Explore Strange New Worlds For Free in Star Trek Online

Where no man has gone before... it became free to play.

It was still worth it Jeff!

Time to try this game out !

Downloading now. Curious to see how it's evolved from Beta.

Set phasers to stunned.

Yay gonna check it out

fap fap fap

Been playing for a week or so due to a lapsed subscription. Love the new changes they made. Also very cool trailer, I see they are teasing us with potential future stuff.

STO is actually a really fun game. It doesn't have a whole ton of content, so it wasn't really worth a subscription, but as a F2P game there's a ton of fun to be had. And you really can do everything without paying. They've added some really great features recently, too. For instance, originally you just had your captain and a handful of "Bridge Officers". Now they've added a whole "Duty Officer" system that lets you flesh out the ranks of crew with redshirts, enlisted officers, civilians, even refugees or prisoners.

So, you build your crew with these duty officers almost like building a deck, then you can send them off on assignments in one of ten categories - diplomatic, espionage, trade, colonial, etc. You succeed or fail based on your crew's traits & specialties & rank, and you get various rewards based on how well you did, ranging from just xp & credits, to pretty much anything possible. Crafting mats, gear, bridge officers, access to new lines of assignments, special player titles, genetically modified tribbles... you name it.

From what I understand, it's vaguely similar to SWTOR's crew system, though I don't know much about that. Sure, it's not super active, you're just sending your crew out on time-based missions, but you can put a lot of time into managing your deck of officers, trading them with other people, and choosing the right assignments if you really get into it. The main thing it does, far as I'm concerned, is add a huge amount of non-combat content that (as a Star Trek game) was sorely lacking in the past. You wanna colonize a star cluster? You can do that now. Capture Romulan spies and interrogate them for intelligence? No problem. Have your crew put on a concert? Sure, throw some Klingons in there and make it an opera. Point is, tons of new stuff to do.

Last time I played this was on the Beta. I was pleased with it. Guess ill give this a go for that times sake.

There's only one way I'd ever play: Are there "Bang (X number) alien space babes" fetch quests?

I AM A STAR FLEET OFFICER?

@l3reak: Absolutely, the game should have been F2P from the start. It's a decently enjoyable MMO, but was in no way worth the money they were asking for it.

Hopefully they flesh out some more of the systems now, I'd love to have more to do inside the ship and if there was actual interaction with your crew, it might start to feel like an actual RPG.

@gamernz said:

It was still worth it Jeff!

Greatest comment. No need to post more comments on this video.

Was bored last week and got a referral key off someone.Overall i found the game boring as hell and the interface and mechanics wanting to say the least.large scale PVE ship battles are fun the first time after the third time it became a shit show grind.Boldly don't go were a few people have gone already.

Not a bad game my friends. I absolutely hate MMO's and what they stand for. I despise the 15 dollar a month policies, I despise the grinds, I despise the "instancing", I despise everything about modern MMO's post-SWG and Ultima Online and most of all, I despise WoW.

However, I've actually maxed out a character in STO, the first MMO I've ever maxed a character out in. My philosophy is this: If the game isn't fun for levels 1 - 10 and I decide to quit, don't you dare tell me to wait until endgame. If I'm paying money a month, it better be fun from day one. Well it is. From a person who enjoys games like Skyrim, Mass Effect, ArmA 2, and Total War, Star Trek Online is certainly worth the price (Free). Give it a go, buy something from the c-store (like an outfit or whatever) and have some fun for at least 20 hours. You won't even know the time went by and for a price of 0 dollars, the hours you will get will be more worthwhile than paying 60 dollars for a cookie cutter shooter that will only give you 5 hours of campaign play.

My only advice to you is to bring along a friend. I played every episode from start to finish with a buddy and we had a blast. If you're a Role Player, you'll enjoy it even more than we did.

I've been playing again for the last week or two since they let people who had subs before back in early (I had a free month from a $5 collector's edition I got a while back). I hate to say this, but if they had the Duty Officer system in place before, I probably would have stuck around. It's terribly addicting, and I'm logging in every few hours to make the most out of my assignment limits (only 20 active assignments at a time). They also got me to buy "Duty Officer packs", God help me, to flesh out my crew with some green/blue/purple quality guys (like items, not shirt colors).

I realize it's a horrible mechanic as a game and it's just a dice roll on a time delay, but it's still compelling for some bizarre reason. I actually felt a bit sad when two of my crewmen (permanently) died on an away mission.

It definitely makes you feel more like a starship captain. Before it just felt like me touring the galaxy shooting klingons with my 4 pets. You couldn't even visit your own bridge before, which shows almost a complete lack of understanding of what people come to Star Trek for. It's nice that you can do that too now. Pointless, but you can.

Yay! A reason to go back after quitting 3 months after it launched! I <3 You Star Trek!

@AlKusanagi said:

There's only one way I'd ever play: Are there "Bang (X number) alien space babes" fetch quests?

With the user created content, there probably is.

