Well I’m back after E3. By ‘back’ I mean I never left I just wasn’t posting. With the Blogosphere and in general the entire internet spamming E3 news constantly I decided to take a leave of absence until E3 was said and done and I had something else to talk about.
Let’s get to the first piece of news, something from E3…wait…dang. Well here it is anyway:
Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online! I don’t want to get too excited but I’ve wanted this since WAY before they announced the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMO. I’ve always thought the 40k universe was one of the more in depth, rich, and deep space settings and I would prefer it (if done well) to Star Wars or Star Trek.
Some people are already complaining that it looks too colorful! These are the same people that complained that the Diablo III trailer looked like unicorn farts. It seems the only way to make a game dark enough for them is to turn off the monitor. I see the art design as a sign of hope. It looks good, and it means that its graphics might age slower than those of, say, Age of Conan. That game is already beginning to show it’s age, and while it still looks good, it is nowhere near the technical marvel it was in the MMO space at the time.
Haters gonna hate!
I finally finished all three seasons of The Original Series the other day! I went right to Netflix to start in on Season 1, Episode 1 of The Next Generation only to find out that it is not available for streaming. In fact none of the Next Generation is available. I couldn’t find it anywhere (legal and in good quality at least) so I’m kind of stuck. I don’t have the money to pay for them all, and my Netflix que is packed and I don’t want to spend the next eight years with my que full of seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. If anyone knows of a place to stream it, throw me a link in the comments or in email.
I did decide to watch all the Star Trek movies involving the original crew. Luckily Netflix had all of those movies for streaming except one. The first one. I skipped it for now and I watched both The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock. Both of them were really enjoyable, and it was great to see Khans return. It really surprised me that they never actually saw each other until the end, at least not in person, but I liked it.
The Search for Spock seemed REALLY out of character, seeing as how Kirk didn’t really believe in a ‘Soul’ and didn’t understand Spocks “mind transfer before death” thing. It seemed like he just went insane and stole a ship with four people (and if Scotty can rig the Enterprise to run with four people in an hour, WTF do the newer ships needs all these people for? More impressive casualty numbers?).
I’ve got more to say on more topics, but I’ll leave those for later blog posts. It feels good to be writing again.
Manifest Pixel 
So what did you think of TOS?
And sorry, no idea where you can watch TNG stream online…I don’t have the money right now to spend on them either, so I settled for watching it on Space where they show it every weekday. Luckily it seems to run on a loop and they just restarted the series from the first season a couple months ago. Maybe they some of the big video chains still rent them out? Or maybe you can find some of the DVDs cheap used.
You weren’t able to watch it through Youtube? Sadness. They have the entirety of the old series on their, legally, free of charge.
I’ve often thought the Starships as portrayed are way overstaffed. However, large vessels in our day have large crews mostly of maintainance and operations personnel. The funny thing is, the more people you have along, the more people you need to provide quality of life, such as medical and culinary staffs. Besides, how boring would an actual deep space mission be without plenty of people to interact with?
Most of the things we see on the screen are much more for the benefit of the audience and the drama, anyway; as opposed the way a Starship might actually run. According to the Star Trek Technical Manual, Picard could have flown the Enterprise from a PADD while walking down a corridor.
I hope you get a hold of TNG. I was so excited to watch it at age 15 when it premiered in ’87.
I would add to Rowan’s comment by saying that flying a starship with minimal crew is not a good idea in combat situations.
I hadn’t thought of that. Sure, three people could fly the ship, but one lucky torpedo and all three are dead.
That or just needing one guy to man weapons while others handle dealing with fires and such. Plus if automated systems are knocked offline it’s nice to have extra hands as back up.
I really hadn’t thought much about any of this until Rowan’s comment though.
I’m a Tau fan through-and-through, but I’m not that excited about the 40K MMO. Maybe it’s just me, but some of the footage in that teaser trailer looked like it was straight out of one of the Dawn of War games – which are great games, but not really what I was expecting in a MMO.
If you mean graphics wise I can see that, but I don’t understand what you were expecting if that’s the case. The Dawn of War games seemed to capture the feel of the 40k universe pretty well graphically, despite some limitation such as scale.
No, you’re right, DoW captures the feel of 40K really well. But: look at how those IG move when hit; I swear I’ve seen the same thing in Dark Crusade.