Cryptic has confirmed that Star Trek Online will be going free-to-play on January 17, 2011. “We’ve always wanted the game to be free-to-play, in fact we tried to make it free-to-play at the original launch, but our publisher [Atari] didn’t want us doing that so we didn’t do that,” said Stephen D’Angelo, Executive Producer on Star Trek Online and Chief Technical Officer.
The developer learned from the rough transition of Champions Online to make sure that beginning loot is easy to acquire and later loot is satisfyingly difficult. “A lot of the things people acquired weren’t worth very much to them,” D’Angelo says. “[So we’re] revisiting the game’s economy.”
One big change is going to be switching over the myriad means of acquiring items with Dilithium. This material can also be exchanged for Cryptic Points, which grants access to things like certain starships, pets and consumables.
“Dilithium buys you the cool gear. People who buy Cryptic Points can go to our store and can buy the cool ships, but they can’t get the cool gear. We’re going to let people sell their Dilithium to other players for Cryptic Points,” noted D’Angelo, “if you have no money and want to spend no money you can literally get everything available in our store.”
Source: IGN
