Star Trek Online Message Board

Perfect World Entertainment, publisher of free-to-play games like Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter and Star Trek Online, has announced the creation of a new company division that plans to bring "current and future" games to both current and next-gen consoles.

Perfect World Entertainment CEO Alan Chen said in a press release that the studio's move to consoles was a "natural progression," but no details were given on how the company's mostly keyboard-and-mouse-centric games will be translated to the controller-oriented consoles. The press release did, however, tease that more details will be coming sometime next year.

Star Trek Onlines new expansion, Legacy of Romulus, is now available! In this expansion, players gain the ability to make Romulan characters and immerse themselves in new, story-driven missions written from the Romulan Republics point-of-view. Romulans have access to a full range of new Warbird ships, as well as new content throughout their career.

In addition, players can now create Klingon characters starting at level 1. All players also gain access to the new Nimbus III adventure zone, the new Nukara Strike Force endgame Reputation system, an improved trait system, and new user interface options.

For more information about all of Legacy of Romuluss features, visit: www.legacyofromulus.com

#startrek R-R-Romulans have r-r-ridges. Perfect World Entertainment's is gearing up to launch the most ambitious Star Trek Online expansion to date in May, giving players tired of making excuses for their Vulcan characters to roleplay space sex a more passionate alternative with Legacy of Romulus. And hey look — Tasha Yar is back! More »

#startrekonline While being forthright with his community about the woeful state of Star Trek Online's player-vs-player combat, a developer at Cryptic Studios also admitted to something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: PvP in the game is so bad, no one's participating in it. Participation is so low, the studio has seriously considered removing PvP altogether. More »

Cryptic Studios, the developer behind City of Heroes and Star Trek Online, announced on its official website today that a hack from December 2010 has just recently been discovered. Better late than never, right? Information obtained from the hack includes user account names, handles and encrypted passwords. Evidence makes it clear that the hacker was able to crack at least some portion of the encrypted passwords...

It feels like it’s been ages since a major game company reported a break in from a gang of keyboard-wielding malcontents – and for Star Trek Online and Neverwinter developer Cryptic, it actually has been ages. Well, not actual ages. There were no lances, moats, or trebuchets involved (to my knowledge), but today – in the Neo Future Space Year 2012 – Cryptic cautioned users about an “unauthorized access” from December 2010. And while that certainly spooks an entire flock of northward-migrating eyebrows from their cozy forehead nests, there are more immediate concerns at hand. The short version: while Cryptic has “no evidence” that anything beyond usernames and encrypted passwords were taken, you should still change your password and keep a close eye on credit card info.

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#hackers Cryptic, the guys behind Star Trek Online and City of Heroes, have found out this week that they've been hacked. User details have been stolen, and some "portion of the passwords" present in a database were even cracked. Which is bad. What's worse is that the hack took place in December 2010. More »

#startrekonline Set your phasers on stupid Trek reference, as Cryptic's Star Trek Online opens its free-to-play docking bay and invites the world inside following a brief subscriber-only period. To see what players get for free, hit up the official Star Trek Online web page. More »

Players with a lapsed subscription to Cryptic's Star Trek Online can come back an play the game at no cost today as part of the free-to-play early start program. Everyone else can play for free come January 17. More »

It’s a bit of a shame that we already did the “RPS Free To Read” joke, I feel like it would have been useful this morning. Anyway, the news is that Star Trek Online is nearing the freeness now shared by dozens of its MMO brethren. It’s currently a limited roll out, as producer Stephen D’Angelo explains: “anyone with a lapsed subscription to Star Trek Online will be able to log into the game and play as a Silver member. This means that any account that has in the past subscribed to the game, even if only for the initial month, can come back and play for free!” The details of these new subscription details, with the content and features offered by them, can be explored here.

Full freeness for everyone commences on the 17th of this month.

Star Trek Online is going free-to-play. We've known for a while, but just when and why it's going free has eluded us, until now. Cryptic's decision to remove the subscription cost from their most recent MMO wasn't sudden, according to Stephen D'Angelo, Executive Producer on STO and Chief Technical O...

#startrek Late last week it was revealed that Cryptic Studios' massively multiplayer Star Trek Online would be going free-to-play later this year, swapping required subscription fees for an active player base. Today we find out what's free and what'll have players reaching for their gold-pressed latinum. More »

#startrek Star Trek Online, the MMO picked up by new owner Perfect World when it acquired Cryptic Studios back in May, will be taken to a free-to-play format by the end of 2011, says the new ownership. More »

Stated in a recent earnings call, Perfect World Entertainment revealed that developer Cryptic is currently working on a free-to-play model for its Star Trek Online MMO. The altered pricing structure will be put into effect alter this year,as pointed out by Massively...

Publisher Atari is "divesting" itself of MMO specialists Cryptic Studios, which it snapped up in 2008. It's trying to sell the creators of Star Trek Online and Champions Online after losing Atari millions. [Atari Results (PDF)] More »

Create your own episodes of Star Trek in the Foundry of Star Trek Online!

Without an equivalent of the Ghostbusters game, Atari's revenue for the nine-month period from April 1 through December 31, 2010 was, well, a bit busted. Through the first three quarters of its current fiscal year, the publisher has reported €41.0 million ($55.3 million) in revenue, down 55.7 percent from the same period in 2009.

However, Atari doesn't seem too bugged by the decline. In its latest earnings release, CEO Jim Wilson said that current-year revenues are "in line with our outlook and show a continued shift toward fewer but more profitable retail releases and the growing online games market." And, in fact, Atari's online revenue has increased by €15.3 million year-over-year to €18.4 million ($24.8 million) through nine months, thanks to Champions Online and Star Trek Online.

