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Same as title, Star Trek online is going free to play soon. Odds are that there are few trekkies here but I'll post anyway. It's a decent game with a fairly easier learning curve compared to some other space games (EVE Online has whats called a "learning cliff") and features tactical space and FPS style ground combat. It also has the Foundry, a built-in tool set to make your own missions and publish them for others to play. You can easily solo all of the game, the community is considered the best around and it runs on a single server. Character customization is fantastic, you can create practically any race, Ive seen Roger from American Dad, an ork, a couple of Na'vi and a Nightelf. The game takes place in 2409, 40+ years after Nemesis and the Federation is in open war with the Klingons, Borg, Romulan separatists and a bunch of others. Currently you can play either the Feds or KDF (Klingon Defense Force), Romulans might be added later.

I played it at launch. Had the makings of a fun game, but there was way too much content repetition for me to sink $15/month into it. I'll definitely give it a second look now that it's F2P.

It has gotten a lot better.

Thanks, might look again at it. Played the free trial, space battle was fun. Although there are strange Un-Trekish features (As a Federation officer I buy officers and ships ...).


I dont think they will implete anything no it goes F2P.

Love STO, only reason I quit paying was that I preferred that $15 in my pocket. If it's true, I feel for those people(like my friend) who bought the life time memberships.

Excellent timing, I've been researching a space MMO and the thought of battling with those huge ships is awesome. Are the space battles pretty intense, or what?

murdog wrote:Excellent timing, I've been researching a space MMO and the thought of battling with those huge ships is awesome. Are the space battles pretty intense, or what?

Depends. The battle grounds where they spawn constantly or the Mass Battle missions are, but the majority of missions where you take on 1-2 at a time aren't.

I heard that it was Champions Online, except in space, and they switched out polygons to put it in space.

AWESOME! I loved the space portion, but the ground portion was rather 'meh'. Will definitely play it if it doesn't cost 15/month.

Dashofpepper wrote:I heard that it was Champions Online, except in space, and they switched out polygons to put it in space.

That's quite true of ground combat. In fact, it's the same exact engine as Champions, as evidenced by them forgetting to take out certain commonly known commands from Champions for the first 2 weeks of release, such as the command that changes the color of your powers, or in this case Phasers/Disruptors/Plasma. While it wasn't necessary to take out, it was helpful, as the only way to know what you're being shot with(and thus use the right abilities against) is by the color of the beam. Plus, after it was removed, people stopped spamming chat with "Wher U get Pink FaZers?!"

I didn't mind the ground portion if you had a full crew with you and you thought of it is a real time tactical game and would set your crew up to create ambushes and such. Shooting people in PvP was ok too. Not $15 a month good, but still fun.

Dashofpepper wrote:I heard that it was Champions Online, except in space, and they switched out polygons to put it in space.

That was my experience. The ground combat was pretty much identical to Champions (IE, terrible). The space combat was mediocre. Overall, not a game I'd play even for free.

They just overhauled the Ground combat system a month ago and its a lot better.

So after doing some research, there are some 'conditions' if you choose to go the free to play route:

Players won't have access to the Foundry
In game voice chat will feature third party advertisements
You can't go Klingon until you get a Federation character to level 25
You only get two character slots
There is a cap on your wallet/inventory/storage

Still worth it I think, provided that the caps don't make advancement to late game content impossible/difficult.

So you've got the P2P route and the F2P route?

What is the Foundry exactly?
What kind of cap? Are we talking trying to play WoW with nothing but the default starter bag?

I assume you still have to buy a retail copy of the game?

When Lord of the Rings Online went F2P they gave bonuses to VIP members(people who pay or had memberships) such as no gold cap(F2P's gold cap is 2 gold), limit on 'sacks'(3 compared to 5), and people with the membership got Turbine Points monthly, Turbine Points work like Steam. You can buy points, be given points monthly if you have a membership, or by doing 'deeds' in game(deeds like killing 150 of x enemy which would net you about 10 points).

Turbine Points can buy in-game content, or even expansions. This one F2P guy earned 3,000+ turbine points by doing deeds and bought the expansion for 'free'.

I would imagine that STO would do the same, maybe not with the whole 'Turbine Points' concept though.

@Tyyr, typically F2P games are downloadable as well because if you buy the game its no longer F2P. If you want to play it for free, but don't want to lose out on some of the features then buy the disc and install it. It should give you about a month's worth of premium account stuff, and hopefully let you keep it afterwards(it did for LOTRO).