Captain's Log: Star Trek Online enlists Denise Crosby for secret project

Sometimes it's a little tricky to write about an MMO right before content releases. There's usually a definite slump in developer interactivity as the team prepares for what will inevitably be a very busy time. Star Trek Online is no exception to this rule, and this is one of those weeks.

We're still about two weeks away from celebrating Star Trek Online's third anniversary. To date, we have only a few ideas about what the anniversary celebration might entail, but not much else has been revealed by the team at Cryptic.

However, that doesn't mean nothing has happened. Quite the contrary! There are a few things to talk about this week, including some fun news that actress Denise Crosby has been tapped to participate in the game. So join me past the break as I touch on some of the fun stuff in STO that we're hearing about!

XP weekend

While we wait for more concrete information on the anniversary festivities, Cryptic has announced that beginning next Friday, the 25th of January, there will be a Q XP weekend. These weekends provide double XP to players who have need of it during the few days it runs.

Many player who have commented on the game's blog have made it very clear they don't need more XP because they have characters at max level. Once again, I have to remind them that there are new players coming to this game every single day. And contrary to popular belief among veteran players, not everyone who plays STO can sit in front of his computer for eight hours every day in order to level a characters to endgame. So no, not everyone levels characters in five days, as so many have intimated on the game's forums.

Personally, I think this is a great chance for people who have mid-level characters to make that final push for endgame just in time to be able to enjoy the material currently available to endgame players as well as any new content we might be presented with during the third anniversary celebration due in early February.

A new ship

For the past three years, hard-core Trekkies have pushed STO's developers to have all of the canon representations of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the game. Most of the ships, with one glaring exception, were put into the game well over two years ago. The Constitution class (Kirk's original Enterprise), the Excelsior class (the Enterprise-B), the Galaxy class (Picard's Enterprise-D), and the Sovereign (the Enterprise-E seen in the films) have all been in the game virtually since launch or just a few months after.

It took more than a year to get Adam Ihle's Design the Next Enterprise contest-winning design approved for release, and we finally got to see the Odyssey class vessel in game early last year.

But we were missing one. A big one. One that many Trekkies love. It's the Ambassador class -- the class of ship that bore the name U.S.S. Enterprise, registration number NCC-1701-C.

It always kind of saddened me that we never got to see her in game. Trust me when I say that it's not because I think the ship is overtly beautiful in design. Frankly, she's one of my least favorite-looking ships, but there's much more to her than her looks.

The Enterprise-C is seen on screen for just a few moments during the pivotal Next Generation episode titled Yesterday's Enterprise, but that episode fired the imagination of a lot of Trekkies, many of them female, because shock of shocks -- her commanding officer was a woman. In that episode we were all introduced to Captain Rachel Garrett.

Within the episode's short 42 minutes, we met her, got to know her, fell in love with her, and sadly, mourned for her. She was as strong a captain as any Enterprise would ever see, and fans gobbled up the story with ravenous glee.

So I am very happy to see not only that the Ambassador class is finally, finally coming to the game but that we might actually get to see the Enterprise-C herself in an upcoming mission. Why? Well, the screencap above reflects that the devs have actually created the Enterprise-C. There was also the release of very interesting news about a certain actress who made her way to Cryptic Studios a couple of weeks ago...

Denise Crosby visits Cryptic

Just last week, I happily watched this video, taken by STO's lead writer Christine Thompson, of lead designer Al Rivera at a local sci-fi convention as he got the opportunity to pose a question or two to Denise Crosby, the actress who portrayed both Lt. Tasha Yar and the Romulan Commander Sela in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Around the same time the video was posted, several tweets from STO devs began to pop up showing that Denise Crosby had personally visited the studio. That was followed up by the posting of a formal audio interview with the actress, cementing many players' suspicions that upcoming content might include the character of Sela, whose ship was last seen in the game being whisked away by what we all assume was an Iconian vessel.

Knowing that Crosby was likely at Cryptic for voiceover recording and that this is coming on the heels of the reveal of the screencap of the U.S.S. Enterprise-C and Thompson's verbal comment on the video (she says, "I can do that!" when Crosby mentioned her wishes for her characters), many of us began to wonder whether or not we might not actually hear from both Sela and Yar in the upcoming content. Alas, we won't find out about any of it until the material that features the actress is released.

All I know is that it's been damned fun to sit around and actually ruminate on potential Star Trek storylines again. I've missed doing this for a long time, and I'm glad that STO is finally giving me something to really look forward to: the actual forward progression of the game's story!

So while we all wait to see what the next few weeks will bring, I would like to hear from all of you in the comment section below. Knowing that Crosby is involved in the upcoming content in some manner, what do you think is in store for us? Will we see Sela? Yar? Both? Will the Enterprise-C be involved? If so, how? What might this mean for the future of the Romulan colony? Or the Tal Shiar? I look forward to your thoughts! Until next week, live long and prosper!

Incoming communique from Starfleet Headquarters: Captain's Log is now transmitting direct from Terilynn Shull every Monday, providing news, rumors, and dev interviews about Star Trek Online. Beam communications to terilynn@massively.com.