Today's post at
mmorpg.com mentions that the Iconian War will be ending in the nearish future. After 5 years of building up this story arc, is it wise to conclude it so soon? This isn't a doom thread or anything because I can think of plenty of things to do after the Iconian War concludes, I just find it odd that it's concluding so quickly. I personally hope that it's more of a lull in fighting and while we move on to other things, the Iconian War is still technically going. The Federation-Klingon War for example doesn't end at the conclusion of the Klingon War arc.
While we move on to the Romulan Mystery and then mess with the Cardassians, Undine and the Mirror Universe, the Federation-Klingon War continues to rage on. It doesn't end until the Undine assault Earth and Qo'noS. I really think the Iconian War should be the same way. We've seen the Iconians argue with each other, so if we do meet up with them and sign a temporary cease fire or something, one of them could disagree and continue the fighting. The Heralds are fanatics so some of them should fight for this Iconian and keep the War going, even if it's not as important this time around. I can see T'Ket continuing the war for example.
Perhaps this way we could get a Herald Bridge Officer from the allied Iconians to help our crew attempt to make piece with T'Ket? Either way, if Cryptic is intent on ending this war permanently, then I hope the Iconians and their Heralds don't just disappear for good. Set up a neutral zone around Iconia and have them continue to occasionally interact with the community. Maybe if a new big bad appears in the future, the Iconians could lend assistance? Or maybe a new enemy can provide a distraction and the Iconians continue their plan without interference from us?
People are already complaining that it doesn't feel much like a war. Ending it all this year after 5 years of build up would make it even more disappointing.
Comments
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Al Rivera says they want to get back into currently-existing storylines from the shows and movies (and likely the game itself), since the Iconian War was more or less an in-house thing, whereas the 2,800 (for example) was a hanging plot from DS9.
The Iconian War ending does not mean anything else other than the conclusion of a story, and possibly the introduction of a new one. After all, we still have the Gamma Quadrant that deserves attention -- and the Andromeda Galaxy.
There's still an entire universe to get pissed off at us and decades of Star Trek story to be told within STO.
The iconians are an entirely different beast, an ancient enemy with vast technological superiority and numbers.
Given how the Alpha Quadrant forces totally got their butts handed to them in the first engagements of the war, a prolonged conflict just isn't plausible.
There are no frontlines with an enemy that can literally appear anywhere in the galaxy in an instant.
Is it still on maintenance or not
Maintenance was yesterday for the game. Whatever problem you're experiencing with the game is probably due to something on your end.
Let's see them gorram using those zillion ships. They shouldn't be shutting down the war, they should be ramping it up! Sector space random encounters! Red alerts! Ground battlezones! Planets getting glassed (Risa, please)!
Or maybe Worffan101 and I are right, and the Iconians are just hammy idiots who have no idea what they're doing. Kinda like Cryptic's writing team.
The Klingon-Federation was caused by the Undine who were manipulated in doing so by the Iconians, which was the first blow agianst the Alpha/Beta Quadrants, without requiring direct invovlement by the Iconians, but still I'd argue it was the beginning of the war (actually the Klingon-Gorn war was, but we don't play in a part in that).
Next was the Wars with the Undine (who aren't servitors, but unwitting pawns), Elachi (Servitors), Voth (unwitting pawns), Solanae sort of via they're swarmers (servitors), Talshiar (Servitors), Bluegills (servitors), Vadwaars (servitors), and via a betrayal the Kazon briefly, and finally the Heralds. Each race battled is a Chapter in the Iconian War, this is just the end threatre of the War. Even now for the most part the Iconians don't fight us directly, they use the Heralds, they're strongest servants, the ones they likely never intended the Alpha/Beta/Delta Quadrant races to even know about, the sledge hammers for a manipulative race that perfers to use scapels.
The powerful as the Heralds are with they're own Dyson Sphere, the fact that the Iconians have had to turn to using them, they're last ace is a sign of how badly the war is going for the Iconians. Yes the Heralds are tough and they've had more successes then other servitors/pawns, but its the last card the Iconians have to play.
You're missing the point. The Heralds may indeed be the Iconians' last line of defense, but they have jillions of them. Using the measurements of the Solanae Sphere as a baseline, an Iconian Dyson sphere has a radius of 1 AU, or about 150 million kilometers. That's a volume of 1.402×10^34 cubic meters, a frankly absurd volume by any ordinary measure, albeit still small in astronomical terms. And the Herald fleet fills this incomprehensibly huge volume to the brim.
So why in God's name aren't they being used properly? This should look like the Reaper War in Mass Effect 3, but instead you wouldn't even know there's a war on if you skipped the featured episodes. For that matter, why did the Iconians even bother with all the running around in the shadows for the past half-century when their fleet is so huge they'd roflpwn all the major powers of the galaxy combined with sheer numbers?
Answer: Because Cryptic has a worse sense of scale than the jackass who managed to put Qo'noS in the Sol system Oort cloud in ENT.
My guess is that the in game justification has something to do with the "Other." In "Time in a Bottle," one of the Iconeans wants to just wipe us out, and the others decide to stick to the plan. Watch Sela come riding in with a bunch of Iconean males and save the day.
As was said above, it really seems as if Cryptic has a terrible sense of scale. I have to assume they didn't bother to do the math on the scale of the fleet they described in the Dyson sphere -- the *mass* of the fleet of ships they describe would exceed the mass of all the worlds inhabited or explored by the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans, excluding aside the Dyson spheres themselves. They don't seem to even consider how incredibly massive the Dyson spheres are. (Larry Niven had a pair of novels about a ringworld, in which he makes it clear how incomprehensibly huge such a structure would be -- and a Dyson sphere is orders of magnitude more vast).
So yes, as described, the Herald fleets should have been able to conquer the known universe almost without effort. Compare how the Delta Alliance spent a huge amount of effort to defeat the Vaadwaur, despite the fact that they were a tiny group, massively outnumbered and outgunned.
In a way, the scale of the threat is so overwhelming that it kind of makes sense that they'd have to have some plot expedient to close it down.
The problem is, in the first place, almost everything in STO has been tied into the Iconian storyline. There's still unfinished business on several fronts, but at the moment, with the exception of the Voth, everyone is either effectively allied against the Iconians, or neutral and officially at peace with the antagonists. In the second place, for better or for worse, STO has in fact methodically mined the entire Star Trek canon, so when almost everything in STO has been tied to the Iconian storyline, it means that almost everything in Star Trek has been tied to the Iconian storyline.
It could be a good thing, to finally step back from the perpetual escalation and have some storylines on more reasonable scales -- although that's still a bit odd with our characters who became fleet admirals a few months out of the academy, and with the Federation/Klingon/Romulan alliance now mastering time as well as space. The scale is still way off.
Perhaps that's how they see "The Herald Sphere" PvE map? The continued assault on their sphere could be how they've been neutralized. It's pretty dumb to assume we chipped away at so many ships over such a small amount of time but this could be how they see it.
any cease-fire made with the iconians will not be involving m'tara, at least, since
that blue one from TiaB, however, seemed fairly reasonable and moderate for an iconian - s/he even gave us 'sentients' a backhanded compliment
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