Free-to-Play Star Trek Online Takes a Little Longer

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Free-to-Play Star Trek Online Takes a Little Longer

Star Trek Online has announced a date for its changeover to free-to-play, but it won't quite make it for 2011.

Rumors that Star Trek Online would transition to free-to-play began kicking around back in the summer and were confirmed by Cryptic in September [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112723-Star-Trek-Onlines-Free-To-Play-Plan-Surprises-Nobody]. It's taking a little longer than expected, however; the transition was originally scheduled to be complete by the end of the year but it's not quite going to make it. Instead, the game will launch as a free-to-play title on January 17, 2012.

The F2P model will divide users into silver [free] and gold [paid] categories. Gold members will have unlimited access to most features, a bigger inventory, priority logins and other bonuses, while silver players will be able to purchase access on an a la carte basis. Gold-level subscribers will also get a "stipend" of 400 free Cryptic Points each month on the anniversary of their subscription for use in the game.

Finally, and this will probably make more sense to people who actually play the game than it does to me, Cryptic is "bringing the new build from Tribble to Holodeck" sometime between December 1 and December 8. "Testing with the new game changes has been going really well on the Tribble server," Executive Producer Stephen D'Angelo wrote on the STO blog [http://startrekonline.com/node/2683]. "The development team has been pleased with the results and feedback, and we think we only have a few more weeks of iteration and testing before the game changes will be ready for the mainstream players."

To learn more about Cryptic's free-to-play plans for Star Trek Online, check out startrekonline.com/f2p [http://startrekonline.com/f2p].


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Aisaku

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Jul 9, 2010
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How come this is newsworthy and DCUO going free to play and getting more users than it can handle isn't?

On the topic, this is pretty much the story of STO... one broken promise after the other. It has gotten to the point that users are up in arms raving against the company and the changes on the game's forums. The best thing that can be said about this is wait and see... the question is, will people care if SWTOR delivers?
 

Micalas

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Mar 5, 2011
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Aisaku said:
How come this is newsworthy and DCUO going free to play and getting more users than it can handle isn't?
I was wondering the same thing. They're both equally shit games. Maybe this one is less horrible?
 

SurfKansas

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Nov 25, 2008
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Pushing this to January is probably in the best interest of the game. If STO is going to thrive in the F2P MMO world, it needs a solid launch that draws a lot of new players in. With Star Wars: The Old Republic and Warcraft 4.3 both releasing in December, a significant number of the potential new players might have had their focus elsewhere.
 

Enrathi

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Aug 10, 2009
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Micalas said:
Aisaku said:
How come this is newsworthy and DCUO going free to play and getting more users than it can handle isn't?
I was wondering the same thing. They're both equally shit games. Maybe this one is less horrible?
Personally, I enjoyed STO more, but I did have fun with DCUO. And I played both while they were still pay (obviously, STO since it's not free yet).

The one thing I do like about both games going F2P is that even if access is restricted, I can pop in and play once in a while without feeling that I'm wasting my money if I'm not on at least X hours per week. When I pay a sub, I feel like I have to play at least some so that I'm not wasting my money, even if I don't really feel like playing. With them being free, I can just pop in whenever I feel like.
 

Vie

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Nov 18, 2009
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Must admit I'm actually interested in this - I always liked the idea of STO (bar it being multiplayer anyway) in that you could walk around and fly the ships. If they had made an offline mode I'd have probably bought it. As it is with FtP I'll give it a try and see if the multiplayer side of it is tolerable.
 

kwydjebo

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Sep 1, 2010
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I liked STO at first (I paid the $300 at launch for life time membership), but just got bored of it, and I've checked in the occasional time, but honestly haven't played it in months. Wonder if that will make me a gold subscriber?

Between other things, I just never have the time or interest to play this one (Of course if I had friends on this MMO, as I do on City of Heroes, I might show up more...or ever)

Of course now I'm lookng foreward to SW:TOR, that game looks to be a lot of fun.