Star Trek Online Continues

 

Looking over the blog I realized it's been quite a while since I said anything about STO and that's a shame because I've spent quite a bit of time on it lately. First off, yes - it's still around still adding new material and still fun to play in my opinion. I've been playing it since launch and though I have had a few gaps it is never a game I've "quit" - usually it just gets de-prioritized while I do things like the move last year. 

The game just celebrated it's 13th anniversary so it has been going for quite a while now. The last two years' major storyline has been fighting the Terran Empire from the Mirror Universe and I have to say it's been pretty interesting with some unexpected characters showing up in a big way.

 

The pace of content development is not fast with about one new "big mission" per quarter alongside new ships, new uniforms & gear, various bug fixes, and tweaks to existing content in general. The downside is that if you're "caught up" there is less new to do, but if you're coming in fresh there is a ton of content here and plenty of time to do it given that pace of releases.

Inside the Dyson Sphere - I love that zone

One of the things that became far more prominent after the game had been out for a bit is the regular recruitment of Trek actors to do voice work in the game. From TOS to TNG to DS9 to Discovery many of the actors have contributed to a storyline and it really does add something. Running around fighting alongside J.G. Hertzler's General Martok was a particular bit of fun for me. In the recent terran arc Admiral Janeway is a big presence and you get both the one we know and a Mirror Universe Janeway which is quite a bit of fun. 

With the Terran arc wrapping up now it looks like the Next Big Thing in STO is going to be some kind of Borg ... resurgence? Invasion? It's hard to say just yet but they were the big bads in the early days of the game but they have diminished over the years, powercrept and relegated to older missions that are not played as much outside of some raid-style Task Forces (in STO terms). I'd be happy to see them become terrifying again.  

Marvel Heroes Shutdown

Well November was already not a great month for superhero MMO games and now it looks like the current Marvel game is going away. It wasn't a traditional RPG, it was a Diablo type game but it was a lot of fun regardless. Here's an article with the details.

It came along in 2013 and I dabbled in it some and then eventually I became a "burst" player - I would jump in and play it a lot for a month or three then let it go for a while. That let me run a fair number of characters up to the level cap of 60 as I would pick a new one every time I rejoined to re-familiarize myself with the game.

While Iron Man was still "me" in game I probably had the most fun with Hulk, running through "Monday Midtown Madness" jumping up and down like a madman with a screen full of enemies and smashing everything in sight. It was very theraputic.

The premise was multiple universes spilling over on top of each other which explained why you could see multiples of the same hero running around at the same time. yes, it was a videogame but somehow it all made comic-book sense.

Those frost giants don't stand a chance against TRIPLE CAPTAIN AMERICA!

The game is still up as I write this so if you have an interest in grabbing some screenshots of your own that is still possible.

That said the door is closing. Ah well. Hopefully something new and cool comes our way down the road.

Member City of Heroes?

Member 2012 when they shut it down for no great reason? Aluminum Man remembers ...

Four years ago today it all came to an end.

Still haven't found anything quite like it.

Someday ...

Where Experience Points Went Wrong - Part 3: Rise of the Machines

People like to characterize D&D in general as a Hack and Slash game. It certainly can be that kind of game but it doesn't have to be. Depending on the group and the time period outsmarting the enemy (and the game in a way) can be just a big a part of play. Sure, I've seen plenty of frontal assaults but I've also seen disguises adopted to sneak into temples. I've seen deals cut with leader type enemies in order to secure aid against a different enemy. I've seen flat-out Stealth aplenty. I've seen rivers re-routed to flood out a problem location. The first time I saw a truly well-played illusionist in AD&D was a revelation - he was like Green Lantern in a pointy hat! Creative players thrive in a game where magic is a part of the toolbox.

I've talked about killing monsters for XP, and fixed numbers of encounters and the problems they can cause. But if in the early days XP was awarded mainly for gold, how did we get XP for monster kills all the time and the hack and slash rep of the game?

For one, there were plenty of people focused on killing monsters even in the early days. I mean, having a way that "you" can fight a minotaur or a hydra is a pretty cool thing. This was even more true before video games were a real thing.

