Star Trek Online: Free To Play

On January 17th, 2011, Star Trek Online will be going Free To Play. Current STO subscribers are able to play the current free to play build. There is a lot of changes to the game, but the core game is still the same. If you never had a chance to try the game before, this may be the chance to try the game.

There is some good and bad when it comes to free to play games. One of the best reasons is that it gives you the opportunity to try the game without any commitment from your part. The bad part, on the other hand is the fact that most of these games are pay to win. I am not going to lie here but in Star Trek Online's case it is a pay to win game.

Star Trek Online does have a hybrid model. As I look back, they always did, but without the free to play subscriptions.

As stated above, Star Trek Online really is a hybrid model when it comes to subscription options. Why you ask. This is the reason why. There is two subscription plans for the game. The gold members are the ones who pay for their subscription while the silver are the free players. If you go the route where you pay for your subscription, you have two option; pay monthly (1, 3, 6 month plans are available) or you can go lifetime. There are some perks going with a monthly plan instead of going free. This will be explained.

You may be asking which plan would be best for you? It all depends on how much you are going to pay. If you are going to end up paying on a monthly basis for stuff like Bridge officers, you may be better off or you just can't live with some of the limitations it has given you as a free player like bank slots or ec, then maybe the gold plan is for you. Just something to know that even though you have a paid subscription to the game, you don't get items from the cstore for free. There are a lot of items listed in there and you still have to pay money for those items.

Where shall we start here.Mostly everything is unlimited but bank slots and bridge officer slots. Both have a character limit. To really know what you get out of both, go here to check it out. I think that is the best way to explain the differences. Safe to say there are some perks to paying for you subscription instead of going with the free one. One of the perks is actually getting free ships.

For some of you, you have never played Star Trek Online while on the other hand, there are some of you that have played but have left the game. Here I will explain the features of the game for both old and new as there are some new features with the game.

First off, there is currently two faction. Both factions, you have a choice between Science, Tactical or Engineering as classes. No matter which class you choose, there is no difference to the storyline. Klingon and Federation have different missions except for the featured and once you get to max rank.

This game has both Ground and Space. Most people do like space part more than the ground part.. They though have improved that, but people still prefer space over ground.

One of the most recent improvements to the game is the Duty Officer System which is a new mini game. Once you make it to Lieutenant commander, you should be able to play this mini game. You can send your doffs on assignments. You can also assign 5 doffs for ground and space as an assignment with a total of 10 between both. You would pick something that would help you out. There is one doff that when you use a hypos, you have a chance of a medic beaming down to help out.

For you people that were used to the marks and badges and so on, now all of that was converted to Dillithium and now we have a Dillitheum system. This can be mostly used toward ship gear, but also a lot of endgame gear.

The Cstore has always been part of Star Trek Online. You may be asking what the Cstore is. Its a cash store where you can buy for real world money addons. There are premium ships you can get along with other services like retrain Tokens and character slots. There is many other items to choose from, but that is only the beginning.

Are you running into problems with the game or just needs some tips into the game, feel free to leave me a message and I will try to answer it the best of my abilities. I have been playing this game since open Beta, so I know quite a bit when it comes to the game.