Ready for Star Trek Online's newest Featured Episode series? Well, ready or not, Cryptic is here to give us the skinny on Series 3: Cloaked Intentions. If you're wondering how STO's episodes work, it breaks down like this: Feature Episodes are tied together to form a single story arc. New episodes under each Feature banner take a bow on Saturdays at 11:00 a.m. PST and are freely available to all STO players regardless of level.
The new Cloaked Intentions arc involves a series of missions focused on the Romulan Empire; the overarching goal of participating players is the prevention of a bloody civil war. The intrigue kicks off today with Episode 1: The Vault, followed by episodes 2 - 5 every Saturday through March 5th.
You can learn more at the official STO website, and don't forget to warp past the cut for the Cloaked Intentions trailer.
Yes, a Featured Episode, the release of which brought the Star Trek Online servers to their knees. Emergency Maintenance was implemented to deal with the network problems. A queue was put in place to deal with the number of folks trying to play the mission.
I love how you guys only report half of the story. At least you might have mentioned the server issues to illustrate how popular the Feature Episode is. It's been an ongoing issue all day.
Would they have known about the server issues at that point though? I doubt they wouldn't have at least added a line at the end about the server issues. Or maybe there's a million other reasons. Or maybe you just didn't have your coffee yet? ;)
The episode was rather contrived. The use of the shuttle was what I would call over design or design rot. It could have been better but it was not. Maybe the next in the series will be better.
I always hated the I'm in a shuttle and something bad happens episodes in Star Trek. After the first few times, you'd think they would stop doing that...
You know, if this had come out a month ago, I would have still cared. If *any* new content had come out in the last month and a half, I would have still cared. It was long enough between what used to be called Weekly Episodes that I got bored with Star Trek Online, and who knows when I'll get around to looking at it again.
Agreed. I think that the way STO is structured and the rate at which new content is produced do NOT warrant paying a regular monthly subscription fee. The game should either switch to F2P or offer a substantially lower monthly subscription rate.
As it is now, the only reasonable way to approach the game from a subscription standpoint is to subscribe for 1 month (only) about twice a year. It's hard to stay interested in a game when you're doing that, however.
Loved the episode, and the Vault was gorgeous. Haven't played in about 5 months but I'm glad I came back. A LOT has changed and I'm now finally a Captain with my awesome little Defiant class Escort. That thing kicks ass.
