If we think back 2 years ago, the free-to-play concept and business model were still baffling to most North Americans, and a heard-of-it-but-never-played-one concept to a lot of Europeans. I say this, as we all know the business model had it’s birth, and arguably the most amount of success in Asia. As the concept met resistance, there were obviously more than a few gamers willing to give it a go, and thus was born the acceptance.

We all knew that it was going to take a big leap of faith from a major studio to put the seal of approval on the whole shebang. And while it might not have been EA to come out and introduce free-to-play to North America, but a number of smaller firms took note, adopted the model, and started to watch a decent ROI roll in. Fast forward 18 months or so later, and suddenly, we’ve found our free-to-play flagship in Turbine. When Turbine decided to cut the flailing Dungeons and Dragons Online free from the subscription model, they had two choices, shut it all down, or…reinvent the game in a free-to-play/premium subscription hybrid model. We all know how that story went. Dungeons and Dragons Online has seen a massive resurgence, and lining the Turbine coffers nicely. So well, that the company decided to mimic the same model with their flagship property: Lord of the Rings Online (which goes f2p this coming fall).

As the expression goes, it only takes a crack in the dam to open the floodgates, and in this case, Turbine might very well be that crack. As noticed by the good folks at Massively, it looks like Cryptic Games might be ready to follow suit with Star Trek Online. The suggestion was thrown into the ring by Star Trek Online’s Executive Producer Daniel Stahl in an Ask Cryptic forum thread:

I could easily see STO going into a hybrid model similar to what Lotro is doing. In that model, subscriptions stay as is – but you allow people to play for free but heavily limit what they can do – which in essence creates a robust way to demo the game and then if you want to keep playing, you either pay for every little thing you are interested in, or you subscribe and don’t have to worry about it.

Turbine seems to have some interesting plans and looking at how DDO has turned around, its worth taking note.

And again, Stahl is not committing to anything here, but it’s quite obvious that if Cryptic is closely watching what trailblazer Turbine is doing, so is just about every other major (and not so major) gaming studio. While I’m not quite ready to say that subscription only is dead (I’m looking at you Blizzard), it’s clear that the business model has seen better days, and is now looking a bit like the aging hipster at the cool kids party.