14 DAY TRIAL // Video game publisher Perfect World has announced that it plans to make the Star Trek Online MMO free-to-play before the end of the year, joining one of the most popular trends for the genre.
It's not yet clear how much of the game world players who chose not to pay will be able to access or what are the advantages for those willing to give Perfect World a monthly subscription fee.
The company is also probably preparing a package of bonuses for those players who have been with Star Trek Online since it launched and basically paid in order to keep the game going.
Kelvin Lau, who is the chief financial officer of Perfect World, has said, “When Perfect World acquired Cryptic, one of our contributions was to share our free-to-play experience with Cryptic.”
He added, “Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well. So I think with the free-to-play model, we have bigger potential in the U.S. market and also in the Chinese market.”
Initially, Star Trek Online was published by Cryptic Studios in partnership with Atari, but in May the company announced that it was discontinuing any joint projects.
Perfect World acquired the development studio for a little over 50 million dollars, gaining access to both Star Trek Online and to Champions Online, the superhero-powered MMO.
Star Trek Online allows players to jump into the nifty star suit of a starship captain and explore the galaxy, both fighting other vessels in space battles and exploring new world as part of an away team.
When the game was initially launched, a lot of players complained about bugs and about a relative scarcity of content, but since then Cryptic has worked hard to address all complaints.