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Star Trek Online: Story of the Week: Star Trek Online Runs Free
BillMurphy
Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565
Though it wasn't entirely unexpected, Cryptic and Perfect World Entertainment announced this week that they have plans to make Star Trek Online free-to-play by the end of 2011. In a week filled with PAX coverage, this story garnered a lot of attention if only because many have been hoping for this development for some time now.
As we reported earlier in the week, the inevitable (we think) is finally happening: Cryptic’s Star Trek Online is going free to play. The story also touched a bit on the Torchlight MMO and Neverwinter, two hotly anticipated titles in their own right, but nothing made jaws drop quite as much as the STO going Freemiumn by the end of 2011. While we’ve all been kind of expecting this since Champions Online went free this year, the fact that it was backhandedly announced during an investors’ meeting sort of caught us all of guard and made everyone here at MMORPG.com go “Bwuah?!”
Read the rest of our Story of the Week: Star Trek Online Runs Free.
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Comments
Avoid Craptic games and you will be a happy camper.
good news! i will be a happy admiral once again!
Even if it's free, most players wanting to play a sci fi game will be probably playing swtor. Too late, at least in my opinion. Thats doesnt mean I will not give it a spin, maybe, If swtor fails to deliver, I already own sto but it's not worth the monthly sub for me.
I'll pay for a good game before I play a bad one for free.
He's right...
well, i'll certainly be giving it a go.
as for swtor competition, i dont think WoW has stopped the tsunami of f2p fantasy games, so im not quite sure how its 'too late'.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Well let me clue you in, since it is PW get your wallet out, expect to have to pay for almost everything. So much for a f2p environment.
Actually, Cryptic now being owned by PWE is a good thing what with all of the changes coming to season 5, the ones implemented in season 4 already and the ones soon to be implemented in season 4.1 the game is growing and becoming very stable. All these haters out there who say Cryptic games will cause sadness, have obvious NOT played it recently. They have done alot of good work.
Incidently, i do hope they adopt the LOTRO model for lifetimers, free retrofit ships and costumes would be awesome!
I can't imagine them actually keeping people from playing the episodes because the model they use for this game gives ALOT of experience for just doing explores without the explore quests. They really don't have a way of locking people into buying quest packs like most F2P games do.
It will probably get me to try the game, but I've heard so much bad about it that I'll be shocked if I want to stay.
I played beta, bought the game and played for one month and cancelled. I am sure I will check out the game again once it goes F2P. Obviously, the subs have reached a low enough level for them to give the old F2W option a try
P2W I meant oops
Agreed. I could see myself logging into STO for a few hours of space battle action, but I already know it'll never pull me back for any significant amount of time. There are other P2P MMOs out there that I would rather shell out monthly for over STO. Heck, there are other F2P games out there I'd play long before STO (i.e. City of Heroes, Fallen Earth, Age of Conan, etc.)
Makes me wish there was some method of making income back with my NWN1 server. Ah well :P
I will if I have the free time be playing around in STO when it is free. It was fun to me just not fun enough to buy.
It should be noted that none of PW's games use the hybrid model that Champs and STO will have, so Champs/STO do not conform to the same model as PW's other games.
Is this game actually worth trying for an old EVE player?
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
I used to play EVE many moons ago and tried the free trial for STO many moons ago, I'd say since it's free try it and see if you like it. However in my opinion the chances of most people liking it are somewhere between slim and none, it is a total pile of shit in my opinion.
Also what about the suckers that paid something like $240 for a lifetime subscription? What happens to them? Are they going to be stiffed by Cryptic yet again? Or maybe they'll get thier money back? Yeh that last question was a bit crazy, someone actually getting treated like a customer by Cryptic rather than fleeced like livestock!
Live long and prosper!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
True! + avoid anything Bill Roper. He is like a curse that dude.
Well, to be fair anything that guy worked on after 2003!
It is good to hear that Cryptic will finally be charging what STO is worth. I have never anything seen Star Trek be so boreing.
I'll definitely try it. Sorry to hear such bad things about it though.
***Raving Rabbid dances with Yeoman Rand***
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes
This game is barely an MMO. It should have been F2P or B2P from the get go. Pointless factions. It's like Fallen Earth, where factions really doesn't matter. Now this game is just about killing borgs or fly around asteroid belts over and over and over. Of course, ground quests are a relief from the space nonsense, but ground quests turned out so boring that I would rather go back to character customization (best part of the game) and never go back. I guess if you are so bored and want to just pass the time, go for it.
"The plus side is that PWE and Cryptic have been handling the Champions Online version quite well so far by most accounts and there’s no reason to believe the same won’t be the case for STO."
CO went F2P in January. PWE closed the deal with Atari a few weeks ago. PWE had nothing to do with handling CO before that, beside as someone already noted, PWE has 0 experience dealing with Freemium models.
They are already utilizing many of the UI features from CO like "gold membership required". Given that CO has changed nothing about their freemium model since the PW purchase, and that the CO freemium model has been widely received as a good change, I don't see STO transitioning to something other than the CO model.
Also the PW purchase happened in May, it has just been a slow transition for announcments about the changes. That's roughly 3 months where the only thing that CO has done is release more content (both cosmetic and playable), so it doesn't look like PW wants to come in and suddenly shift focus or payment models.