By the late 70's though you have another factor than how people played the game: computers. Apples and TRS-80's were coming out alongside the college mainframes that generated a lot of the early games. Games like Wizardry where the focus was on what? Going into a dungeon and killing monsters. There was no real interaction, no thinking outside the box - there was rolling up a party of characters, buying gear, and smashing your way through each level, drawing a map along the way, triggering traps, and hoping you came out with most of the party alive.

Sure, it looks primitive now but I can't tell you how awesome it was when it was new.

For the 80's this is pretty much how computer RPG's worked: create character/party, gear up, go into dungeon and fight, rest, level up, continue. All of the wizardry games and their clones, the early Ultimas, the Bard's Tale games, the early Might & Magic's, the Gold Box games all pretty much worked this way. The later Ultima's are worth noting as they started exploring morality by including some choices that had an impact on the game. For most there still wasn't much of a story other than "fight your way through a series of levels to fight the big boss enemy".

That's pretty much the problem in a nutshell

The 90's were mostly more of the same with better graphics but we started to get games like Betrayal at Krondor, Ultima 7, and later Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment where there was a real story beyond just "kill things and loot".  There was still character progression and a lot of combat  to make that progression, but there was more going on too.

Krondor!

Then the online RPG's swept in and we saw the return of "advancement by combat" in a big way. Everquest was huge and that's pretty much how it worked.

Sure, it looks primitive now but I can't tell you how awesome it was when it was new.

So to me, at least part of the "must kill monsters to advance" mentality was driven by computer games through the 80's and 90's and was then canonized into the game with D&D 3rd edition where that was the standard, stated method of awarding experience in the DMG:

Now there is a roughly half-page section at the end that talks about story awards, bonuses for good roleplaying, and noncombat encounters. That is after 3 pages talking about monster XP and a big chart showing the numbers for monsters by level.A few pages later there's another 3+ pages on building encounters. It's not hard to see where the emphasis was and it's not a surprise that became the standard. In contrast the 2E DMG only spends 6 pages on the whole topic of experience and the first 3 topics discussed are fun, character survival, and improvement, and story awards are discussed through the entire section. It's a difference of emphasis in many ways. I think the increasing popularity of computer games through the 90's, along with the back-to-the-dungeon mentality of 3E, made this an easily assumed new standard for the game. Pathfinder and 4E both branched off from this and carried it forward to today. People say 4E was the MMO/computer game edition and while I can disagree for multiple reasons here's one you don;t see a whole lot: The computer game influence was already there years before 4th Edition was conceived.

Why is this a negative? Why is a heavy influence from computer game a bad thing? I'll go with one example: consider the Dig spell. In AD&D this was not a spell the new player cared about at all because it wasn't flashy. Experienced players though knew it was an awesome tool to have in your bag of tricks. Setting an ambush? Instant pit! Getting ambushed? Cut off part of the attackers with a moat! Need to direct enemies into a particular area? Dig out part of the road or path you expect them to follow! Fortifying a camp? Dig! Need to re-route a creek? Dig a new channel! Want to capture a big animal? Dig! Need to hide in a desert? Dig + an illusion of more desert! Fantasy blender? Dig + Blade Barrier = pain you can't escape from easily. There are a ton of uses for the creative player!

Yet it rarely shows up in a computer game because they can't account for all of the interesting uses for it. If it does show up it's usually only in the "does damage to earth creatures" aspect - the least interesting part of the spell.

And that's a fairly mundane bit of magic. Think of what an illusionist can do with an arsenal of deceptive spells. In a computer game though they tend to be limited to invisibility and "make an illusion of one of the monsters in the game". Those things can be fun but are only scratching the surface of what a good illusionist can do.

This is the effect that the killing-monsters-is-the-way-to-gain-XP mentality can have. Things are only important if they do damage or stop damage. Creative thinking is "how can I do more damage" and not much else. If it doesn't have a number on it then it's useless. Combat utility is the only measuring stick and DPS rules all.  I'm looking to do it better now in my games. I'll let you know what I come up with.

