Coming back from holidays, I found that it's really hard to find some good games for this month's recommendation. It seems that MMO developers and publishers are unwilling to release or test their games when some people are still in holidays and many others just come back. What's worse is that many companies are dealing with SOPA these days and some of them have taken actions to boycott the bill. Red5 Studio has announced to shut down Firefall's beta server on January 18 as an action to protest SOPA. We really don't want this kind of things happen again although most of us are also against SOPA and PIPA.
When the bill hasn't been approved, we can still play games as usual. MMO market is like in the winter for there aren't too many new and awesome games coming out this month, but don't worry, because in February, you are going to have a fantastic month with numbers of cool games available. What are they? You will see in next month's recommendation.
Official site: http://startrekonline.com/
Star Trek Online goes free-to-play on January 17, 2012
Star Trek Online is another Cryptic MMO that switched to free-to-play. But similar to Champions Online, you can still subscribe STO to get access to full gameplay contents and additional bonus.
Star Trek Online - Tips and Tricks
Atari pushed the game to market when it's still unfinished which almost ruined the game. Other than lack of gameplay content and polish, the original STO didn't even include any PvE quest for the Klingon faction, or in other word, Klingon is PvP-exclusive. Perhaps you can name other problems of the game if you played before.
But the game is going free-to-play, does Cryptic make any improvement to the game to bring back players? Of course, first of all, Klingon will be available for PvE gameplay, and new Klingon characters will begin their adventure at level 17, but you need a level 25 Federation character to unlock Klingon character. And then there's a Duty Officer system which is like a companion system. Duty Officer can enhance your effectiveness and complete assignments for you. Besides, there will be new ships, updated craft system, revamped skills and so on.
Free players (Silver account) can play all gameplay contents but they are limited on character slots, in-game chat, forum, etc. What's more, Free players can't turn off in-game Ad in Vivox Voice Chat.
