the competition, Star Trek Online [official site] for a while now, and this seems as good a time as any. After five years, is it worth signing up for an investigative tour of duty on the original final frontier?
]]>Star Trek Online [official site] has added tributes to Leonard Nimoy as well as other actors from the Star Trek series at part of a Thursday update to the game.
Writing on the official blog, Arc Games' executive producer, Stephen Ricossa, explained the additions:
"I’m certain everyone who knew of Nimoy's work will remember him in their own special way, and I want to make sure Star Trek Online also has an in-game way for people to remember him as well. As of this morning, there are several locations throughout the game that will allow people to take a moment to remember Spock, Leonard Nimoy, and other departed friends from Star Trek history."
]]>It feels like it's been ages since a major game company reported a break in from a gang of keyboard-wielding malcontents - and for Star Trek Online and Neverwinter developer Cryptic, it actually has been ages. Well, not actual ages. There were no lances, moats, or trebuchets involved (to my knowledge), but today - in the Neo Future Space Year 2012 - Cryptic cautioned users about an "unauthorized access" from December 2010. And while that certainly spooks an entire flock of northward-migrating eyebrows from their cozy forehead nests, there are more immediate concerns at hand. The short version: while Cryptic has "no evidence" that anything beyond usernames and encrypted passwords were taken, you should still change your password and keep a close eye on credit card info.
]]>It's a bit of a shame that we already did the "RPS Free To Read" joke, I feel like it would have been useful this morning. Anyway, the news is that Star Trek Online is nearing the freeness now shared by dozens of its MMO brethren. It's currently a limited roll out, as producer Stephen D’Angelo explains: "anyone with a lapsed subscription to Star Trek Online will be able to log into the game and play as a Silver member. This means that any account that has in the past subscribed to the game, even if only for the initial month, can come back and play for free!" The details of these new subscription details, with the content and features offered by them, can be explored here.
]]>The unstoppable march of free-to-playification continues! Cryptic's Star Trek Online - which is published by Perfect World - will be free-to-play by the end of the year. According to this report on Perfect World's exciting Q2 earnings call, chief financial officer Kelvin Lau told investors: "Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year."
]]>It looks like Atari, recently the focus of negative attention after Test Drive Unlimited developer Eden Games went on strike due to their treatment, are looking to gather some more cash. Via PCG we see Gamespot spotted the news that the publisher is selling Cryptic, the studio behind Star Trek: Online and Champions: Online.
]]>(trad.) Anyway, a big content patch for Star Trek Online has gone live. Subtitle "Ancient Enemies", we speculate it involves some enemies of ancientness. A scan of the content seems to confirm this, with a whole load of new Klingon missions involving the return of the Fek'ihri. Oh God, I hate those Fek'ihri. They really are shits. Perhaps more interesting to my Star-Trek-Online inexperienced-eyes is the new option for the Federation - that of joining the Dilplomatic corp, going on first contact missions and generally not setting phasers-to-kill. Also, a new alien race, regular episodes with a new neutral race ("Deferi") and the introduction of the gambling game Dabo. You can still try the demo, or have a gape at the new trailer, which shows very little latinum-betting and chatting, but a whole lot of the ancients being enemies. Hence, boom-booms.
Oh - and, as a bonus extra news, Bill Roper's departed Cryptic after a couple of years.
]]>Cryptic have revealed some details about their free trial for Star Trek Online, which is now available. It allows you to play through the tutorial and an early mission as part of the Federation, and so seems like a decent taster. Any STO veterans want to add more as to whether this is a representative sampler?
]]>I'm a space captain, ma! Yeah, it's amazing - I was only an Ensign 20 minutes ago, but they've given me my own ship already! I'm going to fly it into the sun and see what happens - I expect it will be lovely and warm there, so the crew will surely be delighted.
STO made me feel pretty important pretty quickly. I like that, even if it seems like open foolishness on the Federation's part. I was deeply curious to try this here MMO back when it was in beta, but knew that sitting down with an MMO can be like giving a vampire permission to enter my home. Danger! Danger! However, as I currently have a work calendar more frighteningly empty than the soul of Haliburton executive, I quite literally have nothing better to do - I can justify getting my Captain's Log on for a little while. As the title states, this isn't a review: it's just me dicking about in the first hour of the game then deciding if I want to continue playing or not. If I was going to give it a score, though, it'd be eight fourths out of C.
]]>Below is the first part of our intricate guide for PC gaming in 2010. There's a horde of muscular-looking titles on the horizon, many of them likely to stop you and demand your money, like ludological bandits. Meanwhile, others that we expected to land, such The Old Republic, have already fled to 2011. Read on as the clouds in our crystal ball roll back...
]]>Update: And STOP! All 1000 have just gone. You'll know if you were successful very soon.
]]>Set cliches to cliche, something about beaming, where no sentence has gone before. Cornish pasties for heads. Red jumpers. There - that meets the government required minimum quantity of Star Trek references, and a fine is once more avoided.
The big news is: Star Trek Open Beta opens today (12th Jan) at 10am PST (2am proper time), letting all sorts of riff-raff into the universe.
]]>Hello! How are you? Uh-huh, yep, right, right. Me too! Yeah! Anyway, enough about that. Here's a few missed trailers for Star Trek Online, which is as much to remind myself that I've got a beta key lurking somewhere in my inbox as anything else. My PC's been dead - a case of motherboard lupus - since just before Christmas, see, and it's only been back on its unreliable feet as of today. Which leaves me with a dilemma. Where to start? What to catch up on? That unfinished campaign in Dragon Age, the TF2 updates, the first L4D2 mods, finally getting around to learning Solium Infernum, the raft of tantalising indie games that have clogged up the RPS inbox over Christmas, or just staring at my email program for six hours with blinking? All good options. But I really would like to try STO.
