Since Star Trek Online’s launch, the game has been doing pretty well for itself. Granted, it probably hasn’t jumped into the top-10, but if the quantity of updates is anything to go on, Cryptic must be happy as it is with their current population. Of course, no company would say no to more customers. With the recent swapping of Dungeons and Dragons, Global Agenda, among others, and the upcoming model change to Lord of the Rings Online, we can only sit back and wonder how many other MMOs will change to the freemium model, and if Cryptic’s Producer Daniel Stahl has anything to say about it, Star Trek Online may as well. In a forum posting, Stahl said:
“I could easily see STO going into a hybrid model similar to what Lotro is doing. In that model, subscriptions stay as is – but you allow people to play for free but heavily limit what they can do – which in essence creates a robust way to demo the game and then if you want to keep playing, you either pay for every little thing you are interested in, or you subscribe and don’t have to worry about it.
Turbine seems to have some interesting plans and looking at how DDO has turned around, its worth taking note.”
Pardon my correction, but from my experience with Dungeons and Dragons Online, the system isn’t about “heavily limiting” what free players can do. Stahl is correct on all fronts, however, with Dungeons and Dragons making a massive turnaround for Turbine when the title changed models.
Could a model change be exactly what the doctor had in store for Cryptic? More on this as it appears.
MMO Fallout 