Star Trek Online goes free-to-play from tomorrow

Have you ever wanted to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilisations, to boldly go where no one has gone before – but you couldn’t afford the petrol and extortionate intergalactic highway tolls?

Maybe it’s not quite the same thing, but Cryptic Studios‘ Star Trek Online is jumping to free-to-play at maximum warp tomorrow, and a vicarious trip around the universe is better than no trip around the universe.

The new system allows for both premium and free player subscriptions, with some limits imposed on free account features, including available character slots, fleet creation, in-game chat and mail options, forums and customer service access.

Free accounts are also ad-supported.

Star Trek online

Star Trek Online launched in February 2010 to a mostly underwhelming reception, managing only 65 on Metacritic.

A year later, Cryptic temporarily reduced subscription rates in an attempt to increase player numbers, and finally announced in September 2011 that the game would be moving over to a free-to-play model.