Ok so i bought this game day 1 and am a lifetime subscriber. I have been working a LOT this past year and have had ZERO time to invest in an MMO. So now I decided to check out the C-store cuz i heard pay subscribers get perks once it goes to free to play mode.

So I login here and.. it says I have no active characters.. I made a character, and granted i only played 4 times and got to level 3, but am I screwed? I'm downloading the latest patch and going to login but did I miss out on lots of stuff for my lifetime account for not having played in about a year and a half?

I got lifetime for this very reason, so when i'd have time I could play. granted i thought I'd find more time but oh well. So any ideas for me on what i've missed/lost?

You might have missed out on some special rewards that were given out when the Featured Episodes came out. Other than that you are good. You can now enjoy the game with many items fixed.

The only things you've missed out on are the "limited time" rewards from featured episodes.

Your characters are all still there. They don't show on the website, but they are still there.

I suspect you'll get a bunch of accolades as soon as you log in too.

haha yea i got like 5 accolades, and a bunch of missions were ended. lol My new years resolution is to play more. All seems ok now. Hey anyone gimme info on what the "100 duty officers" pack is? Like what does that do for me? I have my captain and a 4 man crew, does that mean i can have like 96 more crew members to choose from? i have 640 points, just looking for stuff i want. im ****ed the Ferengi bride officer isnt there anymore. knew i shouldve bought it last time i played

Duty officers are new and are separate from your bridge officers. It's a nice, new element to the game that allows you to send duty officers out on missions for different rewards and accolades. You can access the duty officers feature by clicking the appropriate button underneath the mini-map. It feels very Trek-like to me. I can actually picture myself as captain of a ship and sending out officers from my crew in shuttlecrafts to perform different duties. :-)

That's essentially what the system is all about.

Also, I stopped playing for about as long as you did. I played for about a month when it first came out and made it to captain. I started back up about two weeks ago, and I've now capped my character. I don't think you missed a whole lot. From what I've been able to gather, a lot of the improvements came recently as they prepare for the f2p model. I'm reserving judgment on that for now. My hope is that the f2p model will lead to more players, translate to more money for Cryptic, and as a result improve the game further. My fear is that the exact opposite will happen.

Worth remembering that DOffs are opened to you at LT8 so you'll have to get there first. It should just be a case of completing the missions in Sirius to get there though so it won't take more than a couple of hours if it's your first time through.
They really are addictive though, I've been spending an unhealthy amount of time sending DOffs out on missions recently.

Thank you for that, now I know I'm not the only one. Shall we start a support group? Duty Officer-aholics Anonymous anyone?

To the OP....you haven't hurt yourself any by not playing in a while, if anything you've managed to avoid the drought that we have dealt with for the last year. With the F2P conversion and all the stuff coming out ............."soon".................. it looks like you might have just picked the right moment to return. I would suggest checking some of the fan sites out there, they can be quite useful in finding accolades etc. (STOWIKI is a good one)

Finally I say....Welcome back Captain

Also, I believe they said the Ferengi will be added as a base species (free from start) when free to play goes live. Might want to check the character creator to see if it has already been done. Please don't quote me on that though as I could be wrong.

I believe I saw them on my list the 15 or so

Why are we paying to play again? Yeah, I am not too pleased about the Ferengi and other items going free. No refund for us?

But anyway in the spitit of giving Iam happy that the OP will get the Ferengi captain he was afraid he would never have. Welcome back to STO and Merry Xmas.