Star Trek Online Executive Producer Daron Stinnett has made a few posts on the StarTrek-Online.net forums, clearing up recent rumors about Star Trek Online being made for casual non-trekkie gamers, and about the game using a pay-real-world-cash-for-in-game-items business model. It turns out that the rumors started when an internal conversation about the game's business model, which has not been finalized, was leaked and then taken out of context as fact.

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.

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