The last couple of months I’ve been giving Star Trek Online a lot more of my gaming attention and it is paying off, so to speak. It’s a challenge to play more than one MMO regularly. I played Star Trek Online from the very beginning pretty much, but at that time the game had a subscription and I was playing one other subscription game at the time, Final Fantasy XI.
I didn’t want to be paying two subs per month, so after about a year of Star Trek Online, following some good job news and better pay, I treated myself to a lifetime subscription which cost about $240 at the, April 2011. About a year later, the game went free to play (F2P) and work and life demanded more of my attention, so I stopped playing regularly for a bit.
During that hiatus, the game underwent a number of changes as its expression of the F2P business model evolved. By the time I got back to the game, I was greeted by lock boxes and starships for sale. I was also greeted by an accrued balance of 20,000 Zen or so. I had not realized that I was getting a Zen allowance as a Gold lifetime member. This was nice, but not really anything I was going to use, at first.
Long story short, I got caught up in the Discovery Lock Box craze and decided to try my luck. I burned through a lot of Zen buying lock boxes and keys. After opening 100 boxes and failing to get the ship I wanted, I decided that was enough. And I felt a bit foolish having spent so much Zen. But then I realized that I had essentially gotten back the money I had spent on the lifetime sub in the first place. So not a bad outcome at all. And I’m still having fun playing the game.