Revenue from online games represented a whopping 44.9 percent of Atari's total net revenue for the period, compared to just 3.4 percent in the first nine months of its previous fiscal year.

#anniversary It's been a year since Cryptic Studios boldly went and released a massively-multiplayer game based on Star Trek, and it's come quite a long way since then. See what's changed and what's next for Star Trek Online. More »

Recap the first year of Star Trek Online's journey in to the vast unknown expanses of space-based MMO gameplay!

Direct2Drive has quite a sale brewing this weekend. First and foremost, the company is offering 20 percent off its entire library of titles. Furthermore, the discount also applies to pre-orders and games that are already on sale. To cash in on the promotion, use the promo code "HOHOHO" during checkout. The deal runs until Monday at 10am PST.

Two other deals are also on offer: First, the Atari Complete Collection is 50 percent off this weekend, knocking the usual $531.50 price down to $265.75. We should point out that "Complete" probably isn't the right word here, though there are a handful of decent titles in the collection, including Star Trek Online Digital Deluxe Edition, The Witcher Enhanced Edition Director's Cut and more. Finally, THQ titles are also 50 percent off this weekend.

Design the next Entreprise.

As we all know, the third season of The Next Generation was a real doozy. We mean, "Sins of the Father?" "The Bonding?" Oh, man -- they're classics. We've got understandably high hopes for the third "season" of free downloadable content for Star Trek Online, an update which will go live December 9, adding a mission replay option, unlockable Borg technology and a beta for "The Foundry," which allows players to craft their own episodes.

This, of course, means that someone needs to go through and recreate all the episodes from season three of TNG. Heck, how about all the episodes from TNG? We're not sure those wacky Holodeck episodes would be possible, but we're sure players can kludge something together.

Cryptic Studios already enabled City of Heroes players to create their own missions from scratch successfully -- now it's planning on adding the feature to the rest of its MMO catalog. Star Trek Online players can now apply to beta test the "Foundry" toolset, which allows them to create entire Episodes, customizing mission objectives, characters and scenery, which other Captains will then be able to play through.

There's no telling how powerful the Foundry will be until we get a chance to check them out, but we've got our fingers crossed that our Captain Riker/Tribbles slash-fic masterpiece will be able to be realized using these new tools.

Bill Roper — one of the forces behind Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo — defected to Cryptic Studios back in 2008 to work on Champions Online and Star Trek. He has recently stated that he's leaving Cryptic, but hasn't given specifics. More »

Cryptic Studios, developer of MMOs Champions Online and, more recently, Star Trek Online, has announced that chief creative officer Bill Roper has left the company. He follows in the footsteps of Craig Zinkievich, executive producer on STO who left Cryptic back in July. Talk about a rough summer for the development studio!

Prior to his two-year stint at Cryptic, Roper worked at Blizzard and then Flagship Studios, the developer responsible for creating Hellgate: London. Roper cites his "entrepreneurial spirit" as the reason for his departure, a spirit he says "has become restless" over the last few months. We wish him all of the luck in his future endeavors.

The recently teased free content expansion for Star Trek Online, titled "Season Two: Ancient Enemies," launched earlier today, bringing with it an increased level and rank cap, new ships and missions, a series of new episodes specifically geared towards the Klingon faction, and more. As with the last STO season, the new stuff doesn't stop coming after today's update -- five new "episodes" (aka missions) will debut every week starting in August. Click past the jump to see all the new features present in the update.

If you're intrigued by Cryptic's habit of giving away its expansions and you've yet to invest in Star Trek Online, the studio's made it that much easier for you to do so by lowering the price of the game to $20. Why, with all the money you'd be saving, you'd certainly be doing an enviable amount of prospering. Though, we're not sure what the secret to "living long" is. Fish oil? We bet it has something to do with fish oil.

We weren't exactly sure what qualified as an "Ancient Enemy" in the Star Trek universe -- haven't most of them been around since, like, the 60s, anyway? The debut trailer for the second season of content updates (which carries the "Ancient Enemies" subtitle) for Star Trek Online reveals the true identity of these time-tested foes: Big, scaly dudes with tusks. Oh, and floating, demonic torsos. Oh, and floating, demonic torsos that can fly around in space without a ship.

So, in short, not only are these enemies older than the game's traditional fare, but they're jumpsuit-spoilingly scarier as well. You can catch a glimpse of these second season baddies in the trailer posted after the jump.

Fans can build custom ships and win a custom captain's chair.

Star Trek Online's new executive producer Daniel Stahl recently stated that he "could easily see" a hybrid free-to-play model working for Cryptic's MMO. Stahl specifically mentions (recent Warner Bros. acquisition) Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online as "interesting plans" worth taking note of. DDO went freemium last year to create a dungeon full of gold for the developer; LotRO will roll the die for the same fate this autumn.

Stahl expressed that Turbine's model creates a "robust way to demo the game" and allows those wanting more to pay for a subscription or purchase items á la carte. With Cryptic's parent-company Atari operating at a loss, ways to beam up revenue would appear logical. It's unclear if it's a sign of the future, but Cryptic did conduct a free-to-play away mission back in May.

Craig Zinkievich, executive producer for Star Trek Online and certified lorekeeper for all things Roddenberrian, recently announced on the game's official blog that he's leaving Cryptic Studios after seven years. His shoes will be filled by producer Daniel Stahl, whom he promises shares his own enthusiasm for the Prime Directive.

So, what's the scandalous reason for Zinkievich's departure? Perhaps there was some inter-departmental drama? Maybe he's going to work for one of Cryptic's competitors? Actually, he explains he's going to "focus on other things, like hanging out with my kids over the summer, walking my goat more and taking care of my bees." Well, that's not all that shocking, but we wish Zinkievich the best all the same.