Unlike Blizzard’s store, the offerings from which represent the merest fraction of equivalent content available in-game, Cryptic’s store contains fully half of the Federation races, and nearly half of the game’s top-tier ships! STO currently offers nine playable Federation races, and nine more for purchase in the C-Store. Put very simply, players have to buy an outrageous proportion of certain content — half of the races and nearly half of the endgame ships in STO — on top of the mandatory subscription. I have nothing against those who buy a sparkle pony, but that just ain’t my cup of meat. On the one hand, we have DDO — the very model, if ever there were one, of how to do freemium right. In my experience, DDO really was free to play, because the vast majority of content was available to me, a non-subscriber, without entering the Turbine Store. The company had seen much success doing so with Dungeons and Dragons Online, and the folks at Turbine hope to capture lightning in a bottle twice, or something. Well, damn. See, Turbine surprised just about everyone and his sister’s Tribble when it announced plans to switch LotRO to the increasingly popular free-to-play-ish, or “freemium,” model.

You can switch heroes at any time as long as you’re not in combat, and you level them all up independent of one another. So now it’s up to us to imagine what life might be like if Cryptic makes the big switch with STO. That seems like a bit of a waste. The conversation veered off a bit toward the C-Store, which sells in-game items for real-world money, and its place in a subscription-based game. Prices on items vary wildly. And the prices don’t necessarily bother me. The C-Store has never been the most popular facet of STO — even since day one, when Cryptic quietly added Klingons and Ferengis for purchase. Surprise! A freemium STO would not be the end of the world. That is where the comparison to STO breaks down. But I submit that it could very likely be awful, and it all comes down to the C-Store mentality. The three-part drama is being styled as a ‘thriller’ as it counts down the panic-filled five months to Anne’s execution. It’s also downright silly and charming, even for a creaky old kid like me. And don’t even get me started on the fact that the folks at Cryptic want you to pay human moneys for emotes.

It may be a little too late to get a Costume Quest 3 on Halloween this year, but the demand for the game is assuredly there. The best-case scenario is that we all get sparkle ships and the universe makes love, not war. I am no fan of micro-transactions, and the only one I can recall purchasing was a post-divorce account transfer for one of my favorite World of Warcraft characters. In a way, I think we all wish we could go back to a world where our simple superhero and robot costumes are suddenly real, and there are sewers, bayous, and dental dystopias to explore. Did you know that the majority of college and professional sports mascots are animals? Google’s Chrome OS has come a long way in the past 10 years and Chromebooks — laptops that run on Chrome OS — are great for people who do most of their work in a web browser or using mobile apps. In my opinion, costume play from Bleach series is always interesting and funny, as there are so many great characters within it.

He does not play any MMOs or have anything to do with them, so I think this mascot thing will work out great. Maybe that’s because you can play the game without it! The game has been prepared with the same polish that made Costume Quest such a blast (despite an early glitch that switched the characters we had picked and nearly forced us to play the whole game as the girl twin). The game itself fascinated me so much. How much does it cost to stay competitive in RoM? How much is that Klingon in the window? Outside of World of Warcraft, I’m hoping to knock out Operation: Jackhammer in Mass Effect 3. To prep for the holidays, I’m plugging in the Christmas lights that have been hanging around the border of my window since last year. Katie sent in a whole host of photos of the construction process and her other projects, and she had a chat with me about crafting homemade plushies and World of Warcraft. For 25 cents, your captain can shout KHAAAAAAN. So what can you buy?