The Inevitable Pokemon Go Post

No, I don't play it but I have 4 kids and a wife who do so I feel like I have a scientific observer's perspective at this point. It's ridiculously popular among a lot of ages but is especially so in the tweens/teens/twentysomethings crowd.  What I have noticed:

• It's group play without direct confrontation. My kids and their friends can all go pokemon hunting together or combine forces to battle a gym but you don't see other players and you aren't fighting "that guy standing over there". It's competitive to a degree, but it's an indirect kind of competition, not "PvP" and there is far more cooperation than confrontation.
• It has my kids wanting to go outside! In the middle of the day! In Texas! In July! Hey look it's only supposed to be about 95 for a high today because we're expecting thunderstorms - the last few days it's been 100. While they are outside they are walking around, looking for pokemon, checking on the gym in our neighborhood, and getting in enough steps to hatch an egg. The egg thing is kind of like a fitbit in that you have to get a certain number of steps in to hatch it and then you get a random new pokemon out of it. We had kids old enough to drive and who have their own cars walk to the grocery store to check out the pokemon stuff along the way!
• You can't sit at home and play it - you have to move to go get pokemon.  You have to go find pokestops and gyms to advance and resupply for more hunting and you have to be physically near them in reality to utilize their facilities. So it's not that you can get some exercise while playing it it's that you pretty much have to, yet it's not an obvious workout game like Dance Dance Revolution or other "jump around in front of your TV" type games.

The whole thing is genius and is an example of a step towards some of the things I talked about in my RPG Futurist post a while back. Did I say it was a product of genius? I can't say it enough! It's a videogame that kids want to play that requires them to get out of the house and move around the world! It's a holy grail of videogaming!

The other thing I have noticed is how a lot of the news/media sources are desperately trying to make this a dangerous thing, because that's what they do. 

• "Someone stepped on a a snake while playing Pokemon Go in a park!" I doubt the snake cares - if they had been playing "catch" I suspect it would have bitten them too
• "Someone found a dead body while playing the game" - fixed it for you
• "Criminals are using the game to lure people to remote locations and ambushing them" - er, there's no way criminals can "lure" people to do anything in the game. Users have no control over the environment and you can't see other players in the game. The most they could do is sit outside a location designated as a pokestop or a gym and wait for other people to come by but these are usually parks or churches or other relatively well-known spaces. If you're in an unlit park at 2am well, a)that's not new and teenagers have other reasons besides a videogame to be there and b) that's not really the game's fault

For someone old enough to remember it feels a little bit like the beginnings of the Great D&D Bashing of the 1980's, the Great Heavy Metal and Rap bashing of the Late 80's, and the Great Videogame Bashing of the 1990's where there's some initial reporting on this cool and popular new thing (mostly by people who have no clue about it) and then some near-hysterical reporting of possible bad effects of this cool new thing and then a general piling-on of how it's awful and should be banned or regulated or burned in a big gathering outside a church because somehow someway it has something to do with the devil. It's already happening to a degree. I just hope that this one is popular enough among kids who don't care and obviously harmless enough to intelligent parents that it blows over quickly or gets the legs cut out from underneath it by a social media backlash.

Because it's a really cool, fun safe thing that is good for people. It's a work of genius.

Side Quests: June

23rd century (actually maybe even 22nd?)

The good: The Marvel heroes Anniversary Event continues and is a lot of fun. Lots of free stuff, some crazy event overlaps, and it continues for another week! Also, a playable Ultron is coming, probably next week as well. yes, they call it "Marvel Heroes" but it has playable villains as well. Doctor Doom, Loki, Magneto, Juggernaut, and a few others, soon to be joined by the evil robot himself.

The less good: Star Trek Online is going in an odd direction. The upcoming expansion is full-on retro, allowing players to start a new character as a TOS federation character with uniforms, ships, gear, etc. It still bugs me a little bit but it is the 50th anniversary and it's not like time travel isn't a huge part of Trek anyway so I can deal with it. Now, in addition to that direction, we have this:

26th century - the "Nautilus" class

Spock, the legendary Starfleet officer, scientist and diplomat, accepted a mission to make a daring attempt to save the dying star Hobus. His mission was not successful, however, and the effects of the Hobus supernova have echoed though time and space. This series of events is now referred to as the “Kelvin Incident” by temporal agents and multi-spatial researchers. 

The sheer destruction from that moment in time has weakened the barrier between our reality and one strangely similar to our own, leaving a strange temporal anomaly in its wake. While most are content to allow alternate realities to be, others have looked on them as unique opportunities to exploit, the consequences to the natives be damned.

“Terminal Expanse” will take players not only back in time, but to this strange, alternate “Kelvin Timeline”. This mission will be available to all players at level 40 and above once Agents of Yesterday launches.

