There's been a dearth of Star Trek Online news or information these past few weeks. We've been upset about it. Cryptic just broke radio science at long last, though: four Star Trek Online wallpapers have been posted at the game site. We've got all of 'em here for you to see, but head over to the official gallery for the full breadth of resolution choices.

One of them is a rare in-game glimpse at a planet surface. It looks gorgeous, although we're suddenly worried about the minimum system requirements. Hopefully those nice lighting and shadow effects will scale back for low-end desktops and notebooks.

The much-heralded 100th Asheron's Call update has finally arrived! In addition to new areas and monsters, it notably adds in the highly anticipated faction system, with three distinct societies that players can join. There are also two new towns which may be captured in PvP. The society that controls a town will have access to the Black Market, which sells special items unavailable anywhere else.

A new tier of loot has been added -- mostly for levels 150 and up -- which includes armor sets for players above level 180 and items used in crafting new spells. Yep, there are new spells -- a whole level of them in fact! Level 8 spells may either be researched in the traditional way, or learned via combination of certain item drops from the new tier.

The complete release notes, including details on how to acquire items in the new loot tier, are available at Turbine's AC website. This is a huge update (accompanied, of course, by the August event), and it's a great time to feel proud that you're among the special few playing Asheron's Call today.