New APB: customising will cost you

By Robert Purchese Published 30 November, 2010

MMO's key feature to be monetised.

Character and object customisation was a cornerstone of what APB offered, and new owner GamersFirst realises that - that's why you'll pay for it when the game reappears.

Specifically, if you want to save or share your customisations then you'll need to shell out.

"Instead of limiting what you can customise as a free player, you will be allowed to customise almost anything, but you will not be able to store (and share) complex customisations above a certain level unless you are a Premium player AT THE TIME OF CUSTOMISATION," wrote GamersFirst boss Bjorn Book-Larsson on his blog.

"This has several benefits: first it would limit the amount of content pushed to everyone else in the game from free players (which would reduce the amount of loading required); it also lets you be Premium for just one month, create a lot of customisations that month, and then use those items later on (even if your Premium membership has lapsed)."

He added: "We presume that some incredibly talented artists will squeeze the living daylights out of the Basic complexity cap no matter what we set this at. In other words, whatever we set this cap at, we expect people to make some fantastic designs using every possible trick in the book, and then those who are really focused on their characters will clearly be very compelled to get Premium status."

GamersFirst (offspring of K2 Networks) was announced as the new owner of APB earlier this month. The tragic MMO will return to life in the first-half of 2011 as a free-to-play game, having undergone critical maintenance to change the business model and address some glaring bugs.

The majority of work, however, will be done once the game is up and running. Bjorn Book-Larsson told Eurogamer that it could take up to five years for APB to reach its full potential.

Did you play APB, Eurogamer reader? Are you prepared to give it a second chance?

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • coolbritannia #1 1 year ago

    ouch.

  • beastmaster #2 1 year ago

    Well, they better make sure they fix the game first. But somehow, I've got a feeling this is a very bad idea and will probably fail again.

  • Lord_Gremlin #3 1 year ago

    Considering that it'll be free to play... Sounds alright.

  • jonbwfc #4 1 year ago

    So.. they're going to take the only bit of the 'old' game that people liked and charge you for that, while not fixing any of the things about the game that people didn't like. Eerrr... yeah, good luck with that.

  • ChthonicEcho #5 1 year ago

    This certainly sounds like something that must warrant a negative reaction, but considering it will supposedly be free-to-play, appearance does not affect gameplay, and you can tinker with customisation for as long as you like (as you only have to pay for the end result), that's not that bad.

    Bad for those who like to change their appearance on a regular basis, though. But such vain cunts probably have money to spare, at any rate.

  • cowell #6 1 year ago

    Not forgetting ofcourse that you were paying for it before anyway through subscription.

    God forbid that a company might actually want to make this game viable as a business proposition....

  • WMain00 #7 1 year ago

    Awesome idea. That should effectively make sure APB is dead in the water on arrival. Nice work!

  • leeram #8 1 year ago

    I have probbaly 30 hours left of what I paid for before they closed it down Unless they give the paying customers that were abandoned something, I'll never go near it again, free or not free.

  • FogHeart #9 1 year ago

    This is no worse than the games you've already bought that charge another fortune for DLC costumes that won't even be uniquely yours.

  • Quak #10 1 year ago

    It's so lame when people use "in other words" and then say exactly the same thing. In other words, when people say exactly the same thing "in other words", it's so lame.

  • TheNinkyNonk #11 1 year ago

    I do hope they turn this product around but the situation doesn't feel too promising

  • Stratix #12 1 year ago

    New players are unlikely to be able to fill the complexity bar anyway, so this shouldn't be a problem. I didn't until I learned how to use the editors. But I don't know why they bothered to announce it.

    Nice to know they have a premium option, though I may be wary of it until I know the game wont crash and burn in the first 3 months again.

  • pbz #13 1 year ago

    I can smell the whif of failure on the breeze... best of luck to em though!

  • huckan #14 1 year ago

    ... and that's a lesson on how to bury a dead game.

    It's a shame they didn't prioritise the real issues in the game.

  • lordofthedunce #15 1 year ago

    ProfitFirst

  • kangarootoo #16 1 year ago

    @jonbwfc

    "while not fixing any of the things about the game that people didn't like"

    Why do you say that?



    @Quak

    I prefer that version of "in other words" to the version where people say "in other words" and then come out with a completely unrelated stream of strawman nonsense. That version grinds my gears :)

  • Jorendo #17 1 year ago

    I bought APB back than, i wonder if i still have to pay for customization. That would be very unfair towards those who bought the game, invested money in it and saw it die. Sure some of us got a free game in return from EA (but keep in mind these where games worth 10 max 20 euro on the EA store while we pay 45 - 50 euro for APB).

    And weak that the biggest strong point of the game will be a pay to use feature, cause i'm damn sure the max free level will be set on very low and you will have to pay massively for the cool stuff (as in all F2P games...funny how they are much more expensive than their P2P brothers in the end).

    I think APB will stay dead....the issues they had where not only unbalanced gameplay cause on later levels when you got the better gear it was even out better, especially when you played with friends. Biggest problem was also the hackers. They will have to fix the unbalanced stuff and deal with the hackers..now its free to play i fear only more hackers. Not sure if APB is better off with this. I shall remember the epic times i had with the game while it was still dying. They had a fair payment system (you started with 50 game hours and only had to pay for more game time when you spend your 50 hours, not like other MMO's where you pay 15 euro per month. If you didn't play for weeks your counter was still on lets say 43 hours to go).

  • levitate #18 1 year ago

    I'm afraid the boat has sailed on this one. I wouldn't mind being proven wrong but I suspect it will take 4 or 5 years until it reaches its full pot... hey, wait a minute!

  • hobojebus #19 1 year ago

    Are they fucking stupid? seriously your game is crap and you havent fixed its major issues but your gonna release it again anyway and charge for the only working part...WTF did you buy this if your gonna piss your money away?

    Fix the game first then think about charging, because believe me with its rep you will have a hard enough time getting players free or not.

  • brider #20 1 year ago

    why is everyone getting mad a K2? its realtime worlds you should be mad at.
    they the ones that took your money then shut the game down.
    K2 have just bought it they dont owe you for a game that RTW ran into the ground

  • Trikk #21 1 year ago

    For me, the game is fundamentally flawed. It's not a persistent world, it's all instanced, a full game world has fewer players than most non-MMO action titles and I don't care about customizing my stuff.

    A large, persistent world would have kept me hooked for ages. Isn't that what everyone imagines when they hear MMO?