Look for future updates on new missions as the launch day approaches, and we’ll see you in-game for the release of Agents of Yesterday!

This is where it's starting to get messy. The game has a really good concept of the future of the original trek universe, covering the 20-50 years after TNG/DS9/VOY. That's where the focus has been barring the occasional time-travel scenario or mirror universe incursion. The trunk of the tree has very much been The Federation/Klingons/Romulans in the decades following the TNG era with branches for various other races, the Dyson sphere, the Iconians, etc.

The first big expansion added playable Romulans and covered their story in the wake of the destruction of their homeworld - it was great!

The second expansion covered the Delta Quadrant - not my favorite, but it added a whole new region with new races and a new missions so it was solid plus it  continued the story of the setting.

This new expansion goes backwards to the TOS, jumps to the 26th century somehow, and adds in the JJ Abrams movie universe in what I assume is the first of a series of missions at the very least! That seems like an awful lot to cover, even if it is an expansion and not just a smaller patch type update. I'm a little concerned that they're going to lose focus on the "now" of the game and get tangled up in all of these side areas. Players have been asking for stuff like playable Cardassians and now they get TOS Feds. In the wake of that quite a few Klingons have asked for playable TOS Klingons and so far that does not seem to be in the cards.

I can see making some tie-ins to TOS and to the movies with all of the attention they will be getting but it still feels like wheel-spinning to me on some level. There were already retro-ships, retro-uniforms, and some retro-missions in the game. heck, one of my characters and his crew wears the Wrath of Khan uniforms exclusively, because I like them! Making it the focus of the whole expansion, though? I don't know, that doesn't seem like a great choice for the long term. I'll give it a try when it comes out and share my thoughts then.

Almost a Loknar ...

26th century version

Side Quests - Marvel Heroes Civil War Extravaganza

I won't typically do back to back posts on computer games but we have some overlapping events this week - it's a good problem to have!

Before we get into the event details let me say something about the game: It is truly free to play. You can play any of the heroes in the game (55 of them right now)  up to level 10 then choose one to uncap (playable to level 60).  The second day you log in you will be awarded 400 eternity splinters (the in-game means by which you buy heroes) which is enough to unlock another hero for free. With the event below you can also pick a free Iron Man or Captain America as well. So there's potentially 3 free heroes as of the second day you log in to the game. Eternity splinters both drop regularly during play and are awarded as part of the log-in rewards. There are heroes that unlock at 200, 400, and 600 splinters. June is the anniversary month for the game and there are typically a ton of giveaways during that as well, including a free hero at some point. With May full of Civil War and June full of anniversary it's a great time to join in and find out if you like it.

Midtown Madness can get pretty crazy

The Civil War tie-in is MH's biggest event yet. I'm just going to cut and paste the info below:

Starting this Friday, May 6th, we will be kicking off our first event of the month and will continue through the coming weeks.

5/6 - 5/12 - MARVEL HEROES: CIVIL WAR PART 1!

• Crossbones in Patrol Modes - Crossbones and his band of mercenaries have begun terrorizing civilians in Hightown Patrol, Industry City Patrol and Midtown Manhattan Patrol. It is up to our heroes to go in there and stop him before more innocents are caught in the crossfire!
• Madripoor Bazaar Chase - Maria Hill and S.H.I.E.L.D have been busy tracking Crossbones and have located him in a heavily populated Bazaar located in Madripoor. Many innocent civilians are trapped and only our heroes can go in and help them! The chase ends with a confrontation with Crossbones that will have a very polarizing effect on the world and their opinions on super heroes.
• Bonus Experience - All of the playable heroes in Captain America: Civil War will get 50% bonus experience! This includes Captain America, Iron Man, Winter Soldier, Black Panther, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Black Widow, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Vision and Spider-Man!
• Edit: Due to player requests, we will also be doing 50% base bonus experience for all playables.
• Giveaways - We will be sending out 2 codes later this week, one for each side in the Civil War. You will be able to redeem only one of the codes in order to declare your allegiance! The codes will give you either a FREE Iron Man and Team Iron Man Mystery Box, or a FREE Captain America and Captain America Mystery Box! These codes will only be available for a VERY short time, so be sure to claim them quickly once we send them out!

5/12 - 5/19 - MARVEL HEROES: CIVIL WAR PART 2!

