{"id":13780,"date":"2011-09-01T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T11:52:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"star-trek-online-going-free-to-play-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/pc\/13780-star-trek-online-going-free-to-play-this-year","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek Online going free-to-play this year"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Proprietor of MMOs, and new Star Trek<strong> <\/strong>Online owner Perfect World has confirmed that Cryptic Studios is busy developing a new free-to-play business model for Star Trek Online.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Apparently, the ailing MMO will become free-to-play before the end of 2011.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Perfect World&#8217;s chief financial officer Kelvin Lau told investors during a conference call that &#8220;Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">&#8220;So I think free-to-play model we have a bigger potential in US market and also in China market,&#8221; said Lau.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">When Perfect World bought Cryptic Studios earlier this year, it acquired the rights to Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and also something called <a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/news\/7238-New-Neverwinter-game-announced.html\" target=\"_self\" title=\"Neverwinter\">Neverwinter<\/a> which is currently in development.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Star Trek Online was essentially a disappointing title which failed to gain any real traction in the MMO space, joining pretty much every other pay-to-play MMO to wilt in the shadow of World of Warcraft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The free-to-play model has proven that it can be successful in recent years by drawing in a larger player base and then selling in-game items, as evidenced by <a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/pc\/7956-Lord-the-Rings-goes-free--play-doubles-its-income.html\" target=\"_self\" title=\"Lord of the Rings online\">Lord of the Rings online<\/a> which doubled its income after going free-to-play.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Whether or not free-to-play will be enough to save Star Trek Online remains to be seen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span style=\"font-size: small;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/17184-Star-Trek-Online-adopting-free-to-play-model-later-this-year\" target=\"_self\" title=\"Star Trek Online going free-to-play this year\"><strong>Star Trek Online going free-to-play this year<\/strong><\/a> &lt;&lt; Comments and views<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can Cryptic save its ailing MMO by making it free?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}