APB could be turned around in 9 months

Thanks for the above post Bertie, getting sick to death of seeing people questioning it all the time when these things happen.

Just watched that video for the first time, and Christ, some of that team did an amazing job. It's so strange that the stuff that was wrong, shooting, driving, gameplay rules, has been done in hundreds of online games, and yet RTW couldn't reproduce it.

Love how you got in there before a smartarse like me could Rob, very pro-active!

I actually enjoyed playing this game with friends, because it was something so different. I really do hope it is picked up somewhere down the line.

Can we just let this game die in peace. It was unfortunate that the project failed and APB went out-of-business but all devs need to use this situation as a "teachable moment" of what not to do when developing a game and how not to run a company.

There are plenty of great devs in the UK who continue to make quality games that we should look to for moving the game industry forward. We need to stop looking over our shoulder at the past and face forward to a better future.

I think ALL MMO's would benefit, survive AND profit, if they did the following things:-

Allow the game to be played offline, single player, with the ability to allow the player to see all content via a single player experience.
All XP , loot & character development should be kept and allowed to be transferred freely between online and offline modes.

With this ability the game would reach a wider market, and the player would get a true sense of ownership of their character, unlike most MMO's where, in reality, no matter how much time you put into a character, it is never truly yours, you are just renting it.

That fact, if you are a keen MMO player, and think about it for too long can make the MMO experience seem rather shallow, and really exposes the MMO market for what it is.....a rental program designed to continously take your cash.

At least the character I made in Oblivion, or Fallout, or Might & Magic or Gothic is "mine".

I own the game. I own the game save. I own the character progress. No one can take it from me.

Phantasy Star Online got this spot on , the character you made offline could also be used online, and both gameplay experiences added to the game.

Whilst the online servers are live, a stringent security or anti hack process can be used,( see Battlenet for good example of this ) once the game goes off line and can then only be played single player( once the publisher has stopped profiting from online revenues), the security or anti hack software will be dropped. If the player wants to cheat themselves then, let them.

But whilst the game is "alive" and has an online presence, and therefore makes the games make money, the security remains in place.

You always have the option whilst in single player to buy a months game time, and go online.

A ( relatively) simple routine written into the game code could drop mob toughness when in Single player mode and remove the highest level of loot from dropping ( i.e. only tier 9 loot will ever drop, with tier 10 loot only being available online, until the next tier is released, and it all moves up a level). This way there is incentive to go online, remembering the other incentive is to hang out with friends and other players as per normal anyway.

But to really increase the market for other MMO's and let the player own and feel like they own all assets in the game, just follow the above plan. I truly think the market for MMO's would increase.

When an MMO goes free to play it is for a reason, and that reason is simple, it cannot thrive with its current subscriber numbers. So it seeks to gain more. Free to play can often be thought of as a death knell to many an MMO, but in some cases it has been the saviour, and it has been the arrogance of the publisher and/or game writers, reluctant to let their money generator go FTP that has seen some promising MMO's die out. Give an MMO a chance to live beyond it's online persona as a single player game, but give that player the chance to go online when they want, and benefit from their single player time, and you will have a winning formula

There always the exception to the rule, in the MMO market the exception is WOW. This game thrives whilst all others strive for greater success or flounder on the shores of another MMO's popularity.

In the end, no matter the promises that the next MMO being released gives you, remember, you are only renting this game. You are paying for your right to be in the gameworld and you will never own ANY of it.

I truly think in so many cases, that is a turn off for a great deal of people out there, and this situation has , and will continue, to sink many a promising MMO.

( ok, I think I made sense during that little rant, I'm gonna go post that on the AOC forum and STO forum now )

Its dead, trying to bring it back will never work simply because it now has a reputation for being crap and no matter how much effort they put into fixing it it will always carry this stigma.

Look at conan i played that at release and it was a mess, half the promised features were not implamented and it played quite poorly, i played for the first month because i had already payed for it then quit never to return and i was far from the only one who did this, yeah its still going but its never recovered or hit the million player mark it was claiming it would get.

War was another MMO that was supposed to topple wow, it was a poor clone with severe lag and conection problems from day one, there was no balance as everyone rolled disorder because chaos chosen owned every other class, then we had the limited number of people who could be on the servers creating 3 hour que's after people had already rolled there toons.

If you screw up the launch you effectivey kill your own MMO thats been shown time and again, APB is done and it'll never get the 100-300,000 subscribers it needs to function, it'll certainly never make its 100 million back.

FortysixterUK, are you mad? You are proposing an MMO where people can cheat at will on the singleplayer side and then transfer their character to the online server? That game won't last a day.

Codemasters can't even do stuff for LOTRO on time.

Their 9 months is probably 9 years.

I know it looks like the whole dev team was working on customisation whilst the gameplay languished, but that really didn't happen.

What actually happened was that the customisation suite was well defined in terms of design, and RTW had talented staff, so it came out well. The gameplay, meanwhile, never was, so ended being endlessly iterated on. It wasn't a question of neglecting gameplay whilst the staff honed fluff features like customisation - features don't get worked on serially.

The sad thing is - this is the first time I've seen the amazing customisation video.