Star Trek Online three-year anniversary beams up guest appearance by Denise Crosby

Star Trek Online is about to boldly go into its third year since engaging back in early 2010, and from January 31 through February 14, players can take part in a celebratory episode called "Temporal Ambassador" where they'll cross paths with the late Enterprise Chief Tactical Officer Tasha Yar, played in-game as she was in The Next Generation series by Denise Crosby.

Stick around, and you can also expect to be partying with no less than the omnipotent space troll Q, who'll be hosting a special in-game event that will bag you a special Federation Ambassador Class or Klingon Kamarag Class ship.

Crosby's appearance in Star Trek Online will follow other appearances by veterans of the series, including Leonard Nimoy (Spock from the original series), Chase Masterson (Leeta from Deep Space 9), and Zachary Quinto (Spock from J.J. Abrams' Star Trek film) who have lent their characters' voice and appearance within Perfect World's space-voyaging MMO. Still no sign of Wesley, but considering the ensign earned his own death parody video , we're probably better off not letting him on our bridge.

Star Trek Online saw a fair bump in player count since going free-to-play in January of last year. Earlier this week, Executive Producer Dan Stahl announced that more than 2 million captains are continuing to ply the galaxy's warp-ways after the transition. But that's just a fraction of the 4 billion Tribbles stowing away on everyone's ships, as shown in the milestone infographic below.

Omri Petitte is a former PC Gamer associate editor and long-time freelance writer covering news and reviews. If you spot his name, it probably means you're reading about some kind of first-person shooter. Why yes, he would like to talk to you about Battlefield. Do you have a few days?