• Civil War! - After the events of Madripoor, lines are drawn between Super Heroes and you must choose a side! Raise you influence with your team by doing daily missions and hunting down Super Villains. Will you do what it takes to ensure your side is the winning side, even if it means fighting other Super Heroes?
• Tournament - Prove your allegiance by working with other players in a Civil War tournament, where the rewards are not based on individual placement, but team performance!
• Bonus Experience - All of the playable heroes in Captain America: Civil War will get 100% bonus experience!

5/19 - 5/26 - MARVEL HEROES: CIVIL WAR CONTINUED!

• All the new Civil War related game content from the previous 2 weeks!
• All the new Civil War related event content from the previous 2 weeks!
• Bonus Experience - All of the playable heroes in Captain America: Civil War will get 150% bonus experience!
• 5/26 - 6/3 - THE CALM BEFORE THE ANNIVERSARY!
• Civil War Game Modes, patrol bosses, event components will be going away!
• Odin's Bounty Returns!

It's a pretty slick game. It's not one I play for six hours in one sitting but you can jump in for an hour here and an hour there and have a good time. There are a lot of resources online about missions, characters, builds, etc if you do get into it. It's family-friendly as there's not a bunch of blood etc so it can be fun to jump on with the kids and run around as a team. It's also life-friendly as I mentioned above - you can jump in for short runs and the game works just fine. It's not a complete City of Heroes replacement but it does let you team up with a group of fellow heroes and run the streets fighting bad guys and that's a great thing to have again.

Edit: And of course later on the day I post this it turns out there's a new "new player experience" coming as well. Take a look here.

Side Quests - The Old Republic's May 4th Celebration

I try not to shill too hard for these kinds of things but I've been getting back into SWTOR and they do have a nice set of bonuses going on right now:

• Free droid pet - you'll have a collection of these fairly quick if you play regularly but one more isn't a bad thing
• Double XP:  May 3rd through May 10th, then again from May 27th through May 30th.
• Free level 60 character: Apparently if you start a free trial by May 30th you get an insta-60 to run through the current (and expanding) Knights of the Fallen Empire story. That's pretty nice.

Based on those perks, if you're at all interested in some Star Wars computer RPG action it's a great game with a great story for each of the 8 classes and it is completely playable as a free player. 

Book Review: Star Trek Online: The Needs of the Many

This is a different kind of book: It's a Star Trek novel (there are plenty of those) but it's tied to the MMORPG. That's an unusual case. It's also unusual in other ways.

For one, the book is set in 2409. Original Trek took place in the 2200's, and Next Gen Trek was set in the 2300's, so this book (as is the game) is set in the future of the original timeline and recaps much of the "future history" after the last Trek movie set in that timeline - Nemesis. It includes nods to other Star Trek novels as well, from the Vanguard series (TOS era) to the Titan series (TNG era) which is a nice touch.

The other unusual aspect is that it's not a novel, or at least it's not a single coherent narrative like most other Trek novels, nor is it a collection of short stories. It's written as a series of historical interviews looking back at the past 30 years or so and covering specific incidents in Trek history over that time. From Data's return to the breakdown of Federation-Klingon relations to conflict with Species 8472 and many others, there is a lot of interesting material here.

The format though is a problem. It reads more like a series of blog posts than a narrative or set of short stories. It doesn't even read like a history book - I have plenty of real-world history books and none of them choose this particular device and for good reason. Each one is an interview with character X on development or event Y. Some of the characters are well known, like Worf or Geordi LaForge, while others are not. The presentation comes across more like the notes that a historian would use to write a historical account of something rather than what they would actually publish.

As far as sitting down and reading it front to back, well, it was tough and this is mainly due to this choice of structure. The writer doesn't spend much time with any one character or one event, so this is much more of a survey/overview and there's not much depth there. While there are several parts I thought were fine, there were several segments I thought would make an interesting novel by themselves, or at least a good short story.

The silver lining here is that if you were looking to run a Trek RPG set in this time period, this format gives quite a few interesting ideas with just enough context and ties to the existing Trek universe to let a GM run with them and turn them into something interesting. Having all of the trappings of the TNG era Trek with further progression of the timeline to take those big characters off of the main stage  and one interpretation of the future history of Trek to use as a backdrop - that has a lot of potential for a good campaign.

