I think I should explain something of the games I’m playing, before I get too far into the day-to-day stuff, as far as that goes. That can be a big job, especially for a MMO, but fortunately I’ve already done that for one of the games, Star Trek Online (STO) on another site. So go forth, and read.

Now, that was almost four years ago, so a few things have changed, at least in the story. Two alternate starts were created for the Blue Team (Federation): an Original Series -themed start, and a STD (Star Trek: Discovery) -themed tutorial more recently. Another half-faction was also added (The Dominion), but they have similar rules to the Romulan Republic about joining the Red (Klingons) or Blue Team. The story itself has advanced some: we got a time war, then some exploration, then another war, then yet another conflict (which was how The Dominion comes into play). That last bit was really quite good, with several of the actors from DS9 coming back to play their old roles. And yet again, STO takes a thing barely mentioned, let alone featured in an episode, and then makes a big deal out of it (in a good way, I think).

But then we come to the current state of the game. STD came out, CBS suddenly became interested in one of their major franchises, and STO got some official attention. The game was permitted (or ordered…) to get some STD action going. Trouble is, STO is set about 160 years after STD. How can that work?

Well, in my opinion, it doesn’t. There’s some timey-wimey stuff, and one of the Klingons ends up in the current year, influencing stuff. Don’t know how, since literally nothing has come from that. All of the other missions have been “historical simulations,” just to get the player into the setting. I haven’t done any of it; I don’t want to catch any STD. The game has sure been (trying to?) capitalize on the ships, though; since it’s Trek, old-as-dirt ships getting upgrades to stay current is a thing. I don’t like the aesthetic of the STD ships, though.

So I haven’t had much interest in the game in…a year? More than that. Trying to stay current with the TV shows is a bad thing, in my opinion, especially crap shows that are way outside the setting, like STD.

Fortunately for the game, they know how to keep even not-completely-enthusiastic players like me in the game: daily events with daily rewards. It hasn’t been constant, and the events haven’t all been good, but collecting dongles and prizes is what kusoge skinner boxes MMO’s are all about. Right now is the Risa Summer Event, where you fly through some hoops to get dongles to get a ship. You can do other stuff to get other dongles to get other prizes, some of which are pretty cool.

And, there’s the promise of more, different, non-STD content in the future. Perhaps to do with the Picard show (I hope it doesn’t suck like STD, but I’m not counting on it), perhaps the other shows. But we’ll see soon, since STO will have at least one major panel at Star Trek: Las Vegas. Maybe I’ll go to that; I’ve been considering going to that convention, but the main draw would be the STO stuff, for me.