Cryptic's Star Trek Online was released nearly two years ago to good reviews and moderate fan acceptance.  According to Executive Producer & Cheif Technical Officer Stephen D'Angelo, Cryptic intended to release STO as a free-to-play MMO from the begriming, but Atari wouldn't have it.  He tells IGN; "We've always wanted the game to be free-to-play, in fact we tried to make it free-to-play at the original launch, but our publisher didn't want us doing that so we didn't do that."  

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Star Trek Online Executive Producer Dan Stahl has thrown in the proverbial towel over at Cryptic. In a long letter to the players and fans, Dan left by saying "This was a difficult decision but ultimately one that will start a new chapter for me and my family." With a little over a year under his belt Dan has overseen several changes in STO since replacing Craig Zinkievich in July 2010. The biggest news of late being the purchase of Cryptic by Perfect World as well as the new free-to-play model. On the former, Dan mentions that he's "confident that the future of Star Trek Online is secure with Perfect World."

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A brand new episode of our favorite STO podcast (TrekFleets) just launched for your little pointed ears.  A.J. Was kind enough to have me back on the show and this time we go through season 2 of Star Trek: The Next Generation to find which episodes would make great content for Star Trek Online.  Aptly Named "STO or NO", we work our way through all 22 episodes.  That's right, I said 22.  Remember there was a writers strike going on at the time and with such turmoil comes turds like "Shades of Gray".  Okay, so we probably just offended the lone solitary fan of Trek flashback episodes... Well Reginod, this one is for you.

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It's been a little while since we've reported on Cryptic's Star Trek Online MMO. Not that we don't have love for STO, we just have been focusing on other areas. The game has seen a few updates lately including Season 4 and we figured it was high-time that we covered a new instance of the Star Trek Online monthly series "Ask Cryptic". As usual, STO Executive Producer Dan Stahl answers fan questions that include tons about season 4, plus a few questions that peeked our interest. For instance, will the Defiant's pulse cannons be a playable ship weapon? Or, will you be able visit the bridge on your shuttle or captain's yacht? Also thrown into the mix;will the Tarmarians and other well known/liked "Aliens of the Week" make an appearance sometime soon? The answer? Absolutely! In fact, CBS has requested the very same thing. Expect to see some familiar faces in upcoming Series. Rock! Check out more of the questions & answers below.

Q: KBFLordKrueg Now that we have a beautifully redone Qo’noS, can we hope for more Klingon missions soon as well?

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Here we go again! STO players are now screaming from the top of their lungs: “We’re all gonna DIE!” Okay, so maybe not quite so melodramatic, but pretty darn close!

Remember last week I told you that Atari had decided to divest itself of Star Trek Online’s production company, Cryptic Studios? Yeah, I talked about the rumors flying around the forums and the podcasts and the blogs – all of which seemed to take a “wait and see” attitude, hoping that a company who actually might love STO and Cryptic’s other products would be their knight in shining armor.

There was conjecture about almost every company – Blizzard, CBS, Microsoft – we even thought that maybe King Abdullah of Jordan might be interested…

Boy were we wrong.

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OK OK OK – it’s been awhile I admit. I’m not going to ramble on about my excuses for being so long, so I will just jump right into it!

Not a lot really happened with Star Trek Online between my last (first) post at Subspace Communique and last week.

We had a “Featured Episode Re-Run” – which was the players opportunity to grab a special reward that was offered during the episodes’ initial run and the C-Store was stocked with Oberth class ships and Section 31 uniforms … fun yes, but not something that warranted an article unto themselves.

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(Intro from Captain Pyke -- Subspace Communique would like to give a warm welcome to blogger & columnist Terilynn Shull and introduce you to a new article series focused solely on Star Trek Online called "STO: Uplink". This new series will be written from a player perspective and cover the latest news and happenings in the STO universe. Be sure to leave comments below welcoming Terilynn to the site. We're sure glad she's here.)

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Cryptic studios recently added more player purchasable items to the Star Trek Online C-store. New items include Multi-Vector Advanced Escort (i.e. USS Prometheus form Voyager), a new federation costume pack that gives you an open jacket option (like Picard's captain's variant uniform from TNG), new melee weapons, and finally Vulcan science vessels and support craft. We're especially excited about the melee weapons pack because it includes the Vulcan Lirpa from the TOS episode "Amok Time". Ya know, dah dah daaah daaah daaah daah dah dah dah.... anyway, you get the idea. Now we can only hope that appropriate music plays when wielding the lirpa. Oh, and, that our character's shirt gets slashed at the midriff. Check out the new C-store updates below.

Federation Multi-Vector Advanced Escort
(1200 Atari Tokens)

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Have you ever wanted to visit Jupiter Station? Or maybe Utopia Planetia Shipyards? I know that we have and if you're a Star Trek Online player, this could be a distinct possibility in the near future. Executive producer Dan Stahl answers questions about this plus playable Hirogen, more pets (like Porthos), and a visit from V'ger in this month's round of "Ask Cryptic". When asked, "Is there a chance to see something like V'ger from The Motion Picture?" Dan answered, "Someday, oh yes. There is a reason my forum avatar is V’ger." Not only V'ger, but also that whale lovin' probe from Star Trek IV. Pretty awesome!

We've gathered a sampling of questions below, but you can check out the full Q&A session here on StarTrekOnline.com

Fractal_Eye - Q: When will we get Porthos pets?

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