I played the game back during Open Beta and while it was OK, it just wasn't subscription material OK.

In anticipation of it going F2P I pulled one of the Buddy Trial Key's off this site (thank you all that post those) to give it another whirl.

I agree at the lower levels it doesn't seem to hardcore like other MMORPG's but it's a fun diversion and now that I finally got it up and running on my son's computer (thanks again for those Buddy keys) I anticipate us grouping and playing together, just like we do in PotBS. 

And so me and my Mirror Universe Connie and crew and out having fun.  Yes I dropped $20.00 on it to get the ship and uniforms and will probably do another $20.00 to get the Connie interior and shuttle craft.  Don't see me putting anymore money than that into it. 

My one complaint would be that you can't seem to earn Cryptic points via game play (a la LotRO).

I too am enjoying my time back. I played on release and did not get into the game.

Now however I cannot get enough of it lol.

These for me are the main areas of improvements

1. The ground game has improved a lot and is enjoyable to play, this was my main problem with the game on release.

2. A good rpg should have a lot of customisation and STO offers that in bucket loads. You have your main char as well as your Bridge Officers(pets essentially) which you can outfit skillwise, lookwise, equipment wise etc and of course your ship(s) that have different roles, consoles, weapons.

From char creation, through to customising your ship and bridge officers it will be extremely difficult to find two players that are the same.

3. Sector space revamp makes it quite workable and believable.

4. There are a lot of different things to do, you can do straight forward repeatable combat quests, join PvP/PvE queues, do story line type quests, there are a ton of player added quests as well which i have not even started with. Then there are War Zones which I have not yet investigated

With the ability to set the NPC level you can go back and do lower level quests and for them to still be a challenge, or you can jump into a quest appropriate vessel to do the quests. So you cannot out level the content in effect.

5. Combat, here I used to think that auto fire was a game killer, now I think it is a game saver, as you level up there is so much going on in space combat, even against one target that you are sometimes relieved that you can put your weapons on auto fire, at first i only put rear weapons to auto fire but more and more I am putting forward ones on to auto as well as i concentrate on movement of my ship and as i develop different attack strategies. For example when in a Bird of prey I make sweeping passes on my target where as in a larger Battle Cruiser I look to tank the target with a head on attack.

Similarly ground combat has quite a few options considering that you have 4 bridge officers with you each with a set of skills that you have direct access to. As well as a new action based mode where you play like a 3rd person action game where you dont need to target, you "point and shoot" instead.

6. The pop is not bad either as at peak times the pop is high enough to require another world map instance. This will increase quite a bit when STO goes F2P later this year. One of the best F2P packages available.

All in all I cannot find anything I am not happy with, ofc I would love to see a new race or fight from the bridge, but these things will come.

Take all the above and then add some very very nice graphics, but those graphics into 3D, add a life time sub and you make a Star trek fan very happy!