Couldn’t come up with a witty title, especially since this is a real ramble of a post. Lemme know if you have a title suggestion. So…

Lord of the Rings

Turbine has announced their next book release, Volume 3 Book 1: Oath of the Rangers. Aside from the advancement of the epic story quests, it seems to be all skirmishes and crafting recipes. I don’t know what I was hoping for but that wasn’t it. I did read a rumor that Volume 1 will be completely solo-able though which is nice, I only wish I remember where I’d heard that or how reliable the source was.

Star Trek and Champions

Despite what my Twitter says I didn’t actually play STO last night. If you look at my Raptr profile you’ll see I spent 3 minutes in the game because I launched the patcher last night and decided to click on Engage since the launcher said the server was up. I did get the game to launch to a “No logins authorized at this time,” which was enough for Raptr to think I was playing. The best part was a message I got from Blamefulgecko wanting to know how I got in so soon, was accidental but very funny.

No real news on the Champions front as far as the expansion controversy. I played a bit last night and had one disconnect early on but that was it. Crafting still seems to be a problem but only for some specific items (can’t remember which, sorry). The only major irritation from my play session was the camera spin bug. I’m not sure what causes it, but occasionally the camera would start to rotate wildly around my hero. It seemed to happen most often when I was flying. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to stop it by using the mouse look, but still I will be glad when it gets fixed.

Last thing I wanted to mention is there’s a follow up from the STO team regarding upcoming features. Lots of interesting stuff there, especially for Klingon players. For me, the IP location additions are the most interesting. All of the high level stuff is something I won’t be ready to see for quite a while. The most interesting bit though is the last paragraph under the Engage heading.

These updates are entirely free to Star Trek Online subscribers.

Obviously this was included in response to the Champions drama going on. I wonder how much communication is going on between the two teams, because PR-wise they don’t seem to be on the same page. I’m imagining Craig having a little hallway conversation with Bill about his timing.

TGIF
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15 thoughts on “TGIF

  • January 29, 2010 at 12:27 pm
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    Looking forward to reading about live STO adventures, since I probably won’t be playing! It was still really nice to talk to you in EVE *nudge nudge*

    • January 29, 2010 at 2:08 pm
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      Hopefully I don’t do what I usually do and just play so much that I don’t have time to write. Can’t make any promises on EVE, I have a couple of days training setup, but if I see you playing via Raptr I’ll try to pop in.

      • February 2, 2010 at 5:45 pm
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        Honestly, having so much fun that you don’t have time to write says a lot about a game. 🙂

  • January 29, 2010 at 12:46 pm
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    The intention is that all of book one will be soloable eventually, it has been mentioned in a dev diary I’m too lazy to link. They have mentioned a pretty bizarre system for it where your character gets a temporary buff. The buff idea hasn’t been too well received, so they may be back at the drawing board. In any case, I don;t have the impression the change to book qusts is coming in the next patch, but I could be mistaken.

    And yeah, that does seem like a direct response to the CO controversy. Would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall during the conversation you mention.

  • January 29, 2010 at 5:31 pm
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    I thought Turbine themselves said Volume 1 would be soloable?

    Or maybe I dreamt that.

    • January 31, 2010 at 7:39 pm
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      Orion was doing some redesign to allow all of Volume 1 to be soloable and he’s said the work was done (see the dev diary Doc linked to), but we don’t know officially if it going to be in the next book release.

  • January 31, 2010 at 1:29 pm
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    If all of book one will be solo-able, how much of book two requires a group?

    • January 31, 2010 at 7:41 pm
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      I’m assuming you meant volumes not books. 🙂

      I’m up to Book 8 on Volume 2, and so far there have been 3 or 4 Chapters that required fellowships about 1 per Book.

      • January 31, 2010 at 8:47 pm
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        For Volume 2, there’s 4.7, the joyous 5.5 trio, and 6.8 that are all full-group quests and rather long. Then in Book 8 there are 3 (or maybe 4) small fellowship quests that are 3 mans. Book 9 is all solo-able, with skirmishes.

        • February 9, 2010 at 7:20 pm
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          Ahh, thanks for the info. Sorry for the mix up, I did mean volumes and not books.

          • February 9, 2010 at 9:57 pm
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            Oh I figured, I was just teasing a bit. 🙂

  • January 31, 2010 at 4:13 pm
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    It annoys me Raptr tracks you launching the patcher instead of time actually spent in game. So much so, I’ve submitted a bug report on it 😛 Its especially annoying for web games or Facebook games because it will put a Facebook game like Zoo World on your played list simply for having clicked on a link.

    Sorry for the Raptr rant 😛

  • January 31, 2010 at 7:43 pm
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    Not sure how they could tell the difference between the patcher and the game if it is the same executable. In EVE Raptr shows me playing from the login screen, but Champions and Star Trek don’t say playing until the full client is launched. With the Cryptic games there is a second login screen you get if the server is down or you logout of a character, but that one is part of the game client and not the patcher.

    I don’t use Facebook, but I think there’s an option to turn off reporting for Flash games.

    Oh and rants are welcome. 😉

  • February 3, 2010 at 4:50 pm
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    I have had the camera spin thing happen everytime my virus scan started its scheduled maintenance. Maybe something to check. I stop the scan and it stops the spinning.

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