The sad saga of Realtime Worlds has mostly ended, but as it turns out, its urban crime MMO APB will indeed live on. Late last week we reported the IP rights to APB were now in the hands of online game distributor K2 Network, which owns MMO operator GamersFirst. The K2 Network MMO portal intends to relaunch APB sometime in the first half of 2011 as APB: Reloaded.
GamersFirst has yet to disclose the actual sum its parent company coughed up for APB, but Realtime Worlds' current administrator Begbies Traynor notes that as a result of the purchase, any outstanding wages and holiday pay claims owed to former Realtime Worlds staff members can now be reimbursed in full.
Speaking to Edge Online, GamersFirst COO and CTO Bjorn Book-Larsson believes it knows what needs to be done to fix what went wrong with APB. Not least of these will be doing away with selling "game time" and instead make APB: Reloaded free-to-play, supported by microtransactions if you want some of the cooler firearms, for example. Free-to-play has its own challenges which GamersFirst intends to address, like the amount of time required to build content while keeping players interested.
That's a bit more in line with most other MMO's these days, but it will mean that APB will need to be retweaked to better leverage the new business model. For example, APB: Reloaded will feature more game modes that are better suited to session play, making it easier to find and jump into games. The whole "Enforcers" versus "Criminals" faction system will also need improving. In charge of refitting (and rebalancing) APB as we know it will be GamersFirst's own Los Angeles studio, given that Realtime Worlds has pretty much dissolved by now.
For the time being, GamersFirst doesn't expect the technical specifications of the game itself to change, so the PC system requirements should be more or less untouched from the original release. However, GamersFirst is entertaining the notion of launching an additional "lighter" version of the game in the future to better cover their (user)bases.
Source:Edge Online
Section:PC Games
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