Well Jadon gave me the ok, some of you may have seen these in the past but honestly I doubt it... this was my first look at PEs version of STO

Without derailing the topic at hand to much I will point out you can clearly see an XP bar at the top of the screen on both pictures from PE. With that said if Cryptic is using a lot of source material from the PE development its likely we're going to see levels in the game. Now I will point out that games like EQ1-2 have done a system where you have levels (which effect skill caps, HPs, MP/Energy) and skills which effect your ability to do things in the game, so hopefuly Cryptic does a nice mix of systems if they chose to go with the level system (which seems likely as CoX is a level based game).