Star Trek Online back on Course

One hour ago Cryptic Studios announced the relaunch of the Star Trek online game. The game was previously being produced by Perpetual Entertainment. However when perpetual went out of business, the future of Star Trek: Online was unclear. For a while the official website was down, only to be replaced for months with a simple page saying nothing but "Coming Soon"

Rumors abounded that Cryptic Studios had picked up the rights to the game, but there was no confirmation of this.

Over a month ago a countdown timer appeared on the Cryptic Studios website that contained some artwork that was previously known to have come from Star Trek Online's development.

That countdown reached it's timeout at Midnight, and those of us who had the page up when the countdown reached 0 got a popup message saying "Launch Time", refreshing the page showed a Star Trek: Online logo where the countdown timer previously was, and clicking this logo showed a newly re-designed and re-launched Star Trek: Online Website.

On the new website the following press release could be found:

CRYPTIC STUDIOS LICENSES RIGHTS TO PRODUCE STAR TREK ONLINE

Trek Fans Worldwide Are Invited to MMO Gamplay Reveal at Annual Star Trek Convention August 10, 2008 or Via Live Webcast at http://www.startrekonline.com/

Los Gatos, Calif. – Cryptic Studios™, a leading developer and publisher of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), announced today that it has secured the global rights to develop and publish Star Trek® Online, a massively multiplayer online game based on the legendary Star Trek franchise, from CBS Consumer Products.

Cryptic will unveil the first Star Trek Online gameplay footage as well as details about this highly anticipated MMO at the annual Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas on Sunday, August 10, 2008. Trek fans from around the globe can also view the event live via webcast at http://www.startrekonline.com/.

Interested participants can register today for the Star Trek Online webcast and to sign up for the STO community by visiting http://www.startrekonline.com/.

We look forward to seeing this new game footage on August 10th (which happens to be this Star Trek Fan's birthday, happy birthday to me!