In his latest "State of the Game," STO producer Craig Zinkievich announced the first major content update and Cryptic's new "Transparency" initiative

It's been a little more than one month since Cryptic Studios launched the highly-anticipated Star Trek Online, and the developer is already prepping its first major content update. Dubbed "Season One: Common Ground," the upcoming patch will feature PvP updates, additional customization options, new missions, new skills and more. In his latest "State of the Game" announcement, STO executive producer Craig Zinkievich said that "Season One" is currently live on the new "Tribble" Public Test Shard (or "PTS"—Cryptic's name for its public test servers).

Zinkievich also mentioned "Infected," Star Trek Online's first-ever "Special Task Force" live event. To exemplify Cryptic's new philosophy of maintaining "transparency" between its developers and fan community, Zinkievich urged players to check out the new "Engineering Report," an ongoing series of development reports written by STO producer Daniel "dStahl" Stahl. In addition, Zinkievich said that players will be better apprised of upcoming content and patches by referring to the new "Upcoming Events Calendar." These recent developments suggest that Cryptic is delivering on its original promise of releasing new content as quickly as possible, as well as staying on top of community issues and concerns as the MMO takes its first few baby steps. But will it be enough to keep subscribers around after the infamous "second month" mark?

Like most MMOs, Star Trek Online includes the first 30 days of gameplay with its purchase. Also similar to other MMOs, most players register their initial subscription by placing a credit card on file for the second month of gameplay; except for those who quit within the first 30 days, the second month is usually when the majority of remaining subscribers decide whether or not to stick around and keep paying to play. Thus, the second month has proved to be a sort of "litmus test" for MMO fans; many players feel that if they aren’t satisfied with a game after 60 days, they never will be (or they opt to take a break and wait to see how the MMO matures throughout the next few months).

As we highlighted in our "Q&A: STO Community Issues and Concerns" last month, the developers at Cryptic had their hands full with a slew of post-launch concerns from players. One month later, most of those issues have either been fixed or noted by Cryptic as on the "to-do" list. The recent State of the Game from Zinkievich begins with an affirmation of Cryptic's dedication to in-game live events: "We pushed our very first Special Task Force live last week," Zinkievich said. "A terrific number of people have played STF: Infected, many have completed it, and some even took a moment to provide excellent feedback."

Special Task Force content is aimed at experienced players with group-play in mind; the "Infected" event is the first of what many fans are hoping will be a regular occurrence in the STO universe. Zinkievich said these live events require a bit of "coordination, talent, game experience and familiarity with the specific STF being attempted," according to the announcement.

Live events are always great in MMOs, but frequent content updates are even more enticing. Since the beta-testing days before STO's official launch, the developers at Cryptic consistently promised that they would release new game content—usually in the form of new "Episodes"—on a regular basis. The first major content update is called "Season One: Common Ground," Zinkievich said, offering a link to the official Season One: Common Ground Fact Sheet.

"Season One" will feature a variety of new content; PvP updates include "Wargames" (Federation players will be able to engage one another) and a new PvP map called "Shanty Town" (a Ground Assault map for Federation and Klingon factions). New Fleet Actions are on the way, including "The Big Dig" in Romulan space, "DS9 Under Siege" in which players will defend the station from a boarding party, and "Klingons Can Play, Too" which gives Klingon Captains the ability to access several Fleet Actions that were only available to Federation players.

Cryptic is also adding a handful of new items to the "C-Store" (the STO micro-transaction shop): several new Bridge Variants, Ship Variants, a Respec tool, an extra character slot, name changes and three new Federation playable species (Tellarite, Pakled or Rigelian). The ability to respec your Captain's skills is also being added as an in-game item that can be obtained via traditional PvE means. Three new Ship Skills will be introduced as well; "Starship Attack Vectors" improves ship accuracy and critical hit chance, "Combat Maneuvers" improves ship evasion and turn rate and "Starship Battle Strategy" boosts your ship's critical hit severity and damage resistance.