Partying like it's 2399

Last night was the last day of the Open Beta testing on STO.

On the official site was a message...End of Beta Event. All Klingon gather together at Qu’dar System at 10pm GMT.

No information on the Federation side at all...

I log in 30 mins before this, and tune into an STO-theme internet radio show to see what they know about things. Not a lot, it seemed, although word was out that Federation ships were being mustered at a starbase near the Klingon/Federation border.

When I zone in to the area, my instance number was 26. And it had 50 Federation ships in it, the apparent maximum. Instances are added as more people arrive to an area...that was a LOT of ships gathering.

A few people scout around Klingon space to try and see what is happening.
Then word came in – Klingons had been sighted in Sirius Sector Block. That was an area of subspace in which Sol (and Earth) system is located, and is normally off-limits to Klingons during Player-vs-Player (PvP). We were in the PvP area...the entire fleet either heads off to that sector, or transwarps directly to Sol.

Over the next thirty-forty minutes, it became apparent that every system, every starbase, every planet had been opened up for PvP in space or on the ground.
Unfortunately, the number of Federation vessels in most areas meant that Klingons spawning in were destroyed almost immediately by broadsides from 30-40 ships. Trying to encourage people to back up and let them come in were largely ignored. Despite being the beta, people started to leave, despite rumours that things hadn’t actually really started yet.

How right they were...

Word started to spread that Borg ships had been sighted in Klingon space. Then in Federation territory Starbase 24 was under attack.

I headed out from Sol to see what was happening, and headed that way in subspace, right into the path of the Mother of All Borg Cubes. There was a massive fleet heading to Sol. Almost all attention on the Klingons was switched to the Borg. Massive space battles against Borg Spheres 30-40 levels above the level cap. They just kept on coming. More and more re-spawning for each one we killed. 5-6 ships were able to take down a sphere; any less than that and no chance. My shields were being stripped in 2-3 seconds of fire; less if more than one ship targeted me.

Ground battles reported the Borg were adapting to the weapon systems...

A new rumour came round – these weren’t AI Borg. One of the Cubes had a player name by it, prefixed with “GM”. This wasn’t a normal Borg invasion. This was the Dev team out for revenge on all those WoW players that had been whining about the game play over the last few weeks. And they wanted blood.

Starbase-01, in orbit around Earth, was down to hand-to-hand fighting. Ground battles reported the Borg were adapting to the weapon systems... I went back there and joined in for a bit. Taking down the ‘spawning nodes’ in the side corridors didn’t seem to stop the spawn rates, and soon it was impossible to get out of the main areas at all.

With our backs to the door of the Admiral’s office, a few of us stayed to see how long we could hold out, until the order came through – Starbase-01 was lost – evacuate immediately.

Back on the ship, and with 30 minutes left before the servers were switched off, sub-space radio suggested since we had lost control of Earth space, everyone head to the paradise planet of Risa for an End of Beta party. Great fun – all beach areas and tropical islands. Spent the last half an hour chatting to people and looking at how many dancing animations they had programmed in for the avatar.

Subspace radio played out with REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know it”....
Game is back up on Friday...but that was one hell of a way to test the server capacity!

What was great was that apart from the initial ‘Klingon muster’ post, nothing official came through at all during the entire four hours. Everything was coordinated (such as it was) by the various groups and sub-communities. In the last few minutes, a message did come through – “thanks for all the support, hope you had fun, and see you on Friday!”

Oh,and a few screen grabs are on my Facebook page.