I started playing again a few days ago (would've started earlier if I had realized they reactivated old accounts early), and I'm finding it's more or less the game I quit playing a month after launch.

However, now it is free, so I don't feel slighted by the largely awful on foot content. It's mind numbingly easy, despite the common misinformation in the quest tracker but, to its credit, it never lasts half as long as the in-ship content.

I've already broken the spacebar on one keyboard. It has me thinking that a remake/reboot of Star Trek: Bridge Commander would be pretty awesome on Kinect. Telling my crew what to do with voice commands would give this new keyboard a respite, at least.

Probably give it another go.

I stand by Jeff.

Nice try Jeff

So it's more JJ Abrams Trek than Gene Roddenberry Trek? I suppose that's better for games.

I'd actually like to check this out. Cryptic seems to botch MMO launches all the time, but they sure as shit crank away on fixing them like nobody's business, and adding content. It's a shame so few people seem to go back to check 'em out later though.

@cavemantom said:

I've already broken the spacebar on one keyboard. It has me thinking that a remake/reboot of Star Trek: Bridge Commander would be pretty awesome on Kinect. Telling my crew what to do with voice commands would give this new keyboard a respite, at least.

No, you don't need voice commands. What you need is a better keyboard.

It really helps if you're a Star Trek fan. The ship and crew customization is pretty great, as is the ship combat. Ground combat is pretty standard, but also avoidable aside from the main quest line.

I recommend trying it out if you want to pilot your own space ship.

When I played the game my bridge was a lifeless ghost town... Have things changed?

Pretty good trailer. If Old Republic has some great space combat akin to this I'd probably be loading it up now, instead of STO. C'est la vie.

So like... does everyone get an Enterprise?

Tempting... but unless they have turned up the difficulty from "cakewalk" it's not worth the time it'd take to re-download.

I wonder if Jeff actually got around to playing ST: O while it wasn't free-to-play, if not then I bet he felt pretty silly when he heard this announcement. Cue the well known Jeff groan when he thinks some type of money grabbing scheme has been shoved into a game and wants to convey how gross that scheme is: "UGHHHHHH!!"

Star Trek Online, pioneering the MMO space corkscrew since 2010.

massively banned online RPG?

If I wasn't knee deep in Skyrim (still) and Persona 3 right now, I'd give this a shot. I hope it's still around when I emerge from my tomb of gaming.

The trailer was actually pretty good. Played the beta, but had no time for the actual game when it was release. But I remember enjoying the space battles a lot, the ground missions not so much.

Also... Nemoy.

@TorMasturba said:

I wonder if Jeff actually got around to playing ST: O while it wasn't free-to-play, if not then I bet he felt pretty silly when he heard this announcement. Cue the well known Jeff groan when he thinks some type of money grabbing scheme has been shoved into a game and wants to convey how gross that scheme is: "UGHHHHHH!!"

The F2P stuff is actually handled quite well here. You get all of the content as a silver member, with few restrictions. All there really is to buy on the store are certain playable species, snazzy uniforms and some of the higher tier ships. You can easily play through the entire game without spending anything.

Asking $15 a month for this was far worse.

AWWWW! I am already traveling in space in star wars! Do I have to?

Played it for about an hour and found the interface really confusing. I felt like I was trying to fly a Warthog.

Jeff would argue it was free-to-play since launch.

Nice, dusting off the USS Steakhouse for this.

I really wished it went F2P months ago when I needed something to do on the PC. Now with SWTOR, I got that covered. Oh well.

I may have to jump back in and see the changes they've made. I played for a few months when it first came out and I remember it being quite fun, except for the horrible away team missions. I'm looking forward to seeing how they've improved it.

Did the Away Team portions ever get better? Because other than that uninspired, incredbly generic ground combat it was a fun little game.

Oh, there is actual space combat. You know, for those of you that wanted more than Star Wars Clone Wars: Galactic Heroes for an MMO. :) Hint hint.

@mr_shoeless said:

@cavemantom said:

I've already broken the spacebar on one keyboard. It has me thinking that a remake/reboot of Star Trek: Bridge Commander would be pretty awesome on Kinect. Telling my crew what to do with voice commands would give this new keyboard a respite, at least.

No, you don't need voice commands. What you need is a better keyboard.

Voice commands actually sounds awesome for a Star Trek game.... never crossed my mind, it's sooo nerdy, but so awesome sounding.

Nice looking video, definitely curious to see how the game starts up now over how it started at launch. Bought the deluxe edition a little while back rather cheaply for the art book but if it's like champions online, I should be able to get the one month of that membership level to dive back in & see what's changed on both faction sides (as well as what happened to my characters). See you duders in space.

I will go where no man has gone before...to collect fifty thousand rabbit ears.

Wow, that video made it look pretty cool. I'm going to have to give this a try. At least it isn't some garbage Star Wars bullshit.

@alibson said:

I felt like I was trying to fly a Warthog.

Luckily, you can indeed fly STO ships with an Xbox controller. How quaint!