draclvr wrote:I've never played a MMO game online, but I love Star Trek. Is it a subscription type game? How does it work?
You can play for free. There are things, like costumes and ships, that you pay real money for, but they aren't necessary to enjoy the game. You can make characters for the Federation, the Klingons, and Romulans. Basically, each character has their specialty: Tactical, Engineering, or Sciences. The specialties effect your skills and what you can train your staff to do. There are also 3 kinds of starship: Escorts, which are tactical ships, think
Defiant-class, Science, which do support/ healing functions and can confuse enemies and drain their systems.
Intrepid-class, like
Voyager, would be an upper-tier Science ship. And of course, Cruisers, the all-around.

Cruisers suit Engineers, many iconic ships are available:
Galaxy,
Excelsior,
Constituion Refit,
Ambassador, etc.
You start on a
Miranda-class.The game has a great tutorial, and there are always help popups for new things. There are storylines, with missions and Episodes. As the game starts, the Federation is at war with the Klingon Empire, but something is going on behind the scenes.... There are also daily missions as you rank up, Nimbus 3 always needs help against pirates, the breakaway Romulan Republic needs assistance, things like that. The latest expansion, from last October, is Delta Rising. Under command of Admiral Tuvok, we've gone back to Delta Quadrant.
Also, there are queues for missions against the Borg, or whomever, and a Player-vs-Player Arena, which i haven't yet done.
The game gets criticized as too combat-heavy, but remember, the Federation has been attacked. More variety opens up as you rank up, Diplomacy, pure science, stuffs like that. The game really rewards old Trekkies like me.

Look at this:
this trailer is 3 years old now, from when the game went Free-to-play.

Did you see the new
Enterprise? NCC-1701-F. There will always be an
Enterprise.