I love MMOs. I love leveling in MMOs. Shepherding a character through her own unique path, growing in power and becoming more awesome — that’s what keeps me in a game. Once I’ve finished with the leveling, more often than not I’m done with the MMO. The max level grind can’t hold me. World of Warcraft, EverQuest, EQII, Rift, Wizard101 — once I hit the top, I was ready to move on.
What’s different about Star Trek Online? The customization, to be sure — you can build nearly any alien ever seen in the Star Trek universe, and mix and match the hundreds of parts to make your own unique creature.
My first character was a regular Andorian, though light-skinned so she might be an Aenar (who live in relationship with ethnic Andorians similar to ethnic Japanese with the Hokkaido Ainu). My second character was a Klingon — but not a modern Klingon. I went old school. I had pictures of the Klingons from the original series as models and went back to the 60s with my Klingon. Sometimes I see other old schoolers around…
My third character, standard Vulcan. She flew the “Star Trek Enterprise” version of the Enterprise, and unlike Enterprise’s T’pol, T’pral wore a uniform. She’s currently on detachment to the Bajoran militia for the duration of the Dominion crisis.
In the center of that crisis is my fourth character, Heerza, a Vorta. Put in charge of a squadron of Alpha Jem’Hadar during the last days of the Dominion War, Heerza led many attacks against entrenched Alliance positions both on ground and in space, until finally crashing on an unexplored Class L planet. Though the ship was damaged beyond repair, Heerza and her surviving Jem’Hadar were able to rig stasis pods and survive until a Federation exploration ship discovered them while on a mapping mission.
Knowing that she faced certain euthanation should she return to the Gamma quadrant (her successor clone would certainly see to that), Heerza elected to stay in the Alpha quadrant, making a living as an adviser on Dominion affairs and staying below the radar, hoping not to attract the attention of her masters.
The return of the 2800 has changed all that forever. Now she must confront the Dominion and stop a war, even if it should cost her her life.
And that’s why I’m still with Star Trek Online, you see. It’s that rare, non-sandbox MMO where I can tell my own story.
Also, seriously? Heerza’s first ship in the game was a refurbished Constitution-class starship, a sister to the Enterprise itself! Just can’t get cooler than that. Well, it would be cooler if Cryptic would let me buy a Dominion ship… Maybe someday.
7 thoughts on “Star Trek Online: Enter the Vorta”
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I love that she’s flying around a Constitution class ship. 🙂 I like the little RP tools, too, like the flexible naming scheme and the “background” text field at character creation. It seems like Cryptic actively wants people to RP, at least at a surface level.
…and yes, let us buy the bugships directly. I’m decidedly not a fan of the lockbox gamble methodology.
I consider STO one of the best non-WoW games precisely because of its RP nature.
I’m curious as to how you were able to make a Vorta. When I tried to make my own custom alien I was kind of let down by how limited the customization tools ended up being. They looked like a lot of options, but really weren’t. Did I just miss something?
(I’m going on the assumption that Vorta is not a pre-configured option)
It’s not pre-configured, but the parts to make most canon races, including the Vorta, exist in the character creator. There are also some parts for the Jem’Hadar, but there’s a healthy bit of experimentation with them — the Jem’Hadar in the FE use parts not provided.
There’s a wiki for making known alien races with the parts you get. I have seen some pretty bizarre looking aliens running around ESD… Mostly I just want my own characters to fit into existing lore, and that is the character creator’s real strength.
Hiya Tipa,
I’ve recently taken up STO and I must say I’ve been quite impressed. The combat is kind of meh at times but the episodes have me completely enthralled! I haven’t found myself clicking through the quest lines at all which is unusual for me (almost through the Klingon Episodes).
@Warsyde I thought STO has one of the better character creators. Make sure you use Alien and then hit the advanced buttons. There are several changes you can make, and I feel I have a completely unique character.
I had absolutely no idea that anyone could make a Vorta race alien! But then I got 3 characters and haven’t really used the creater much. Kudos for having a custom alien character. For me to get another character slot I would probably have to sub or buy another slot and not quite sure on either.
Does a Vorta get any race specific traits?
A Jem’Hadar warrior would surely be cool as well if that’s possible.
Alien characters get to pick four traits. Naturally I went with ones that would enhance her eventual build 🙂