Morning Discussion

Friday night is the village-famous bingo night in Wainthrope-by-Roe. As ever a community minibus service will be picking up ball-crazed bingo fans from the outlying area so slip on your best frock and glam up your Zimmer because it's certain to be a night you won't forget until your next funny turn!

Mind you don't stay out too late though, as on Saturday Ms. Cholmondley-Mainwaring, 52, will be leading a fascinating morning of debate covering topics including "To starch or not to starch?" "Dress to the left or the right?" and "Those foreign people--chase them out or burn them?" We understand that last topic is why Mr. Henry Bysshe-Pringle-Fletcher, 117, has been politely asked never to attend again, the horrid withered beast.

I'm interested to see what will end up in Mass Effect 2's daily fake 'news' updates on the title screen in a year or so from now. You would be surprised by how quickly people slip into gibberish and nonsense when required to write daily blurbs.

From The Chatty
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    February 5, 2010 5:15 AM

    4 hour early dismissal today. Probably snowed in all weekend.

    I just hope not to lose electricity. I want to make alot of progress in Star Trek Online. I want to AT LEAST hit Lt. Commander.

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      February 5, 2010 5:16 AM

      We're sitting here looking out the window at all the ice accumulating on the trees, the branches bowing lower and lower, just waiting for the power to go off.

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        February 5, 2010 5:20 AM

        I often find it ironic that I work as a power reliability engineer at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and my power goes out so often.

        I can go into details about how transmission (what I regulate) is different than distribution (no authority over), but when MY lights are out, it just bums me out further.

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          February 5, 2010 7:00 AM

          distribution is where all the troubles lie.

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        February 5, 2010 5:27 AM

        In SoCal? How is this possible?

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        February 5, 2010 5:39 AM

        I wish you were on the podcast for ME2 discussion :(

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      February 5, 2010 5:19 AM

      This can be our ST:O thread then!

      More people to the Klingon Fleet, please, or I'll crush your pathetic federation faces with my bat'leth.

      I've uploaded some screenshots from some pretty awesome Klingon-side PvP battles, not all of them are that great because it's kinda hard to throw my hand over to the print screen button in the middle of a battle, but some of them are cool.

      http://durajim.shackspace.com/sto/klingonpvp/

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        February 5, 2010 5:21 AM

        I actually might start my Klingon Faction character this weekend after my Federation character hits lvl 11.

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        February 5, 2010 5:22 AM

        Graphic card update, STAT!

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          February 5, 2010 5:32 AM

          For me?! They don't look that bad!

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      February 5, 2010 5:22 AM

      Take solace in knowing that your Imperial nitwits get to live for a little while longer before I grind your fleet into stardust.

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        February 5, 2010 5:26 AM

        Yea, I guess I might not be able to make it over. I'll assess the roads tomorrow.

    • gmd legacy 10 years legacy 20 years mercury mega
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      February 5, 2010 5:34 AM

      I am home, they told everyone don't come in, and there is no snow yet, glorious.

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        February 5, 2010 5:35 AM

        This is me as well. Although, to be honest, I normally work from home on Friday anyway. This time, however, they told everyone to work from home today.

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        February 5, 2010 5:36 AM

        My bosses are stuck in the darkages. They don't trust working from home, even though legislation and OPM require it.

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        February 5, 2010 5:36 AM

        [deleted]

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        February 5, 2010 6:19 AM

        amazing, when we have snow here, work never closes even though the city practically shuts down due to weatheralert.gif.

        • gmd legacy 10 years legacy 20 years mercury mega
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          February 5, 2010 6:22 AM

          was it 2 feet of snow?

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        February 5, 2010 6:49 AM

        When I got up this morning I kind of hoped to find an e-mail from my boss saying just this. Ah well.

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        February 5, 2010 6:50 AM

        I emailed in a copy of the winter weather warning and said "I'm working from home today." No snow yet.

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      February 5, 2010 5:51 AM

      Btw down for an additional hour server "pre" upgrade taking longer than expected.

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      February 5, 2010 6:03 AM

      So what's up with this game? Just read Eurogamer gave it a 6/10. That doesn't sound very good.

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        February 5, 2010 6:11 AM

        Link the review. I'd like to read it. I think it is alot of fun, I'd give it a 8/10.

