StarTrek online FREE TO PLAY

[~Sabaku no Gaara~]

From January 17th 2012 the game is going to be free to play!

[Juliette]

Perfect.

[~Sabaku no Gaara~]

tar Trek Online is the latest in a string of MMOs to convert its business model to free-to-play. Developer Cryptic Studios will flip the switch on January 17, 2012, the studio announced yesterday.

Like many games making the conversion to free, most of the game (including all sectors and missions) will be fully accessible for free. Also available for free will be PVP and fleet actions, which are effectively raids. Free players are to be known as Silver Members and are able to buy stuff that comes to current paying subscribers for free, such as respecs and extra character slots.

Silver Members will face some limitations outside of gameplay. They’ll also get ads in their Vivox voice chat, they’ll get limited access to in-game chat and mail, and they’ll have limited access to forums and customer support.

Those who’ve been paying subscribers will switch over to Gold Members. They’ll get more inventory slots, unlimited energy credit storage, priority in login queues and the ability to create guilds. The price will stay the same at $15 per month, but $5 of that will be returned to players each month in the form of 400 Cryptic Points, the game’s premium virtual currency for use in the store. As a ‘thanks’ to current players, that benefit will start a little early, on December 1. That “stipend,” as it’s being called, will come into players’ accounts on the day of the month when the player first signed up.

Star Trek Online follows numerous MMORPGs in fully converting to the free-to-play model. In virtually every case before – most famously Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online - lowering the entry price to free has actually increased player numbers and profits for publishers. Cryptic has experience with the conversion from taking its superhero MMO, Champions Online, free last year.

[madman1125]

read about this a couple weeks ago and cant wait and cant wait for Aion to change to f2p in feb