Cryptic Studios has informed players that, from this weekend, more players should be able to simultaneously access the recently released MMO, Star Trek Online.

The STO team posted a notice on the official site that the server capacity will be expanded, following a high turn-out of players.

“Throughout Head Start we noticed the overwhelming response to the game and we are working on changes to further increase the number of people who can play Star Trek Online at any given time. Our current plan is to have these changes in place sometime this coming weekend.”

This course of action, increasing the server capacity instead of putting up more servers, could well be the new standard for MMOs, as seen by NCsoft's treatment of Aion last year. It saves the inconvenience and embarrassment later when the number of players has stabilised after the initial rush.

It's a lesson learnt by companies including Mythic and Funcom, who had to merge and close down dozens of game servers after the subscription numbers for Warhammer Online and Age of Conan didn't meet their expectations. It's a risky tactic as players are often annoyed at server queue times or lag, but it saves the company the expense of surplus servers.