]]>The Star Trek Online beta has for some reason allowed us in. So of course this means spending my entire afternoon playing with the character creator. It's made by Cryptic. Can you guess whether it's brilliant or not? It's brilliant.
]]>The Star Trek Online forums have thrown up news of a neat piece of design for Klingon characters. Weirdly, the link seems to work from some pages and not others, randomly taking you to their front page. Anyway, what it reveals is that Klingon's will be PvP-focused, and while Federation classes can expect to advance through PvE missions, the Klingon player will need to do harm to his fellows if he means to progress: "Klingon Captains have the same number of skills available as their Federation counterparts, including the same professions. Your Klingon Captain can be a Science, Engineering or Tactical officer. However, they must advance through PvP, as they will not have access to the same amount of player-vs.-environment content as Federation players at launch." I think that's a neat idea, a kind of formalisation of role-playing in the content available to you.
]]>The sheer amount of promotional materials pouring out of the Cryptic/Atari for Star Trek Online seems to suggest that MMO means to come out fighting. It's got some serious competition to go up against, even if we discount all the other bajillion games coming out in the early part of next year, there's going to be the looming threat of The Old Republic, which threatens to suck up sci-fi fans like a space-hoover when it arrives. Nevertheless I'm quietly confident that STO is going to do well for itself. There's just something about the setting that I think will click. If Cryptic can get the exploration and ship-management stuff right it really could be worth, er, beaming up. New trailer below.
]]>Another peek at Cryptic's upcoming Star Trek Online, this time focusing on the Klingons and their motives for wanting to smack the Federation's ships up. They sound angry. Was it because they were left out of the new movie? I'd be sad about that, if I was a Klingon. Doesn't seem fair, really.
Not quite sure why the guy in this trailer sounds like a disgruntled Yoda, however. And I'm presuming it's CGI rather than in-game, but I can't tell anymore. I've been tricked so many times before! I can't trust anyone!
]]>Having seen a bit of the ship-to-ship and man-to-alien combat in previous Star Trek Online footage, we're still waiting to get an angle on what will be central to the game: doing diplomacy, managing your crew, commanding a Starship, and all that Federation jazz. No change in this trailer, but it's starting to look a lot more polished than previous in-game footage. Moreover, I think it's pretty easy to be cynical towards this, but the truth is this game is likely to light a commercial touchpaper and become very popular indeed. It's not just a popular licence, but I think it might just be different enough as an MMO to drag people away from established games. There's a definite thirst for interesting MMOs right now, and this is certainly going to qualify. The site is crammed with new screens, and they're now taking beta applications.
]]>There scarcely seems like a more logical target for online worlding than Star Trek, so hopefully Cryptic will get it right with Star Trek Online. They seem to be bang on with the sub-par special effects, at least judging by the exploding ships in this trailer. I've made more cataclysmic explosions with a balloon than the ones we see here. Nevertheless it's good to see the game in motion - the third-person away team stuff seems a lot more developed, but perhaps that's only to be expected, given the Cryptic back-catalog. Anyway, enough with my space-cynicism, I am like a Cardassian who hasn't had his dinner - go watch!
]]>As I mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of the weekend at the MCM Expo. I eventually managed to tear myself away from my table and go looking for electro-entertainment. Alas, mainly console - or console versions of PC games we've already covered like Borderlands. And Assassin's Creed 2, which I would have looked at, but I was scared away by the Marge Simpson cosplayer who looks as if they'd peeled Marge and was wearing her yellow skin as a skin-suit ala Silence Of the Lamb's Buffalo Bill. However, Star Trek Online was there, and I spent some time getting familiar with what Cryptic have been up to...
]]>Cryptic must really be feeling the pressure with their upcoming Star Trek MMO - it now has to both live up to the success of JJ Abram's Pretty People In Space reboot and shrug off the so-so reviews which their last game, Champions Online, is tarred with. Their most recent response, oddly, is to really play up to the Star Trek hardcore...
]]>As you might expect from the Star Trek MMO, there's going to be loads of scope to create blue-in-the-face Federation lackeys, and continue Star Treks fine tradition of sticking things to the foreheads of humanoids. It looks pretty nifty in action, even if we saw this years ago in Eve Online. Trailer after the jump.
]]>VG247 point out this fan Q&A in which Cryptic studios executive producer Craig “Zinc” Zinkievich affirmed that players in Star Trek Online would be expected to explore space, and not just grind missions for Starfleet.
]]>Cryptic Studios, they of City Of Heroes and Champions Online, have revealed their new MMO, Star Trek Online. Beyond the jump is the first trailer, which is packed with in-game footage. Borg cubes warp, Federation ships explode, and dudes get phasered in the midriff. Is the trailer set to stun(ning?) Maybe! Oh my aching sides.
]]>After a troubled few years in development at now-defunct studio Perpetual Entertainment (oh, the terrible irony of the name), Star Trek Online recently fell into the strong but tender (like a mother lioness, or a warrior vicar) hands of Cryptic Studios. Who promptly dazzled us with environment art. Sigh.
]]>Cryptic Studios, those folks developing the mighty-lookin' Champions Online, have unveiled the Star Trek Online website. This, we must assume, means that they really are developing Star Trek Online.
]]>The last we'd heard of sci-fi MMO Star Trek Online was that developers Perpetual Entertainment had been booted from the project. Now though it seems the project is back online. The Trekkie forums are alive with fans trying to figure out who has been brought in on the project, but all we have so far is that the site is still owned by CBS and some unfounded speculation that Cryptic (of City Of Heroes fame) are to be brought in. Cryptic would make a good candidate, if they hadn't already just announced a new MMO. I suppose they could make two MMOs at once, but I think that'd be unprecedented.
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