Cryptic has kicked off a new "Path to Free-to-Play" dev blog series that will feature sneak peeks at some of the features coming to Star Trek Online this year. The inaugural issue is penned by interim Executive Producer Stephen D’Angelo, who is filling the position while the team looks for a replacement for Dan Stahl.

In the first F2P dev blog, D’Angelo announced that the Tribble test shard is re-opening today, September 29, as a way to give current subscribers early access to changes that are coming in the free-to-play relaunch. In addition, Cryptic has opened a new public test shard named RedShirt.