APB to be no more

[The Rogue Wolf]

Well, a sad day for that handful of us who continued to enjoy Realtime Worlds' troubled [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/102845-Realtime-Worlds-Troubles-Confirmed-Faces-Liquidation] MMO shooter APB [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99485-PAX-East-2010-Hands-On-APB-All-Points-Bulletin]. I logged onto the site this morning to find the following message [http://na.apb.com/en/news/announcements/2010/09/16/end-of-an-era]:

APB has been a fantastic journey, but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone's best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close. It's been a pleasure working on APB and with all its players. Together we were building an absolutely amazing game, and for that, we thank you. You guys are awesome!

From all of the Realtime World staff we thank you for your continued support.

The servers are still up, so join the party and say goodbye!

I for one am going to miss the awesome customization (seriously, it's spoiled me for any other game's attempt now) and the fun times to be had when you got just the right group, piled into your tricked-out car and went on a cross-city running shootout. I won't regret the money I spent on APB, only the wasted potential the game had.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

Wait what?

Hasn't it been out like 2 months?

Man that sucks... It's a shame it didn't kick off. I loved the idea of it.

 

[ChocoFace]

Wasted potential indeed.

 

[Tartarga]

Wait, it was already out? Well that sucks, talk about a missed oportunity.

 

[King_Julian]

i liked the idea of it but i didn't know it had come out yet ha, probably better off though cos i would have bought it.

 

[robinkom]

As someone that played it for about a month and a half, I knew this was coming, aside from the fact that RTW is up for sale.

Biggest downfalls in-game:
1. Running on the Unreal Engine allowed for easy hacking since all calculations are done client-side.
2. Punkbuster DID NOT DO ANYTHING to prevent it because it is ALSO client-side and can be turned OFF.

*death-stares at RTW Staff* "Is anybody... fucking HOME!?"

I will miss the customization as well but that is all outweighed by the fact that I had to fight people with Aim-Bots and Wall Hacks... and there was no PvE combat to placate me from all that bullshit.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

There are two classic blunders kids.

The first is a land war in asia.

The second is buying into and preordering or getting a lifetime subscription to an action-shooter-MMO. It only ends with you losing a hundred dollars.

 

[John Horn]

"APB has been a fantastic journey"

No.

"but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end."

Surprise surprise. Bad game design, poor execution.

"Together we were building an absolutely amazing game, and for that, we thank you. You guys are awesome!"

Again, no no no.

I find gleefully ignorant Propaganda exclamations to be sickening and tiresome. Would it be so horrible to admit failure? The world could improve so much if everyone could just admit their own failures more often, instead of sugar coating it in the machinations of the Public Relations industry. We could all learn from each other's mistakes to a greater degree.

 

[robinkom]

I find gleefully ignorant Propaganda exclamations to be sickening and tiresome. Would it be so horrible to admit failure? The world could improve so much if everyone could just admit their own failures more often, instead of sugar coating it in the machinations of the Public Relations industry. We could all learn from each other's mistakes to a greater degree.

You could not be more correct. They dropped the ball, they knew it, and they're all going to hype themselves up over being "down but not out" so they can move on to other development houses and ruin their games as well.

 

[FrostyCoolSlug]

So, I was going to buy this game, and though "Lets wait this out and see if it's still going in 6-8 months", and I'm assuming a *LOT* of other people were like that.

The difficulty with online subscription based MMOs is that one company holds the cards, which makes buyers cautious especially when dealing with a company that doesn't have massive presence in the gaming community, and I'm sure a lot of people were in the same boat as me in the "wait and see" line of thinking which ultimately turned into sales they never got.

If a company wants to make an MMO, they have to prove, using more than 5 or 6 good titles receiving fantastic support, that they are *CAPABLE* of undertaking such a task. There has to be a pre-established level of trust between the developers and the game players prior to them expecting us to fork over money for their game and subscription.

And honestly, I think it's as simple as that.

