Perfect World: Star Trek Online going F2P, Torchlight MMO aiming for late 2012

Perfect World, the company who recently acquired Cryptic, has confirmed the studio intends to turn Star Trek Online into a F2P game by the end of this year.

PW CEO Kelvin Lau said in the company's recent financial call for Q2 that the F2P conversion of the MMO, which launched last year, had a big potential for US and Chinese markets.

"When Perfect World acquired Cryptic, one of the contribution from Perfect World to Cryptic is we can share our free-to-play experience with Cryptic. So I want to emphasize is that never we’ve done a free-to-play model game, so we’re going to launch this game in US and also in China, so we expect to run these type if free-to-play model game," noted Lau on the studio's F2P potential.

"We have a bigger potential in US and also in China. And also Star Trek Online, after the acquisition, in fact Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year as well. So I think free-to-play model we have a bigger potential in US market and also in China market."

Lau also said on the call that it currently has scheduled the Torchlight MMO from Runic Games, which Perfect World owns a majority share of, for either a late 2012/early 2013 release. The same timeline was also given for Crytpic's Neverwinter, with both games planning to release in the US first before hitting the Chinese market.