Star Trek Online's second anniversary is just a month away, but the game's transition to a free-to-play model is even closer than that. In the game's latest developer diary, executive producer Stephen D'Angelo talks about updates leading into the business model shift, the anniversary, and the eventual rollout of the game's next season. A couple of new bug fixes and feature improvements will be rolled out to the live game before January 17th, at which point the game will shift over to the free-to-play mode.
In February, the game will be celebrating its anniversary with a new KDF flagship, the debut of the Odyssey-class Federation ship, and soon thereafter a series of Dominion featured episodes. Players can look forward to season 6 sometime in June, with the development team aiming at something new in the game roughly every other week once the game is free-to-play. It's a tall order, but Star Trek Online fans at least have those frequent updates to hope for if not necessarily expect.
Reader Comments (13)
Posted: Jan 3rd 2012 9:41PM HitechLolife said
Did anything come of the idea of adding other factions to the game? I know the Klingon side was struggling with underdevelopment the last time I played so it seemed unlikely even then.
Posted: Jan 4th 2012 6:39AM Joaquin Crowe said
@Ozewa Ugh. Cardassians have always sucked in the alien design and ship design department. I'd rather have Romulans, the cruiser from TNG was always pimp as hell.
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Posted: Jan 3rd 2012 9:45PM The Grand Nagus said
Only 2-3 featured series per year, when these were originally planned to be every single week, is an epic fail.
Posted: Jan 4th 2012 1:03AM Ozewa said
@The Grand Nagus
To be fair, the game was never really a huge commercial success, and Atari raided most of the capital that came out of the game. Then Atari dumped Cryptic on the side of the road. Supporting that sort of ambitious development schedule in a game like STO would take a lot of capital and the right leadership. Personally I am just hoping that Neverwinter isn't in the same engine as STO and Champion's Online, but w/e. Plenty of other MMOs coming out this year.
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To be fair, the game was never really a huge commercial success, and Atari raided most of the capital that came out of the game. Then Atari dumped Cryptic on the side of the road. Supporting that sort of ambitious development schedule in a game like STO would take a lot of capital and the right leadership. Personally I am just hoping that Neverwinter isn't in the same engine as STO and Champion's Online, but w/e. Plenty of other MMOs coming out this year.
Posted: Jan 4th 2012 1:40AM The Grand Nagus said
@Ozewa If it werent for the fact that complete amateurs are able to create very high quality missions using the Foundry UGC tool I might agree with that explanation. But because they can, I dont. If a single person who isnt even trained in game design can create great missions with the Foundry then an entire team of people should easily be able to put them out on a regular basis.
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Posted: Jan 4th 2012 2:26AM JonBuck said
@Ozewa Considering the nature of the IP, Star Trek deserved so much better. Atari dumped everything on Cryptic and told them to get the game done in 18 months. The game did improve in leaps and bounds in the year or so after release (Featured Episodes, Sector Space revamp, etc.), but Atari eviscerated them anyway.
STO really needed another couple years of development before release.
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STO really needed another couple years of development before release.
Posted: Jan 4th 2012 3:16AM Iamonthemoon said
@JonBuck because of deadline associated with the license, Atari had no choice but to release the game after so short cycle of development - it was either this, or no Star Trek Online at all.
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Posted: Jan 4th 2012 3:31AM JonBuck said
@Iamonthemoon I know, and more's the pity. The improvements the game got post launch were amazing in themselves. Cryptic did well with the time they had with the IP, but they didn't get the financial and staffing support post-launch they really needed to make the game complete. For a while it was just CapnLogan doing ships all by himself.
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Posted: Jan 4th 2012 3:36AM JonBuck said
@Iamonthemoon *The improvements and content the game got post launch where amazing in themselves given the way Atari hamstrung Cryptic. I fondly remember the Drozana Station Featured Episode released just before Halloween 2010. And the last FE with the Romulan/Reman arc was well done, too. They've done well with the staffing/funding situation they've been given, but it wasn't enough to keep me playing.
Need Edit feature, please.
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Need Edit feature, please.







