Perfect World Entertainment and the original developer Cryptic Studios announced today that the Star Trek Online MMO has gone free-to-play.

“We couldn’t be more excited,” Jack Emmert, CEO, Cryptic Studios, Inc., said. “Updating Star Trek Online to the popular free-to-play model removes those barriers of entry that previously kept fans and casual gamers away. Anyone can download and play Star Trek Online at no cost. There’s no better way to see how sitting in the captain’s chair feels.”

With the game going free-to-play, anyone can download the game for free without a retail copy or subscription. All players will be able to enjoy the game’s many features for free. Like all freemium games, however, some content and features must be bought through the online store.

The game tasks players to become a starship captain in the wide expanse of the Star Trek universe. Players can either join the Federation or the Klingon Empire in a persistent online universe. Players can expect to journey to strange new worlds and take part in epic ground and space missions.

The game is completely free to play so there is no subscription or any payment required. New weekly episodes will be updated throughout the game’s lifespan and feature story-based gameplay that will put your captain’s ability to command to the test.

The goal is to become a captain and seek out new life. Players can advance to the maximum level for free. Players can expect to travel to Starfleet Academy, Deep Space Nine, The First City of Qo’noS and many other locations from the series.

The Foundry is the final unique feature that allows players to create and build brand new missions to share with the Star Trek Online community. Players can great ground or space missions to their liking by making custom missions or entire series of episodes.

Star Trek Online is available to download and play for free today at the official Web site.

Cryptic have created a new story trailer for the game in celebration of it going free-to-play.

In the first week after launch of The Old Republic, a million Warzone matches have been played. Warzone is the PvP match system in SWTOR that has eight players from both factions battling it out in objective based missions.

The Empire faction currently leads with 53 percent of all Alderaan Civil War and Voidstar matches being won by them. Huttball, which allows for teams on the same faction to battle each other has, unsurprisingly, been played the most accounting for 39 percent of all Warzone matches.

Good news for fans of the same faction vs. same faction gameplay as BioWare will be adding in a new Warzone that enables this feature in the near future.

BioWare is also making additions and improvements to the PvP system in SWTOR that players have been clamoring for. The first and biggest change will be a level 50 bracket warzone for those players who have reached the max level can challenge one another without getting put into matches with players of lower level.

Ilum and it’s open world PvP has been a point of contention and exploit for BioWare and fans since the game’s launch. BioWare claims that the planet is not up to snuff yet, but they will be making changes throughout January that will encourage more PvP conflicts while balancing the fights and rewards that take place on the planet.

BioWare will be addressing some combat mechanics that will also most likely include removing the ‘/getdown’ exploit that was exposed this week.

They also have plans to include ranked warzone matches, PvP stat tracking, open world PvP loot drops, more warzone medals, more level brackets and the ability to choose which warzone players want to play in. All of these will be added in future updates.

While the Empire is winning the current battles, they have yet to win the war. It remains to to be seen whether the Republic can take back the lead with all the new improvements BioWare has planned for the game.

Whatever the outcome, BioWare has crafted an MMO with obvious staying power that will be interesting to watch as time progresses. If they keep up these continuous game improvement updates, there will be many more conflicts to decide the fate of the galaxy.

If my subtle (or not so subtle) role-playing game references in the past did not indicate my geeky past, let be more clear. I was pushed and prodded into both of Disney’s MMO games, Toontown and Pirates Online by my son; now I play more than he does.

I’m not in the target demographic; far from it. Both games have drawn adult players who, for whatever reason, enjoy these games more than well-known competitors like the biggest MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Forums for both Pirates and Toontown prove this with members identifying themselves as grownups.

To someone who grew up with the casual, hilarious violence of Bugs Bunny, the Three Stooges, Tom & Jerry, Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, these games represent a return to the past, especially Toontown, with its pie-throwing, safe-dropping antics.

Ars Technica has a lengthy discussion with the people behind Disney’s MMOs posted. Some of that discussion centers on child safety in the MMO world.

Disney’s approach on Toontown and Pirates utilizes preprogrammed chat phrases, Speedchat, for conversing with others. Pirates is a little looser on chatting, as players can type in chat along with using the existing phrases.

Mike Goslin, vice president of Disney Online’s VR Studio, said in the report Disney uses “a sophisticated hybrid approach” with people and technology policing the chat. If you have ever wondered why Pirates won’t allow numbers in chat, it’s to try and prevent someone from giving out a phone number.

The whole point of the games focuses on bringing in kids. They can drive substantial spending by their families; witness the theme parks Disney operates, or the Hannah Montana concerts that spurred astonishing ticket prices on reseller sites.

Don’t think of them as MMOs, but as persistent reinforcement of the Disney brand. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m 8,000 gold away from buying my pirate a war sloop. I’ve got piracy to commit on the open seas. Arrr!

Mainstream companies have taken notice of the growing interest in online gaming and have taken steps to market their respective brands in virtual worlds, particularly within Second Life.

Companies ranging from Coke to Scion can be found within the world created by Linden Lab, and many analysts see the current MMO market as merely an indicator of trends to come within the new few years. In fact, most expect an onslaught of MMO titles to be released over a relatively short period of time.

At this week’s Game Developer’s Conference, publishers and entrepreneurs got together to discuss the long and short term future of massively multiplayer online games, and the increasing interest that mainstream companies have taken in the platform:

MMOs are one of the most popular forms of gaming – and are seen as attractive to big media companies because often they have a subscription revenue model and continue to make money after the game is first released through virtual economies.

With eight million subscribers, World of Warcraft is becoming the gold standard against which all other MMOs are judged. It’s the most successful online gaming environment around, to be sure, but why exactly are mainstream businesses so interested in adopting this particular model?

IBM set up shop in Second Life several months back and has publicly acknowledged efforts to develop customizable virtual worlds geared at revolutionizing the way in which companies share information online. Is collaboration, however, the only upside to virtual environments?

Perhaps there are marketing possibilities as well, as MMOs could represent the next logical step of social networking. Imagine if MySpace was really “your space” in the three dimensional sense, a corner of a virtual environment that you could customize any way you see fit and show off to the rest of the population, while viewing a few choice advertisements in the process.

Then, in a sense, marketing would truly make the world go ‘round.