Star Trek Online Early Access Begins January 5th


Set your sonic screwdriver to maximum extermination! Sorry, wrong franchise. As announced last year, Star Trek is Cryptic’s second title to make the transition to free to play, although the wait may feel like forever and a day. If only there was a way for Cryptic to allow past subscribers a chance to get into the game before the full launch and before all the new free players mob the server, so perhaps jaded ex-subscribers can get a decent look at how the game has evolved without server queues, crashes, and lag.

Well I have an answer to your oddly specific request: You can. Starting January 5th, Cryptic will reactivate all existing accounts to enjoy the splendor that is travel across the galaxy. You have to have purchased the game at some point, however. Trial players are not included in this offer.

You can check out the free to play matrix to see what will be available when the update goes live tomorrow.

(Source: Dev Blog)

(Free to play matrix)

Star Trek Online: No More Standard Edition


He's dead, Jim.

At least one of you read the Where To Buy page in the past few days and noticed just one issue with Star Trek Online:

Purchase On:

  • Standard Edition
    • Amazon (unavailable)
    • Direct2Drive (unavailable)
    • Gamersgate (unavailable)
    • Impulsedriven (unavailable)
    • Steam (unavailable)
  • Digital Deluxe

I quickly sent an email to Cryptic as to why the standard edition of the game has been removed from every digital distribution source, and received the following in response:

“Since we lowered the prices on the digital deluxe and are happy to offer the DDE value to any customer, removing the standard seemed reasonable, as there’s no compelling reason to confuse customers with two digital SKUs that are pretty much priced the same. I guess another way of thinking about it is that the DDE now becomes the standard, only it grants more perks – we’re giving anyone who buys STO digitally that value..”

So the Digital Deluxe edition is becoming standard, and the standard edition is being retired. At $14.95, the deluxe edition is the price of a month’s subscription anyway. Thank you to Ivan Sulic from Cryptic for the quick response.