The game is now officially F2P for everyone! I'd recommend checking it out, it has a lot of flaws, but it's a very different experience from most MMO's and if you're a Trek fan, there is quite a lot to enjoy here.

Also, the restrictions placed on F2P are pretty light, you can literally play through the entire game for free. Access to more inventory, character slots and some of the higher tier ships are the only things you'll lose out on.

The only warnings I'll give are that, if you're not a Star Trek fan, you probably won't find much appeal here.. and be prepared for a serious lack of end game content.

Link to the download client

I created an account and I can't log in, and I've had to download the game twice so far, so it did not start well atleast, really liked the beta though

I was very interested in this when it came out. I'll definitively check it out.

So I played the game for about 2 months or so when it first came out.  How has it changed since then?

@Turambar: I didn't play the game much that far back, but there was a major overhaul to the ground combat, that made it a bit more fast paced and a lot more interesting. They've revamped the skill systems several times and there's quite a few new mechanics and features in place these days, most notably the duty officer system, which lets you send your crew (not the bridge officers) away on assignments for rewards. It's a nice little mini-game thing that helps make it feel like you're actually captaining the ship.

A lot of the newer missions are really good too.

I'm excited to try this out, I hope it runs better on my PC than Star Wars does. I DL'd DC Universe too, so it should be a pretty good week :)

No Mac client. :(

I'll be online soon, it's kept my trial character from ages ago it seems.

Do I smell a new Quick look in the works??? I sure hope so :D

Do I smell a new Quick look in the works??? I sure hope so :D

I played through the game as an Engineer and had a great time when I was in my ship. The ground combat left a lot to be desired though. It's good to hear they've made some changes in that area because they were sorely needed.

I've been thinking about jumping back in to see what's new and now that it's free to play I just might. I just picked up Evochron Mercenary on Steam so I'll be checking that out first.

So, we got a guild or some shit we can roll around in?

Yup totally downloading the client right now. It always looked interesting, but I hate the idea of a subscription. Also I usually get bored of MMOs in about a week, so very little investment on something I might not get into is great for me.

@Fattony12000 said:

So, we got a guild or some shit we can roll around in?

That would definitely get me back in. A fleet full of duders, visiting space-laser-death upon Borg.

Downloading the client now.

@Turambar said:

So I played the game for about 2 months or so when it first came out. How has it changed since then?

I have a blog and some videos from last summer/fall after the ground combat revamp. Since November a lot of people like the Duty Officer system (some play it almost exclusively). Visually the game looks great on a modern DX11 system, and they are overhauling the graphics and UI even more.

@Fattony12000: I've searched the Fleet list for lobsters many times, and never seen it come up.

@Hector: Unofficial Mac client.

I know that its imposible but I wish that the new STO F2P would beat EA's SWTOR.

I played it for a bit last year. The problem with STO is that it has a decent space combat section reminiscent of a 3D version of Starfleet Command, but the ground combat sections are mandatory and absolutely horrible. Even if you're not expecting something along the lines of Mass Effect 2, they're still incredibly boring and stale and clunky. And the game forces you to play them, you can't just stick to space.

Anyone else having trouble connecting? I've downloaded the client and created an account, but when I try to connect, it always times out. It's happened about 20 times over the last couple of hours.

If anyone needs a hand with anything let me know.

Been geeking in STO since launch.

I can't spend any of the 12,000 points on levelling up my dudes or ship? I can select all these skills from the tree but the accept button won't highlight. I'm a Lieutenant 3 or some shit.

http://www.startrekonline.com/f2p_features

They appear to have a quite generous offer for free-to-play. Pretty neat, count me in.

I may check this out as I am a big Star Trek fan. However, I watched that entire beta series that GB posted last year and none of that gameplay footage interests me AT ALL.

After watching that video, is the story really as simple as, "EVERY SINGLE VILLAIN FROM EVERY SINGLE STAR TREK SHOW EVER IS BAAAAACCCCKKKK!", because that sounds incredibly stupid.

I am playing right now. Kinda bored. NO one else to play with. 

@The_Laughing_Man: Well, the f2p stuff just started, right? There's bound to be a little influx of people. I'm downloading it right now afterall.

@The_Laughing_Man: Well, the f2p stuff just started, right? There's bound to be a little influx of people. I'm downloading it right now afterall.

@Hector: Try this; http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=76799 it's working out pretty nicely for me.

While I'm kind of interested to try it out, I'm too busy playing Old Republic.

Star Wars > Star Trek, any day.

I played the beta on my old laptop and from what I remember, it was alright. I have way too many games to play at the moment though.

@Fattony12000 said:

I can't spend any of the 12,000 points on levelling up my dudes or ship? I can select all these skills from the tree but the accept button won't highlight. I'm a Lieutenant 3 or some shit.

I had this problem before, and it seemed to fix just by logging out. I imagine the influx of players is causing some weird lag problems.

@FreakAche said:

After watching that video, is the story really as simple as, "EVERY SINGLE VILLAIN FROM EVERY SINGLE STAR TREK SHOW EVER IS BAAAAACCCCKKKK!", because that sounds incredibly stupid.