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        February 5, 2010 6:18 AM

        I have a lifetime sub. Its nowhere near ready for release. They had to release it to get paid. It needs way more polishing and general bug squashing across the board. They have done some shifty shit with paid downloadable content day 1. The pew pew space combat is fun. The ground combat is clunky but could be even more strategic with some time spent making it less shit. Quite a few players at cap, nothing to do. More content has been promised within the first month. Right now the most dire thing is no GM support in a timely fashion. Order bonuses have been a complete cluster fuck. Despite all that uptime has been pretty decent for a new offering. Its not an mmog considering the massive use of tiny instances, 5 player normal, 20 very occasionally, 60 at social areas.

        I still believe the IP has massive potential.

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          February 5, 2010 6:21 AM

          Pretty accurate ^

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            February 5, 2010 6:27 AM

            Yup, a good overview of what is going on. In terms of releases it is the best MMO release I've ever been involved with (very smooth, UI finished, no crashes, little lag), but content-wise they're as empty as WoW at launch.

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          February 5, 2010 6:33 AM

          Ouch, don't you feel ripped off?

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            February 5, 2010 6:42 AM

            Not at all I've played the shit out of beta and live. I decided to take a long term view with regard my investment and me giving them several hundred dollars upfront is the best way i can impact the positive development of the IP. I believe the game will get better with time and will still be up 2 years from now.

            Plus if they fuck up I can firebomb the offices.

            So far I've had 7 hrs downtime without my main character and 17 hrs downtime where I couldn't gain any xp, rewards, merits or complete missions. I had to suffer both these issues and the only reason I got one resolved access to my main was I pm'd one of the devs and he fixed it in 5 mins. The second issue I just farmed ships to advance which is the most tedious shit I have ever done in any game but once I past several levels the missions began to work again.

            I'm sitting at Rear Admiral 4 messing around with an assault cruiser build that adds +100 to my turn rate. My main build is a pedo cruiser than can burst 3500+ dps per pedo and sustained just shy of 900 dps per pedo.

            Its fun, frustrating, and one for the future and for some the future is now.

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          February 5, 2010 6:43 AM

          people are already at the level cap??

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            February 5, 2010 6:44 AM

            youd have to have played almost constantly to be at lvl cap, but there are quite a few of those yeah.

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          February 5, 2010 6:45 AM

          are you PVPing? are there any Klingons at your tier yet?

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            February 5, 2010 6:54 AM

            Nope I am a man alone; bunny and I just touch each other at night in space.

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          February 5, 2010 6:58 AM

          I can't believe people have played enough to hit cap. That's just... fucking dumb. Like how starved are you for something to do? I'm at like Lt 9 and perfectly fine with the pace I'm taking.

          Also, I'm not sure what's shady about the paid content. If people want to buy silly <$5 cosmetic things, then by all means waste your money.

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      February 5, 2010 6:24 AM

      Im about Lt 6 right now... I need to do some humping on that this weekend as well. With my luck living in the middle of nowhere that is SE PA, the power will fail.

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        February 5, 2010 6:27 AM

        I'm Lt 8, it's going really slowly as I've been playing a lot of Mass Effect 2 as well

        I have a weeks holiday booked off next week but thats to work on my game stuff at home and not for playing ST:O :(

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          February 5, 2010 6:33 AM

          You federation scum queens disgust me >:(

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            February 5, 2010 6:36 AM

            To be honest, I'm only playing Fed as I heard klingon was unfinished, and boring :P

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              February 5, 2010 6:40 AM

              it's not boring (pvp combat is far more challenging than pve), but unfinished is about right

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      February 5, 2010 6:49 AM

      I got my Lt. Cmdr science vessel last night. Holy cow the game truly opens up when you hit that rank. Space combat is so much different now. I see the game increasing in fun level a lot from here on out.

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        February 5, 2010 6:56 AM

        So is the system targeting stuff cool?

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          February 5, 2010 6:57 AM

          it's bugged right now. using it damages the system, but them your beams go into a long cooldown
          http://forums.startrekonline.com/showpost.php?p=1670423&postcount=5

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            February 5, 2010 7:01 AM

            I only played with it last night, but it's not a 'long' cooldown. I'm assuming the targeting of subsystems you engage it, and then when your phasers hit the target next is when the debuff activates on the enemy ship.

            There is a short cooldown of like 10 seconds before you can target another subsystem but I wouldn't consider it long.

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        February 5, 2010 6:58 AM

        I'm still thinking I might go cruisers...

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