Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The unstoppable march of free-to-playification continues! Cryptic’s Star Trek Online – which is published by Perfect World – will be free-to-play by the end of the year. According to this report on Perfect World’s exciting Q2 earnings call, chief financial officer Kelvin Lau told investors: “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.”

This feels like a transitional period to me. All these MMOs that launched with subscription models reconfiguring themselves to F2P, while much better contenders – such as forthcoming Tribes-but-WoW offering Firefall – wait in the wings to prove that they can do F2P from the off. Nonetheless, I expect we’re a long, long way from this all being normalised in any fashion. What “free” actually means for these games is still very much up for definition.

Champions: Online, the spiritual successor to City Of Heroes, has announced that it will move to a free-to-play model from the first quarter of 2011. This also involves a new closed beta test that starts on the 9th November, mostly aimed at current players, with a possibility of outsiders being let in too. There’s more super-details underneath the sentence I’m super-typing right super-now.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a year since Champions Online went (er) Online. What are Cryptic Studios doing to celebrate? “Re-do an interview with Jim because it didn’t record first time he did it?” you say? No, you’re wrong. That’s just something they’re doing because we’re rubbish. They’re having a free week. How free? “From September 1 (at 10:00 a.m. Pacific) until September 7 (at 10:00 a.m. Pacific), you can play Champions Online absolutely free!” says their website. That’s how free it is. Go and sign up to play from scratch or continue your sadly abandoned Superchaps. Champions Online is a year old! What are we gonna do, Kool & The Gang?
Read the rest of this entry »

Confirming rumours from a previous point in our temporal existence, Cryptic are “do”ing a new Neverwinter game. Specifically, called “Neverwinter”. From the details in its press release and about page, it’s a persistent world Neverwinter Nights (Including content creation tools) based around co-operative groups of five (with the computer controlling the NPCs if you haven’t got the right number) plus fourth edition D&D rules (which is a definite plus for Co-op groups, I suspect) and all the character customisation that Cryptic excel at (though you are kind wonder how much variety can you get out of dudes wearing leather). Interestingly, it’s also a “multi-platform event”. Except it doesn’t mean consoles. It means a trilogy of novels and a tabletop roleplaying game. Man, I hope we don’t have to dumb the game down for those readers. It’s planned before the end of next year and I find myself tentatively excited. Yay? Yes, yay.

Cryptic have revealed some details about their free trial for Star Trek Online, which is now available. It allows you to play through the tutorial and an early mission as part of the Federation, and so seems like a decent taster. Any STO veterans want to add more as to whether this is a representative sampler?

Cryptic, they say:

Free access to Champions Online begins Friday March 26, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. PDT and ends Monday March 29, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

This latest round of free time can be made use of by signing up on their site, from where you can also preload the client for the free event, should you be so inclined.

The Star Trek Online forums have thrown up news of a neat piece of design for Klingon characters. Weirdly, the link seems to work from some pages and not others, randomly taking you to their front page. Anyway, what it reveals is that Klingon’s will be PvP-focused, and while Federation classes can expect to advance through PvE missions, the Klingon player will need to do harm to his fellows if he means to progress: “Klingon Captains have the same number of skills available as their Federation counterparts, including the same professions. Your Klingon Captain can be a Science, Engineering or Tactical officer. However, they must advance through PvP, as they will not have access to the same amount of player-vs.-environment content as Federation players at launch.” I think that’s a neat idea, a kind of formalisation of role-playing in the content available to you.

Oh and what’s this? An invitation to the STO beta? I might have to investigate it for myself…

The sheer amount of promotional materials pouring out of the Cryptic/Atari for Star Trek Online seems to suggest that MMO means to come out fighting. It’s got some serious competition to go up against, even if we discount all the other bajillion games coming out in the early part of next year, there’s going to be the looming threat of The Old Republic, which threatens to suck up sci-fi fans like a space-hoover when it arrives. Nevertheless I’m quietly confident that STO is going to do well for itself. There’s just something about the setting that I think will click. If Cryptic can get the exploration and ship-management stuff right it really could be worth, er, beaming up. New trailer below.
Read the rest of this entry »

Having seen a bit of the ship-to-ship and man-to-alien combat in previous Star Trek Online footage, we’re still waiting to get an angle on what will be central to the game: doing diplomacy, managing your crew, commanding a Starship, and all that Federation jazz. No change in this trailer, but it’s starting to look a lot more polished than previous in-game footage. Moreover, I think it’s pretty easy to be cynical towards this, but the truth is this game is likely to light a commercial touchpaper and become very popular indeed. It’s not just a popular licence, but I think it might just be different enough as an MMO to drag people away from established games. There’s a definite thirst for interesting MMOs right now, and this is certainly going to qualify. The site is crammed with new screens, and they’re now taking beta applications.
Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a lot of the weekend at the MCM Expo. I eventually managed to tear myself away from my table and go looking for electro-entertainment. Alas, mainly console – or console versions of PC games we’ve already covered like Borderlands. And Assassin’s Creed 2, which I would have looked at, but I was scared away by the Marge Simpson cosplayer who looks as if they’d peeled Marge and was wearing her yellow skin as a skin-suit ala Silence Of the Lamb’s Buffalo Bill. However, Star Trek Online was there, and I spent some time getting familiar with what Cryptic have been up to…
Read the rest of this entry »

The Champions Online beta has been in full swing for a while now, and the current phase is a beta for pre-order folks and Fileplanet subscribers. Here are a few thoughts on the game as it stands in the weeks before release.
Read the rest of this entry »