Star Trek Online (STO) is a great modern mmorpg from the folks at cryptic and it’s been one of the most successful mmo game launches ever. It was therefore a surprise that it went free 2 play so quickly.
Cyberspace… the virtual frontier. This is the article that will tell you how you can get in on the world of Star Trek, which has attracted fans from all age groups and all social origins.
People of all genders and religious affiliations, people of all walks of life have found something entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking in the universe of Star Trek created so long ago by Master Roddenberry.
Although he went to warp 50 and passed to the next universe in October of 1991, his legacy of imagining a brave new world, a better world, one where humanity actual reaches its potential, has stuck around and will stick around for a very long time to come.
In the age of video games and MMOs it was inevitable that there would someday come a Star Trek themed MMO that would attempt to satisfy the hunger that so many trekkers feel to get more into and more immersed into the world of Star Trek. Well STO has done it. Produced by cryptic (the same folks responsible for the wildly successful city of heroes and other franchises) and run on steam or perfectworld.com, you can now play this fantastic space adventure for free!
That’s right, commander. I said free! It costs nothing to download, nothing to play, and there are very few limits on the free account. You will have the option to use real world money to get things in the game, but these are bonuses that are not in any way required to play and really have fun playing the game. It’s best played with at least a friend or two, on TeamSpeak or another similar communication platform, as Star Trek has always been more about the people in it than the ships and guns and explosions. Sing up, download, patch, and play! That’s all there is to getting started.
The first thing to do is make a character to put into the STO world. You will start as an ensign of whatever race you choose. You can be a human, Vulcan, Betazoid, or even create your very own alien species, thereby enhancing and enriching the Star Trek Universe with your own creativity. Once you’ve got your character, you will be immediately plunged into an action packed tutorial presented as a linear story. By the time you complete the tutorial you will have earned your first promotion and started building a core crew for your own command of a ship, eventually. Normally getting your own command means a lot of time and hard work but not always …
The graphics in STO are amazing. While they aren’t the prettiest and most realistic thing I have ever seen, they are smooth and responsive without much in the way of glitches, even with higher visual settings turned on. My laptop has some modest GPU capabilities so the game looks great and gives a decent frame rate even in combat. This is a good indication that you’re going to meet other people who play that may not have a dream machine at home. The widest base possible for who can access the game is a smart model to grow the community and taking the game to the F2P realm so no money is required but it optional is the wave of the future and STO has been smart enough to keep that in their formula.
You’ll eventually have your own ship, a full bridge crew, and an entire universe to explore, much of it created and driven and changed by the players themselves. It’s just about the best free MMO I have played. I would strongly recommend it to anyone who has even a passing interest in MMOs or Star Trek. There are some really great innovations in the game, things you wouldn’t be able to see in a game that was based on something else, so the Star Trek fans will be delighted with most of it, not to mention the goose egg you have to pay to play it. Go check it out and see what kind of adventures you can get your crew into. Until next time, my friends. Engage.
