Amid the SEC report, the staff leaks of their design discussions, and rumors of an unknown media company aquiring the company, Perpetual has been calling in damage control with their Devs playing down the move to a “casual” game and the micro-transaction payment scheme as no more than ongoing discussions by the team.

Panicked fans were soothed on the Startrek-Online.net forums by STO Executive Producer Dan Stinnet with the following post:

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to step in and give everyone a quick update given all the rumors circulating. We are now in the process of finding a formal publisher for STO, which involves conversations with a variety of parties. We have been working on our business model for some time and once we establish a publisher, we will work with our new partner to communicate exactly what we are building – something I know all of you have been waiting a long time for.

There was also a report about PE liquidating our assets. That report relates to a transaction that took place a while back. And while I can’t go into details right now, I want to assure the community that the entire Star Trek team is still here working hard and eagerly anticipating our chance to finally share our big plans.

Thanks, and hang-tight.

- Daron

Regarding the rumored plans of a micro-transaction system:

You guys are very charitable – thanks for the support. And I mean that. There are some really nasty and incorrect rumors circulating right now and while the support is obviously not unanimous, I was expecting much more piling-on in this thread than is the case.

I personally think that MMOs need to be a better deal. Paying $200/year is a good deal for some but I don’t think that is sustainable for the category and certainly rules out a lot of people who don’t have the time to get enough value out of that expense. So we are discussing this issue internally. Unfortunately that discussion leaked and the characterization is incorrect. It’s also unfortunate that we have not yet come to conclusion internally so it is hard to present the real story since we are in the process of figuring it out.

But I do want to reassure everyone that STO is still going, it is still a triple-A game, and we are thinking hard about how to make our efforts even more appealing with a lower barrier to entry than is the norm.
__________________
Daron Stinnett
Executive Producer || Star Trek Online

We all know that $15 subscription aren’t an ideal value for all players. Given alternatives, especially with past experience playing the old pay-by-the-hour games of Compuserve and GEnie showed you could make hundreds of dollars, if not thousands by just exploiting a small percentage of your userbase with the proper monetization. Besides, what corporate Ferengi would ever limit their business to a flat fee all you can eat approach?

As for calling the yet to be released title a “triple-A game” Daron, we think that’s best left to the players to judge, unlike the tragedy of a MMO we dare not name. The IP you licensed is Triple-A, whether it’ll avoid the Star Trek curse and make it as a Triple-A game? We’ll see.. forgive us as sci-fi fans and MMO gamers if we take seeing such an important IP flushed down the drain again so seriously… There are no second chances for this property, and everything is riding on Perpetual to do it right.

Elsewhere, possibly spurred on by the rumors to show something other than artist renderings, the latest STO Dev Blog has released the first ever screenshot of their MMO’s interface as seen from the 3rd person spaceship mode.

The standard MMO interface bar and chat dialog system in STO will be the common element for ease of use across the entirety of the game for all ground based and space based interactions. As far as the old LCARS interface goes, you’d barely notice it was in the game at this point beyond a few small touches here and there.

With a cartoony screenshot in-hand of the stylized STO interface it does re-inforce the rumors of a casual World of Warcraft playstyle seriously puting into question any possibility of a rich and deep Star Trek MMORPG.