When Perfect World acquired Star Trek Online developer Cryptic Studios earlier this year, it made public its intentions to transition the MMO over to the oh-so-popular free-to-play model by the end of the year. As it turns out they missed that mark, but only by a hair.

Perfect World announced today that Star Trek Online will make the transition over to a microtransaction-fueled free-to-play model starting January 17 of next year. As a way of saying thanks to Star Trek Online subscribers, Cryptic will be handing out 400 Cryptic Points starting in December.

Rather than giving out the points to all subscribers at once, Cryptic will instead be distributing the “thank you” points to subscribers based on the “anniversary day” for their respective accounts. In other words, you’ll be getting your points on the same day that you started your Star Trek Online account.

Cryptic wasn’t willing to share details on just how the free-to-play model will work with Star Trek Online, but, going by just about every other MMO that made the jump to a microtransaction model, you can most likely expect to see some form of tiered membership.

We’ll likely be hearing more info on that as we near that January date, so sit tight for more information.

Source: Cryptic (via Game Informer)

Star Trek Online going free-to-play next January is a post from: The Inquisitr

To apply for the Star Trek Online Beta register and fill out a short survey. The lucky participants will be randomly drawn and can join the Star Trek Online Closed Beta at the end of the year.

I’m not sure if this will be as big as Star Wars The Old Republic, but it deserves a chance.

Star Trek Online now taking closed beta applications is a post from: The Inquisitr