Back when I played before, I actually loved the ground PvP.  In fact, it was my favorite part of the game.  But, I know I am a rare bird who thinks that. 

how much is the lifetime subscription??

I might grab another month subscription just to see what has been updated.

I'd wait until the mission maker actually releases, ID. Right now it's still in testing. They did add a bunch of iconic refits, like the "Future" Enterprise from when Picard was jumping back and forth in time, the one that had a third nacelle and it shoots a big beam, also a Defiant refit so you can actually use it a viable high-tier ship. They've also added Fluidic Space in one of their episode arcs which looks pretty good, and a few equipment sets that change the appearance of your ship (one is craftable, the other is from the Borg special task force, which gives your ship a bunch of borg-like attachments). They also redid the sector map. So there've been good changes, but there's still a lack of content, which the mission maker should address.

I'm doing the featured episodes right now, and they are some major fun quest.  Getting a shuttle craft,(or Delta Flyer, or Roudabout if you got one) mission and flying inside a romulan base was damn fun. 

For me STO fills the craving that I have since there is no weekly TV series anymore.

I am a lifer since the start, I've probably racked up over 400 hours of play over my 3 toons, and I'd say 50 hours of that is PvP.

I too am awaiting the ground combat improvements. 

Some will undoubtedly be craptastic, but AFAIK they have a similar thing for City of Heroes and it's worked well. In any MMO the amount of content is limited. STO suffers especially because unlike traditional MMOs there aren't any "raids" where it takes months of repeated running to get your awesome gear set. There's just no way they can put out enough content by themselves, even though they've added a lot since launch. It's a win-win for everyone to release a mission maker. Lots of people love doing that kind of thing, and the rest get something fresh to play through more steadily.

Well, there is a "demo", but it won't show you much in terms of content. You get the tutorial and the first mission, so you can see how it plays but it's incredibly limited. It's odd that they don't have a free 7-day or something trial, it's pretty common for the older MMOs to start offering those.

http://www.startrekonline.com/demo