 

[Sjakie]

I find gleefully ignorant Propaganda exclamations to be sickening and tiresome. Would it be so horrible to admit failure? The world could improve so much if everyone could just admit their own failures more often, instead of sugar coating it in the machinations of the Public Relations industry. We could all learn from each other's mistakes to a greater degree.

You could not be more correct. They dropped the ball, they knew it, and they're all going to hype themselves up over being "down but not out" so they can move on to other development houses and ruin their games as well.

All very true, but i doubt some former employee will talk about how they fucked up APB at their next job interview.
And if everybody just admitted their faults and mistakes instead of this PR-bullshit, we would know we live in a world of "losers" (not really, but most people would view it as such) People just dont have a stomach for the truth.

 

[Masterpsyker]

I would think that this game would have succeeded had the developers considered one major point:

Not everyone can be famous.

This is the major disconnect in most MMO style games but is especially present in the RPG aspect. What happens to your world when every player character in that world is "The Savior" or "The Bad Guy?" In my mind the consequence of this fact is that the decisions you make as a character have little to no effect on the game world because the game world for a concept like this is generally static.

Look at games like Planetside, Guild Wars, and (begrudgingly) Global Agenda. These games fall under the critera of being at the same time an MMO + "Genre X." Planetside is one of the best realizations of an MMOFPS ever attempted, Guild Wars does a fantastic job of being an MMO + RPG (as you cannot progress through the world UNLESS you change it somewhat), and Global Agenda may very well be the first "real" MMO Strategy game depending on how you interpret it.

Then look at All Points Bulletin. What is the objective of this game, in other words, what is the core concept which drives the game? To be a gangster, or more accurately, to cause terror and chaos in a city.

Terror and chaos, theft, murder... basically everything that being a gangster entails (even if you aren't a vicious street criminal) REQUIRES a DYNAMIC WORLD. It requires a world where people STAY DEAD, where resources are LIMITED AND PRECIOUS, and most importantly a world where the more you stand out, the more you are opposed.

APB did not come to a "premature end." It ended exactly where it was supposed to for one reason and one reason alone: The population (not gamers, TY Extra Credits) to which it was targeted did not like the game. Perhaps the mechanics were bad, maybe it was too complex / simple, or maybe the game was too grind-tastic for its genre (gangster != grind). Whichever way you choose to look at and analyze the downfall of APB you can not call the end of this game "premature."

Wow, I finished the whole post without a single crack at racism.

Too bad they targeted...

 

[Zombie Shakespeare]

Is it bad that this makes me kind of happy?

I was in the beta and only stopped playing near the end of it. I thought it was awful. Only the customization was salvageable. The rest of it was a lesson in frustration.

 

[Ickorus]

I can't say I didn't see it coming but it is indeed a loss, the game had great potential but all the balance issues in the game really kept it back and ultimately led to it's demise.

I know I quit because I was sick of being slaughtered by enforcers all the time with LTL guns.

 

[Judgement101]

They took a risk and it didn't pay off. They shall be missed for their valient attempt at an innovative MMO.

 

[TerranReaper]

To be honest, I wasn't too surprised by this considering how much people said it was terrible at release (Well people I know anyways) and how the optimization wasn't all that great. I wasn't really swayed by its customization and felt that the gameplay didn't seem all that special.

 

[jhuseby420]

Making the game a first person shooter would have been ideal. Also, actually cracking down on cheaters would have helped the popularity of the game. There were far too many people abusing the game where they would take missions, and be afk the whole time.

These are three things that should have been addressed early on. And lastly, the whole character upgrade thing was retarded. Have different weapons, sure, but not char upgrades. And then you made it so that the enforcers didn't have to defend against tasers, but the crims did. So the crims had to use a char upgrade slot to defend against it, when the enforcers didn't.

Having in game admins would have went a long way to combat a lot of these issues, and alert the developers to the problems in game. RTW didn't do this, and the game was destined to fail. BTW, I had personally got over 10 people to purchase the game, and we all put up with the problems until the 8-26 release. Up until that point, the other stuff was manageable to deal with, but after that it just became even more ridiculous. Good luck in the future, and hopefully you learn from your mistakes.