It's been over eight years now since I last logged in to Star Trek Online. Considering I only played it for four years, a period that itself included several hefty breaks, these eight years have felt so long that I may as well consider myself brand new to the game.
To be honest, playing the game again was never really on my mind. There was, however, a six year old task that needed to be tackled that I had not yet sorted out. And in contradiction to what I believed, I actually needed to play to get it done.
See, back in 2018, I picked up the Star Trek Online Humble Trekkie Pack from Humble Bundle. Other than logging in to the Arc website to reclaim my code I did nothing else with this as I wasn't playing at the time. However, it's always been in the back of my mind that I needed to get back into the game in order to fully claim the items. For some weird reason that I can't explain, I was recently inspired to do just that.
After all, it shouldn't be too difficult to download the game, log in, click a few buttons, and then get the hell out. Right?
I already knew that using my old character Macan to claim this bundle would be a waste, as he already has the Borg bridge officer from back in the day, and that was one of the items you pick up as part of this bundle. Therefore, a new character would be required.
I decided on a character that would be part of the Romulan storyline, as I read on the t'interwebs somewhere that these characters get two Borg officers from the bundle, being a Romulan, and either a human or Klingon.
Yet after logging in for the first time in all these years, I saw that I already had a Romulan character. He was only level 12, and for some reason was named Tarl Kreethen. I do not remember starting a Romulan at all back in the day. I definitely do not remember making a character called Tarl Kreethen. Sure, this is one of my common character names, but Macan has a ship called the Kreethen, so this would have made no sense.
I quickly decided that poor Tarl was out, and deleted him. As I'm typing this, I'm sure hoping I wasn't using him as a bank character, as I realise now that I may have just lost some of Macan's items.
Oh well. Screw it.
In Tarl's place, I created a new character called Kallisto Blaze. A fiery, red-skinned alien, who would be a tactical officer and recipient of the bundle's goodies.
Kallisto Blaze reports for duty
High five, little bug?
How does that massive beam come out of such a small muzzle?
The R.R.W. Kachiri blowing some shit up
I got into the game, brazenly skipping the tutorial. After all, I could clearly remember how to play, right? Ahem.
I eventually found where to redeem the items in the Zen Store, but it was greyed out. After logging in with Macan, I saw it was also greyed out here. The only info I could find at first was that the code needed to be redeemed by 2020, but I'd already done that back in 2018. So maybe the items also needed to be redeemed by this time?
It was on the Humble website that I found out the reason. After redeeming the code, it required you to play the tutorial missions in order to claim the goods. Yes, the tutorial missions I had just skipped.
As there is no way to elect to replay the tutorial missions, I had to delete poor Kallisto and remake her again, allowing me to play the tutorial this time.
Sheesh.
However, after playing the tutorial, I discovered that I still could not claim the goods. What was more confusing was, after logging back in with Macan, I saw that I could now claim with him.
But I didn't want to claim with him. Sigh.
It was at this point that I learned that the account bank is not available for Romulan characters until later in their story, after they have chosen whether to join the Federation or the Klingons. It dawned on me that perhaps this was also required for the bundle to kick in, so the game would know whether to give you the human Borg officer or the Klingon Borg officer.
I guess it was time for some long overdue adventures.
I sighed again, and ventured out into the galaxy...
Miss Blaze is a bit challenged in the height department
The R.R.W. Lykopis getting stuck in
What's going on with this dude's tassles?
I'd hardly call this a fair fight
I worked through the introductory Romulan story, then started the other episodes. I think I got the choice to join the Federation or Klingons at about level 13, and as I wanted to be able to trade items back and forth with Macan, I elected for the Federation. This allowed Miss Blaze to slip into something a little more comfortable, in the form of the same uniform as my old characters. Gotta admit, she looks way better now.
It sucks however that the Romulan officers can't be put in the same uniform, even though they are now with the Federation. The only clothing available to them are crappy looking generic Romulan things that just look a bit poop. I had to put them in some armour just so that they would look even the slightest bit cool.
As expected, I could now also claim the bundle on this character, and some relief washed over me. However, I had picked up four bridge officers along the way, and I had no more empty slots being at such low level. In order to get two Borgs in there, I would need to free up some space. After another quick Googling, I found that I would get another officer slot, and another free ship to boot, when I got to level 20. It would mean a bit more game time in a game I wasn't really feeling, but I thought it wouldn't hurt much.
So off I went again, butting heads with the Tal Shiar, the Cardassians and the Borg, to name but a few.
And pretty soon, I was level 20. With one officer slot now available, I discharged my poor engineer Veril to make way for both Borgs, and claimed the bundle at last.
Imagine my surprised (not) face when I saw that I only got the Romulan Borg officer, and not the human one as well. Either the internet was lying to me about getting 2 officers, or something was up.
A little perplexed, it was at this time I did something I had never done before in an MMO, and submitted a help ticket from the in-game menus.
I take part in a massive battle against the Tal Shiar
I knew these buggers would show up soon enough
Shoot the Borgie in the backie
Tackling some more shady Romulans
A several day back-and-forth occurred, where I first asked whether I was also supposed to get a Federation Borg officer in addition to the Romulan one.
A GM told me that I'd successfully redeemed all items from the bundle, including the Romulan bridge officer.
I had to write back saying that I knew I'd got the Romulan one, as I'd already stated this fact to them. Then I had to reiterate my original question while simultaneously pointing them to the wiki page that states I was supposed to get two officers.
So they then wrote back saying that some bug must have happened. In order to get this problem sorted, I would need to post in the game's support forums, which should get eyes on it from a senior GM, who could then elevate the problem to the game developers.
This seemed ludicrous to me. I mean, what is the point of using the in-game support menu if senior GMs and developers don't see it? And why can't the GM just forward my issue to a more important GM or developer themselves?
Whatever, I suppose. I went and logged into the forums using my Arc account, only to find I had no way of creating a new forum post or topic. Odd.
However, I was doing this on Windows 7, on a version of Firefox that is probably a good year old by now. It's possible, I thought, that something was unsupported on this setup.
So out came my laptop with Windows 10, with updated Firefox. No luck here either. Can't make a new post, or even reply to ones that are already open. Hmm, so maybe it was Firefox, I thought. The vast majority of people use Chrome now, so I downloaded that and logged in again. But still no luck. I am completely unable to create new forum posts or reply to existing ones.
So how the hell am I supposed to post in the support forum if there is simply no option to?
I considered going back to the original GM and bringing up this matter, but then I simply thought "why?" I'd already spent a few unplanned evenings on the game as it was, and I was probably never going to play it again.
So I didn't bother. It's just way too evident that the game continues to be a buggy, grindy mess, just like it was eight years ago, and will no doubt continue to be. It's a shame, but it's just not worth it.
Perhaps the only interesting thing about this entire entry is that the three ships that I unlocked, the R.R.W. Kachiri, the R.R.W. Lykopis, and the R.R.W. Xanara, all had their names taken from a list I made years ago that was going to be for new Amazon Blood Bowl players. Seemed fitting, what with Kallisto being my new character.
Forty Five Of One must have received the height buff meant for Kallisto
My one and only space battle in the R.R.W. Xanara
Once again fighting the Tal Shiar. Getting a bit bored of this...
Kallisto waves goodbye to the game on my behalf
