Star Trek Online going Free to Play?
 

I noticed this piece of news recently on Massively:

So, assuming the above details are correct, what do you guys make of this?

Source: Massively by Joystiq

there are about 7 threads on the sto discussion board already.

Following the recent "Character type must match account type" and "You need a Gold account to use the Foundry" error messages (the former at least cropped up months too late to have been bleedover from CO despite Tuesday's "not an indication of anything" post), looks very much like they're following CO's model.

CO's model is actually pretty decent. Free you'd get about what you get as a subscriber now, probably minus some options (I can see them restricting ship type or skills to mirror CO's more restrictive skill selection for silver accounts). For the monthly fee (or lifetime) you get a healthy chunk of C-store stuff up front, and 400 points a month to cover a lot of the rest.

There's some complaints about how CO does things, Massively's had articles on it in the past, but honestly I think most of them are with CO itself, and not the free/pay model.

how many threads do we need on this in 1 day..lol

I think it passed the point where it becomes self sustaining about six hours ago. At this point no reasonable level of moderation will contain it, and even an unreasonable level will take weeks to stop it.

so let me get this straight, Today I finaly hit my goal of being able to afford the Life time sub. I finally can give up my buying game cards. I come here to read the forums and find out that this game is going F2P??!!

Let me ask some of you who are in the know.
If I wait and go the F2P route, what will be the limitations, vs. the life sub.
-Can only do certain quest lines?
-Can only get certain ships?
-cant get into certain sectors?

Will the Lifers have access to all content?
If I drop 300 bones on this sub I do not want to see one single screen about "oops sorry you have not paid us money for that"

Considering they have ben nickle and diming us throught he 'Cryptic Store' for a while now - did anyone think this WASN'T going to happen?

In CO's system, though not everything from CO translates cleanly into STO so until the FAQ is up this is all just educated speculation:

-Sort of: Everything that currently has an existing equivalent in STO, yes. All the open Millennium City stuff, all the missions, comic series (equivalent of our feature series), open missions (equivalent of our fleet actions), crafting are available to free players for free. There are several adventure packs that are C-store for free players (free to subscribers) that are from my understanding something like larger feature series. CO doesn't have an equivalent to the Doff system's alternate advancement paths, but as the active roster is tied to part of your ship "build" I suspect that would be included.
-Yes: CO free players don't have access to all the archetypes and travel powers subscribers do.
-No: CO free players can go everywhere, though of course they can't enter mission maps for adventure packs they don't own. Think of it like being able to fly up to the system in sector space but not having any missions that send you there.

In the order of the same questions above:

-Subscribers and lifers get all the C-store missions for free.
-Subscribers and lifers get all the character archetypes for free and have more free travel powers, but not all the travel powers for free. The ones they don't get for free are cosmetic upgrades of ones they do: Free players can fly for free, subscribers can fly and leave a trail of fire for free, both have to pay to be able to turn into a phoenix and fly. All three fly at the same speed, though.
-They can go everywhere.


They also get a stipend of 400 C-points/month as part of the $15/month or lifetime payment, and a good chunk of the C-store costumes for free.

I'm a LT subscriber msyelf since the start of the game. I has no worrie about STO going F2P.

If they follow the CO model of F2P (which I strongly suspend they will), . The following in all speculation on my part (based on CO model). For Gold Accounts (monthly subscirbers or LT subscribers) the game will remain largely unchanged. The only changes we should see is a huge increase in the number of players. And we'll get a small monthly stipend of spoints for C-Store.

Silver Accounts (free accounts) will have access to most of the normal content of the game. There may be some content that may be Pay to Play. However Silver accounts will be hugely limited otherwise. They will limited amount of free races for they Captain. Limited on the number of free ships they have access do. No access fo the Foundry Editor (and possibly missions as well). Limit selection of costume sets for character. Limited number of BOFF races they'll have access to. Free ships may be limited to just a default skin. Any other skins would have to be purchased from the C-Store. Limit amount of currency they can posses, limited amounts of personal and bank inventory space. Limitations on chat.

TL;DR. Basically you'll have access to a small set of plain vanilla stuff. All of the really cool stuff will have to be bought from the C-Store.