My first look at the poster had me almost do a spit take when at the bottom I thought I saw ‘Starfleet Dental’.  Clearly I am suffering from eyestrain, ’cause that’s not what it says.  Although if you guys were to do a print for charity, I’d pitch in $20+shipping to put this up in my new office.  This would go a long way to confirming my geek cred with the team.

So what the heck is Cryptic doing now?

We all know that Delta Rising’s rocky release had a negative affect on the player base.  The content was excellent, but a perfect storm of buggy UI’s, Dilithium redaction, and XP shenanigans topped off by a difficulty increase made STO something to avoid rather than play.  The player-base shrank to it’s lowest I have seen over the past three years.  It’s my ridiculous assumption backed up by observation by someone who likes measurable metrics, and a sad obsession with writing things down.

Players online in channels.  Players in friend lists.  Players in fleets.  Players in queues.

You know what you’ve experienced.  Metrics be damned.  Star Trek Online was hurting for active players.

Fast forward 90 days, a new EP, a new openness and a string of good fixes and small releases leading up to what will likely be the easiest year to market a Star Trek MMO.

Cynicism aside, this new recruitment drive could not have come at a better time, and by looking at the details I see this as a ‘Win-Win Scenario’.  Lets look at it from a new players perspective:

• A free account character slot.
• A limited time recruiting offer, with unique (∆) monikers
• 50+ hours of updated leveling story content, plus hundreds of hours of fan-produced stories in the foundry.
• Delta Recruits will have an inherent bonus trait during the Delta Recruit Event of generating Dilithium Ore upon defeating enemies, a bonus which extends to your entire group.
• A unique account wide Starship Mastery Trait – Temporal Insight. This trait will proc a Damage Immunity when you use any Hull Heal on your starship.  This alone is worth running the mission with a new character.
• Additional rewards are gained by leveling up, playing through story content up through the Breen story arc, and finding special Delta Recruit objectives on certain mission maps.
• Finally, during the first six weeks of the seven-week Delta Recruit event, there will be server wide goals that only Delta Recruits can contribute to, but by accomplishing these goals, they unlock bonuses for the entire server for the whole of the next week of the event! For example, in the first week of the event, every Episode First Run that Delta Recruits complete will count towards the goal. How many First Runs they complete will determine the bonus of the week-long event running in Week 2. You will have either a 1.5x XP bonus, a 2x XP bonus, or possibly even a 2.5x XP bonus for the entire week!

So – if I’m reading this right – not only will you get account wide bonuses, increased dil and a new trait, we’ll also be contributing to a community-wide XP bonus?

Holy Shit.  I might take a few days off work for this one.

[sarcasm]
Next week it will be a free T6 Jupiter II Dreadnaught
with a 6/4 weapons loadout.
[\sarcasm]

Version 1:  Clearly to much time on my hands.