Star Trek Online just went free-to-play a few weeks ago and I jumped in to see what was new. It was FREE afterall. Yet, I won’t be playing it long. Really. I swore off MMOs years ago as horrible time sinks with little true reward, and I still believe them to be. In fact STO was the last one I really played, about a year and a half ago.
I do love the idea of a game that is dynamic and expansive with updating quests with groups of people and, in theory, many of the top MMOs seem fantastic. In practice, I’ll love it for a month or so then just start to hate myself for being stupid enough to play it for this long.
Now here is a caveat: I love Star trek.
From watching reruns of the original 1960s series at my Grandparents on Sunday evenings to the movies and newer tv shows, I have been a life long fan. This is where they get you. This is how the MMO digs into your subconscious and says “Come live out your childhood fantasies”. These games are truly insidious. From Lord of the Rings Online and the newly released Star Wars: The Old Republic MMOs, I feel the pull of those expansive online worlds. Experience has taught me otherwise however. Yet I jumped back in Star Trek Online went it moved to ‘free to play’. Why? Wasting time at no cost makes me feel better I think. Instead of paying a monthly fee, many of these games have moved to a model of free play with expanded content locked behind micro transactions and for the dedicated, full subscriptions. So far I played around for a few hours, and Ill probably mess with it a bit this weekend… then I’m done. Really. Having played a bunch of great non-MMO, games during the holiday, each of them offered a more robust experience, with a less extreme time investment. And I have other interests, and playing an MMO means all of those are marginalized. So I’ll play some of this online star trek a bit, but not for long. Really.
Promise.
But man, check out my awesome Starship!
Other than being one of the most incredible games in years, Skyrim also turns out to be a fantastic cheese rolling sim.
Note: Beware youtube uploader’s music selection.
Dragons make everything better.
Nope, won’t do it. I don’t need it. Honest. My Samsung Focus is still a great phone, works brilliantly and of course is just over a year old. And yet.. here I am thinking I want Nokia’s new phone. Why? Because the one thing that most phones out there don’t have right now is great design and great build quality. The current crop of smartphones have dubious materials at best, even my current phone feels like it would shatter or snap with some effort. My Blackberry phones were all pretty solidly built, but pretty they were not. And even some of the more solid HTC phones still don’t have much variation from model to model.
Cue the Lumia 800.
It’s absolutely gorgeous. It has this slightly raised and curved screen and the body is made of one piece of coloured polycarbonate, so scratching it will not be as noticeable as in other phones. It’s just one of the best looking phones I’ve ever seen. The specs aren’t cutting edge as cutting edge however. A single core processor, no front facing camera. which admittedly, in the case of the front facing camera, isn’t up to top of the line phone standards. I’m not so concerned about the processor as Windows Phone’s Mango OS runs better on 1 processor that all Android phone do on dual core.
Nokia claims they only had about 6 months to push this phone out and it’s a brilliant device given that the Nokia/Microsoft deal was only signed in April 2011. The time frame is probably why Nokia isn’t even bringing this model to North America this year. Expectations are early next year with an announcement at CES in January, with more new Nokia windows phones in 2012 and we’d be impressed by what’s coming.
I hope not. Because I’ll want them all.
So I finally got a chance to go see Green Lantern…
Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
Probably not. Instead, here are some bro’s just hanging out.
flickr
