Star Trek Online's Free To Play Plan Surprises Nobody

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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Star Trek Online's Free To Play Plan Surprises Nobody



In move that even a Tribble could have anticipated, Star Trek Online will be free to play by the end of year.

Building a virtual world set in the Star Trek universe must have felt like a sure bet for Cryptic studios and publisher Atari. The built-in community of fans and gamers excited to live and play in the United Federation of Planets as a member of Star Fleet would drive subscriptions. When the game came out in early 2010, Cryptic Studios to Perfect World earlier this year [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/7055-Preview-Star-Trek-Online], and the new publisher confirms they are in the process of converting the MMO to the free to play model by December 2011.

"When Perfect World acquired Cryptic, one of our contributions was to share our free-to-play experience with Cryptic," said Kelvin Lau from Chinese MMO operator Perfect World.

"Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well. So I think with the free-to-play model, we have bigger potential in the U.S. market and also in the Chinese market."

The move to free to play now seems to be the standard operating procedure for failing MMOs, or at least MMOs that are bleeding subscriptions. Turbine first converted Dungeons & Dragons Online to free to play back in 2009 and Champions Online [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98683-Free-Dungeons-Dragons-Online-Revenues-Up-500-Percent].

Predicting that Star Trek Online would soon be free to download and be supported by microtransactions was about as difficult as guessing that Picard would say "Engage" or that Spock would say something is "Illogical." Now at least, the plans have been confirmed.

Source: Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36975/Star_Trek_Online_To_Go_FreeToPlay_By_The_End_Of_This_Year.php]

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Alphakirby

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May 22, 2009
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This makes me happy kind of. But now I have to change my guy's story so he doesn't have cancer anymore. Alienware gave me lots of neat stuff to play in the game with so this is a good thing in my book.
 

Art Axiv

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Dec 25, 2008
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So many free to play games! Not sure if I can afford to play them all..
 

SangRahl

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Feb 11, 2009
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Almost feel bad for the people who forked over the money for the "Lifetime Subscription"... almost. (The point of running an MMO is for sustained monetary gain... Once I saw the Lifetime Subscription was up for sale, I had a pretty good idea just how far Atari expected the game to go... or not go, as the case may be.)
 

fenrizz

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Feb 7, 2009
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I tried it at release and quickly became very, very bored with the game.

There's only a few "types" of mission, and the endless space battles is indeed not very Star Trek like.
I never, ever again want to orbit a planet and blow up 5 groups of enemy ships.

I also tried it again a few months ago, and found that not much had changed.
I very much doubt that I will be lured back by free to play.
 

SaintWaldo

Interzone Vagabond
Jun 10, 2008
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It's my nit.

Either: "Star Trek Online's Free To Play Plan Surprises Nobody", or, "Star Trek Online's Free To Play Plans Surprise Nobody".

Rock on, Greg! :)
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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Eh, not a huge surprise all things considered.

Though I do wonder what this will mean long-term.

I have a lifetime subscription for this, but seeing as I don't play it much...

Well, who knows.

SangRahl said:
Almost feel bad for the people who forked over the money for the "Lifetime Subscription"... almost. (The point of running an MMO is for sustained monetary gain... Once I saw the Lifetime Subscription was up for sale, I had a pretty good idea just how far Atari expected the game to go... or not go, as the case may be.)

Well, I guess you can predict the way that goes... At a rough estimate, the cost of a lifetime subscription for STO is equal to about 16 months of regular subscriptions.

I don't know many games that have failed quite that quickly, but... Eh.

Whatever. It was a bad idea buying a lifetime sub anyway. I'm just a sucker for star trek stuff. - Unfortunately, this game sounded about a hundred times more interesting based on it's initial premise rather than what cryptic turned it into.
It's not without a certain charm, but it's not strong enough to have held my interest all that long.

Anyway, while it going free-to-play is midly irritating if you have a lifetime sub, to some extent I'm glad Atari no longer owns the game...

Seriously, while it didn't affect STO itself, I've had a serious incident with Atari that makes it difficult for me not to hate their guts...

Let's just say I'm not getting any digital downloads from them ever again if I can at all avoid it.
 

Lyri

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Dec 8, 2008
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They want less grind and they sold out to Perfect World?
Oh boy.

That'll end well when the cash shop becomes an necessity there. I seriously hate that company and how they run their F2ps.
However, I cannot deny they are successful.
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
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fenrizz said:
I tried it at release and quickly became very, very bored with the game.

There's only a few "types" of mission, and the endless space battles is indeed not very Star Trek like.
I never, ever again want to orbit a planet and blow up 5 groups of enemy ships.

I also tried it again a few months ago, and found that not much had changed.
I very much doubt that I will be lured back by free to play.
I agree with that mostly. (The boring bit anyway.). It did get a little better when they started having diplomatic missions, and several types of mission with non-combat solutions to them.

After all, it's star trek. You shouldn't be blowing up every single thing you come across...
But the non-combat stuff is pretty clunky. You can tell it was something of an afterthought.

Also, the 'economy' feels really off somehow. I mean, I get that it's a standard MMO thing but the way it's set up feels extremely out of place.
 

Sixcess

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Feb 27, 2010
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Good news, I guess. I've played and enjoyed STO a little but never enough to justify paying for it (and having two other sub MMOs on the go most of the time didn't help.)

That said, Cryptic, Atari or somebody probably deserves a slap for making so little out of such a huge franchise.
 

Novaova

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Feb 2, 2010
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I predict there will be a massive boost in the number of people who create accounts so that they can play dress up and use it as a free Star Trek themed chat room. . . with some gaming on the side.
 

wooty

Vi Britannia
Aug 1, 2009
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Urge to re-play, rising.

From what I've heard, most of the flaws were ironed out and its more "episodic"......whatever that means
 

Aeshi

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Dec 22, 2009
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To be honest even if it is free now it still probably isn't worth playing.
 

Jeralt2100

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Jun 9, 2010
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SangRahl said:
Almost feel bad for the people who forked over the money for the "Lifetime Subscription"... almost. (The point of running an MMO is for sustained monetary gain... Once I saw the Lifetime Subscription was up for sale, I had a pretty good idea just how far Atari expected the game to go... or not go, as the case may be.)
I'm one of those people and I don't feel bad at all. I got mine for $175 and since I've been playing since launch I would have already shelled out more than that on a monthly basis. If they follow the example of Turbine then Lifetimers will never have to worry about paying for quest packs or new content so...not a bad deal. It's a fun game and the fleet I belong to is both very active and friendly. It isn't my favorite MMO, but it is vastly better than it was at launch and I'm not sorry for paying the lifetime sub when it was on sale.
 

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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SaintWaldo said:
It's my nit.

Either: "Star Trek Online's Free To Play Plan Surprises Nobody", or, "Star Trek Online's Free To Play Plans Surprise Nobody".

Rock on, Greg! :)
Yeah, good catch. I just changed it and checked the comments to see if anyone noticed. :)

Greg
 

SiliconAddict

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Sep 1, 2011
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Got a lifetime sub back when the game just came out of beta....meh. Neither happy about it, nor pissed. Just kinda annoyed. But it was bound to happen. The game has become boring. I've been playing WoW for a month now and am having far more fun on that then STO even though I am a HUGE Star Trek fan. Give me Romulans as a playable faction and maybe I'll come back.