You're not going to see Khan or anything like that.. but in terms of the Romulans, Borg, Dominion, etc, yeah, they all show up at some point and most have their own story arcs. There are a few new ones though.. but really, it's not like they could have not had the Borg. I love the fact you can have retrofit Borg technology integrated into your ship.

Eagerly await actually playing this game, but the download client has enjoyed going as slow as possible.

OK, I'm redownloading this. I really enjoyed playing it when it launched, but I stopped playing about 15-20 hours in. Looking forward to seeing how it has evolved.

Also, does anyone know if I get any bonuses for having bought it at retail and subscribed for a month or two? Or am I just like all the Free 2 Play players?

Also, what's up with the Space Neon Lobsters? Are they still going in any form? If not, is there any plans to revive the fleet now the game is Free 2 Play and plenty of people seem to be interested in playing again?

@MattyFTM: You'll keep anything you had unlocked as a subscriber, so you should have one extra character slot, a bigger inventory, extra ship slots and extra bridge officer slots, but it depends what level you reached before you stopped playing, since those things gradually expand as you level up (silver members just have to buy them on the store). And any new characters you make won't have access to those things.

No idea what happened to the guild though. I've never been much of a guild person, and the game is barely an MMO, you rarely even need to be in a group.

@WinterSnowblind: Yeah, I didn't get to a super high level. I don't remember how high I got. I guess I'll find out in 1 hour and 6 minutes when it's finished downloading and I can login. And I never did too much in the fleet, but it was just nice having a tab of Giant Bomb people to chat to while in game.

hah, man. My beta login still has all the friends in the list, sadly the guild doesn't seem to exist anymore.

What are the limitations placed on F2P gamers versus subscription players? What parts of the game require you to spend real money now? What's changed between the two incarnations of this game?

I plan to check it out soon (having too much fun in Skyrim right now), but I was curious about how much is blocked off for non-paying players.

@PenguinDust said:

What are the limitations placed on F2P gamers versus subscription players? What parts of the game require you to spend real money now? What's changed between the two incarnations of this game?

I plan to check it out soon (having too much fun in Skyrim right now), but I was curious about how much is blocked off for non-paying players.

Very little. http://www.startrekonline.com/f2p_features

@Pezen said:

@Hector: Try this; http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=76799 it's working out pretty nicely for me.

Thanks but I tried this yesterday. It seems you can't download the actual installer anymore only the Star Trek Downloader. :(

@Hector;http://www.fileplanet.com/208701/download/Star-Trek-Online-Client

@Pezen said:

@Hector;http://www.fileplanet.com/208701/download/Star-Trek-Online-Client

Thank you! Maybe I should look harder next time! Cheers!

So I log on and load up my character and am confronted by a million whizzing green messages telling me quests have ended and new ones have started and shit that I've earned and whatnot, and messages popping up from people and then a stat respec screen. At which point I said "fuck this" and quit. I'll come back to it, but I don't have time for all that nonsense right now. I could create a new character and avoid all that, but I really liked the character I had. Eh, I'll sort it out sooner or later.

The space combat totally makes this game worth playing. Ground stuff can be pretty cool too, the shooter controls are a tad clunky (not the aiming, just the attacking and movement) but for what's clearly never been an action game, it's real neat.

I dove back into it myself too & few things I noticed after playing for a while in the opening month or so. While going through my klingon side character that there's a bunch of tutorial lore/info type quests in the list of available missions in addition to some history/quiz missions for some extra stuff so I'm wondering if there's more PVE stuff on that side but saw some lore tutorial stuff on the federation side as well as being able to go to the federation grounds now. Still trying to figure out a lot of it myself as there's quite a lot that has changed but strangely more interested in it over playing more of the old republic.

Played like an hour or so there now, having never played it before or really knowing what I was getting into. Pleasantly surprised, I'm not a Star Trek fan by any account but it was quite interesting. Ground combat isn't great, but I think I can kind of deal with it... hopefully. Shard went down for maintenance though, seems a bit of an obscure time but it's only for an hour so can't complain too much.

I tried playing a little bit of this yesterday, it had some interesting stuff but it seemed really terrible at conveying information to new players, I pretty much don't know anything about this game other than what I know about MMOs going in.
 
Also the space combat just reminded me I should go play EVE again.

The 2nd Anniversary event is starting on the 2nd of February. Q will be showing up to start some mischief, they'll be new presents and other fun/stupid things going on.

More importantly, there's going to be a new mission for us to test drive the new flagship. Everyone who completes this mission before the 6th will get one of there very own. After that, you'll likely have to buy it from the c-store.

Hmm very cool ship I just started again and to stop myself getting to confused made a new character. A tip to those that like the look of their first character but want to start anew. You can go to start fleet and talk to the tailor just go in as if you’re going to change your look then click save. You can now load this look to any new character you make.

So, I just came in here to say: Try this game. Even if you've never seen a single Star Trek episode in your life. Try this game. It's really, really fun.