So, to wrap up:

• As a novel, especially compared to other Trek novels, this is terrible
• As a tie-in to the computer game, it's interesting and does let you know how things got  to where they are in the setting if you're new to it
• As a source book on the Trek Prime universe circa 2400 it's actually pretty good

A Superhero Kickstarter - Valiance Online

Valiance Online is a City of Heroes successor project, an effort born in the wake of the shutdown of the City of Heroes MMORPG.

The Kickstarter page is here. I think it covers things pretty well. If you're interested in superheroes in general, and computer/online  games where you can play one in particular, this is worth considering.

This is the second of the three known successor projects to go to Kickstarter after last year's City of Titans successful run.  Now normally I'm not big on pimping things online but I'm happy to spread the word on this one as I had a blast playing CoH and the team here seems really interested in creating a similar experience. Plus they appear to have made enough progress to get some gameplay video in their pitch.

Full Disclosure: I've backed it. I don't know or have any relation to the people working on the team but I am interested in this kind of thing so I am putting some money into it.

The End of Paragon City - One Year On

Somewhere, the Mighty Crimson Fist is still fighting crime ...

City of Heroes came to an untimely end one year ago yesterday, specifically about 2 am Sunday morning my local time. It's still a sore spot around here and while I don't lay awake nights pining for it I do miss it at times. Quite a bit of the wallpaper rotation on my main PC is CoH screenshots so it still feels very recent to me. There are efforts underway to create some new games in the spirit of CoH but for today I'm wishing the original was still around.

Early on the last day in Atlas Park. Kaptain Amerika is the red one in the center there.

Star Trek Online - Season 8 Begins Today

I mostly focus on tabletop games here but I do like to share the word on the occasional "other" game, and Star Trek Online is one of them. It has been around for over 4 years now, there is a ton of content and most of it feels very much like playing through an episode of Star Trek. The game saw its first expansion earlier this year, Legacy of Romulus, that added Romulans (and Remans) as a playable faction among quite a few other changes. The more typical updates are called "Seasons" and today Season 8 goes live. The trailer looks pretty good - here's a link to it.

Remember the game is free to play and unlike some online games you can jump in, make a character, and play through all of the content without paying a dime. There is not the constant in-game advertising that you see in some free games. Don't get me wrong, there are things you can buy - if you want to fly a triple-engined Galaxy-X class ship from "All Good Things" then you will have to part with some $$$. That said you can play through the entire game, levels 1-50, flying iconic ships (Mirandas and all of the Enterprise types from A-E among others) and do all of the available end game stuff at no cost.

One warning: Space is very very pretty, even on a moderately powerful computer. It's also a lot of fun when you get into space combat. I find myself taking a lot of screenshots.

The game is set 30 years after Nemesis, so Worf has a little more gray than he used to. Don't we all ...

This is an interesting release. The lead in is a special mission that was released a few weeks ago featuring Worf, (voiced by Michael Dorn in-game!) that feels pretty authentically Trek to me and concerns Roumlans, Klingons, the Federation, an Iconian Gateway, and a bunch of somewhat obscure Trek lore that opens up a lot of options for the future. It's a fun mission and if you play it in the next few weeks you get a free ship out of it which is always cool.

For new players, the Federation tutorial is all-new and starts you out at Star Fleet Academy which seems like a completely sensible idea. Early reports say it's good and I'l be trying it out like everyone else later this week. You can also begin as a Klingon or a Romulan and their tutorials were new with the expansion earlier this year and are a lot of fun too. This game does not have near the leveling grind that some MMORPG's do and before long you will find yourself at high level ready to take on some exotic threats.

For existing players, the core of the activity is around a newly-discovered Dyson Sphere that is being taken over by the Voth. They're an obscure race from a Voyager episode that have something to do with dinosaurs  and so we get interesting alien tech, gigantic starships, and all kinds of interesting missions like fighting inside of an enemy starship (with your starship!) and flying around inside a Dyson Sphere.

There's been some static about "space dinosaurs" in a Star Trek game but A) Trek encompasses a lot of wild ideas, B) It is coming from canon lore, and C) it is a game and things might be OK in a game that might not be OK in a movie. It doesn't bother me at all.

Apprentice Blaster and I will be exploring it over the next few weeks. If you're at all interested in Trek, space combat videogames, or Sci-fi RPG's, I recommend giving it a try.