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

Finally, Season One features new customization options and a new Klingon ship. New customization includes "Off-Duty Uniforms," new character stances and hairstyles. "The Captain's Log" is a Web-based app that players can use to access information about their characters and ships, as well as their friends' data. The new Klingon ship is the "K’Tanco Battle Cruiser," available to Klingon Lieutenant Commanders.

In the Season One Fact Sheet, Cryptic anticipates the new content will hit live servers in mid-March; the complete release notes are available in the official forums at this link (check out the notes for complete patch details, including bug fixes and other game tweaks). Season One is currently being tested on the new "Tribble" PTS, as mentioned earlier. In the State of the Game announcement, Zinkievich lists the PTS as an example of Cryptic's recently-launched "Transparency" initiative:

"It's such a relief to have Tribble operational; we can now publish in-game changes and new features to a secure testing environment to get hands-on player feedback before releasing said changes and features to Holodeck. The "straight to live" method might be hilarious fun for games developers who enjoy being completely overwhelmed by uncontrollable terror, but publishing to Tribble first is definitely the right practice."

The new "Transparency" initiative was created in response to player feedback; many STO fans—especially those who purchased "extended" or "lifetime" subscriptions—felt that Cryptic was leaving them in-the-dark regarding the MMO's continued development. That's one of the reasons why Cryptic launched a new survey series; the results of the first round—in which 40,000 players were polled, according to Zinkievich—were recently published on the official site at the "Survey One Results" page.

The player survey is just one of the ways in which Cryptic plans to "be as transparent as possible," according to Zinkievich. The developers will begin making frequent and regular appearances in the forums, keeping the community up-to-date about everything going on behind-the-scenes. Zinkievich announced the new "Upcoming Events Calendar" that players can visit to learn more about development timelines and release schedules. Currently, the calendar lists two events launching in March; the "Season One" content patch and a new Special Task Force event called "The Cure" are both scheduled for release on March 18. The Upcoming Events Calendar also features an advance-preview of future releases in its "Launch Windows" section; several game enhancements and STFs are slated for release in April and May.

According to Zinkievich, the "Transparency" initiative will allow players to learn about developments as soon as Cryptic finishes planning them, instead of "waiting until everything is done, finalized, blasted into sacred stone and prepped for PR and marketing." On the other hand, Zinkievich said that the new policy might lead to occasional inaccuracies when release dates need to be changed or if game content is revised. But at the end of the day, Cryptic believes the reward outweighs the risks.

"We believe our customers and co-developers of Star Trek Online—you beautiful people—deserve to know what's in store for the universe," Zinkievich said. "We believe it's more important to let you know what we're striving to accomplish, even if we stumble, than it is to package releases in fancy boxes for easy, last-minute consumption."