We were really tempted to simply leave the headline "Star Trek Online May Become Free To Play", but that's not quite the entire story.  In recent forum posts, after a bit of backlash from players over the most recent "Ask Cryptic" episode, Star Trek Online's executive producer Dan Stahl answers one particularly interesting post.

With "Lord of the rings" online switching to a free-to-play model, some STO players were concerned with the future of the MMO's viability.  One player in particular writes; "I'm thinking Old School Business Model = Win which isn't true any more. There's more than one way to skin the cat now. I guess we have to get it out of our heads that Going F2P = Fail.  But I would warn you against having STO go F2P in the next few years. Can you imagine the riots from Lifers and all the people who will think STO failed?? Good Lord... it will make previous marketing fiasco's seem like nothing..."

Stahl followed up with his own post; "I could easily see STO going into a hybrid model similar to what Lotro is doing. In that model, subscriptions stay as is - but you allow people to play for free but heavily limit what they can do - which in essence creates a robust way to demo the game and then if you want to keep playing, you either pay for every little thing you are interested in, or you subscribe and don't have to worry about it. Turbine (LOTRO) seems to have some interesting plans and looking at how DDO (Dungeon & Dragons Online) has turned around, its worth taking note."

STO becoming eventually free-to-play with a very limited free option sounds like an interesting idea.  With the struggling MMO trying to retain players and add new ones, it would seem the game's current and near-future revenue will ultimately be the deciding factor.

(info source Massively.com)