Ok so, I've recently joined STO. Been playing about 2 weeks, really enjoy the game and have had some really fun experiences of PvE ques, etc. Quests are fun, story driven missions that make you feel like your in your own series.
Now, you guys went free to play for a reason. It was a marketing idea, and that's great. A lot of other MMO's have joined you in that decision. But.. in the two-three weeks i've been playing, I've been experiencing severe disconnects and down time due to server issues and the like.
I've tried to express my self in the forums on your news posts, about how it will affect your business. Apparently, nobody likes free to play people. Even though, it's the new guys that are bringing in custom and new business for a game that according to some people, was very quiet before.
I speak for nobody but myself, but I can take a solid guess that your server instability will annoy more than just me. Including those that subscribe. I want to play STO, I've already spent atleast 1-2 months worth of a sub in the C-Store. But if it continues the way it is, I will be forced to leave. Maybe it doesn't matter - but concider if others are feeling the same. Which I'm guessing they are. I'm not going to suggest you GET A NEW SERVER ZOMG. But there must be things you can do to improve game play for those that want to play it.
To all you Veterans/Gold subbers/ Life subscribers. Some of you are cursing and swearing at the new F2P people, i've seen some pretty aggressive posts. Actually stop and think that their subs and C-Store spends are actually keeping your game busy and more enjoyable than before. Stop blaming them for everything that goes wrong, and aim it at the Game Designers. They planed to go free to play, so what did they expect? Nobody to come? It's rectifiable though, so hopefully they read this and understand the frustrating place they are forcing the "new guys".
I've met some great people and am really enjoying this game. I don't want to have to leave because I can't spend more than 8 hours playing before the only server there is, goes down. I've been trying to level for days. Every time I do, it goes down. Disconnects, planned or unplanned.
Make of this what you will. I just needed to express myself. I'm neither *****ing or moaning, but trying to explain how I feel. Maybe I speak for others, maybe not.

-Grim.
Comments
The servers have been a hassle but much of that stems from the guesswork Cryptic was required to do when they went FTP. See, with a Subscription launch the developers have a rough idea of how many people will be playing the game because they have a rough idea of how many boxes have been sold/pre-sold. With FTP Cryptic has no way of knowing if 100k people would join or 1 million so they have no real idea of existing server capacity would be enough or not.
For the most part it has been enough, though that has required several restarts and the like. Cryptic is well aware of the server issues, though, and there are posts by Devs around here where they've talked about what they're planning on doing to increase capacity. Still, FTP is less then a month old and it's going to take some time to get things accurately adjusted and increased.
Let me be clear: I've met some f2p players who are good, and they're contributory to the game in both community and in player quality. Those f2p players, I think, are well-tolerated by the 'established' community. Again, it's the complete dunces who tick everyone off.