Star Trek Online's Free To Play Plan Surprises Nobody

[rsvp42]

I think when Champions went F2P, the lifetime subs translated over to lifetime gold memberships, so people that bought them can still enjoy full subscription benefits while others either pay a sub or play a gutted silver account. Not sure if Perfect World will handle it the same, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I think I played this for about a month. It's good if you're just looking for a Star Trek fix. I was marathon-ing some of the shows then and felt an urge to play it. Ship customization is fun and the character builder is done well. I just wish they didn't put so many uniforms in the cash shop. It practically felt F2P already with that thing, except I was being charged a sub.

 

[cerebus23]

Problem with sto has been is the end game is just not there, pvp does not mean much other than getting some purple gear that is slighly better than you can get via pve, pve content is lacking end game, the episodes and etc helped alot but other than farm gear raids and there is onyl a handful to do and a few of them are very difficult, to the point looking for a good group is like a needle in a haystack, and end game just never ever merited a 15 a month sub nm a lifetime sub.

i am sure the game could get better as time went on, but you need more stuff on a quicker release to keep players interested. Some content was still not finished form launch last i played, free to play lest allows players to come back have a look w/o sinking money into the game and play as they like, i wonder what they will do with people that had sub. nm lifetimes subs, imagine that some kind of shop credit or something depending.

 

[SnakeCL]

Lifetime subs will still make out as bandits since from what I've been told, they'll get the free sub-option, in addition to a monthly stipend that can be used on items in the store.

So basically, there will be three levels of 'account'.

Free (you have to pay for items)
Subscription (you get some items free but also pay a "premium" subscription fee)
Lifetime (you get lots of items free, and you get a monthly stipend you can use in the c-store to buy items you don't get a subscription fee)

Unfortunately, the article paints this as STO being "unprofitable", when in reality the move to a freemium model is more than likely going to make more money. The article gets it wrong regarding the "future" of STO. STO was actually one of the most profitable operations for Atari, via Cryptic. They sold it, since they could get top dollar for it, and hopefully turn Atari around, not because they were trying to unload a failed and unprofitable game. Essentially it was short-term gain vs long-term gain.

Perfect World actually has enough confidence in the company and IP that they poured MORE money into Cryptic and the game than Atari did, allowing them to hire more staff.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Snip

Thanks for the wonderful news. My lack of experiencing new things related to Star Trek was getting to me. I actually did a trail of the STO last year and found it intriguing. I actually recorded the main end of trail space battle with Fraps, I just watch it from time to time for the heck of it, but ever time I did it gave me the urge to pay for the game and an actual subscription, but still I never did, because it meant I would have to drop whatever other MMO I was playing at the time. Right now it is WoW, but I'm going to have to let that go after this month, since I plan on getting in on Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Now that STO is going to be free to play, I can wait until then and continue the parody journeys of my captain that happens to look like a young Wolverine who commands the USS Wolverine.

I definitely agree about the space battles. There was just something awesome hearing all the classic sound effects as the USS Wolverine engaged an Orion Marauder Battleship, and using the appropriate tactics to keep only the strongest shielded areas of the ship facing the fire range, then finally at the end making one last turn and firing off a final photon torpedo and watching the enemy ship explode. It's practically what Trekkie dreams are made of.

 

[pspman45]

yes please
I was super pissed that I had to activate the Retail version by having to buy a subscription
now I don't have to worry!

 

[LilithSlave]

I read a topic here about boob sliders a while back.

There's no way I'm even going ten feet within a game whose developer feel that heteronormatively about the female body, and make such inane excuses about it.

 

[spectrenihlus]

Yay Now I can go play. AFter watching pretty much every star trek series on netflix I'm am so hyped up on star trek I could probably repair a warp reactor.

 

[mcattack92]

I so called this coming.
The second I heard that PWE had bough out cryptic I knew they were going to make the game F2P within a few months. It will be good that it goes free 2 play. It is an alright game.

 

[SnakeCL]

I read a topic here about boob sliders a while back.

There's no way I'm even going ten feet within a game whose developer feel that heteronormatively about the female body, and make such inane excuses about it.

There was an MMO a while back that released some figures on the "boob slider".

Namely, female players complained about how it had unrealistic extremes, then most proceeded to crank the slider to max.

 

[LilithSlave]

The topic in question was Star Trek not giving you the ability to go small, much less flat like most MMORPGs with a boob slider. And not only that, they had the audacity to say that women couldn't have a smaller chest to "save the children" or not make players look like kiddy fiddlers. Despite that logic being so atrocious any remotely sane individual wouldn't use it. I'd honestly like to see the actual proof of this actual reasoning this other thread claimed myself, as I'd like to be able to show anyone just how immature Cryptic Studios is.

To this day I still don't know of a MMORPG with a boob slider that allows you to choose a smaller size, a AA cup, an A cup, or even a B cup. In every instance it basically screams "this features is basically here only for large breast fetishists", and I'm started to become turned off from any games that have it because of it. Honestly, female gamers complain about this with reason. It doesn't give a greater degree of customization for the sake of customization, it's there in every game I know of just to appeal to large breast fetishists. To heck with that, the only place in gaming I want silicon is in my hardware.

 

[Aisaku]

If you want to try out the game before it goes f2p Alienware's offering free serials that net you 10 days of playtime plus a handful of extra items.

Here's the link http://www.alienwarearena.com/giveaway/star-trek-online-subscription-bundle/

It's okay, but since you can't have other players in the same bridge it feels like a single player game with optional multiplayer. I'll still wait for TOR