The Death of APB

At the behest of Xenodyne, I come bearing opinions.

I'm a little disappointed about APB closing down shop, but it seemed inevitable. The last hope of the game hinged upon getting another developer to buy it, and who wants to buy a game that sold less than 100,000 copies on release day? Maybe if the game was balanced and didn't need a lot of work on top of normal maintenance, RTW could have found a buyer.

There were so many things wrong with the game when I played it. I decided to ignore the issues and focus on the positives. Playing APB with Joe, Foe, and Krinkor was some of the most fun I have ever had in an online game. However, it was at the same time one of the most frustrating online experiences I have ever had. Some of the pluses can still be seen in our APB review, which is still our most viewed video on YouTube. I think we were one of the only reviews that gave the game positive marks and didn't just nitpick every little thing. That doesn't count all of the legitimate problems people had with the game, it just seemed like once people saw the main flaws, they decided to bitch as hard as possible about little things. I'm fairly sure I remember reading a review that complained about the game having too much customization.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that the fundamental concept of the game was awesome, and it had a ton of potential. Unfortunately, the execution of the idea was terrible. There weren't enough unlockable items, in my opinion. I'd have loved to see more variation in guns, especially. Also, upgrades were basically the same for everyone. Why take 30% less fall damage when you could take 5% less damage from players? It was like some of the items and upgrades were added without playtesting. One good example of this is the grenade launcher. I remember Joe being super excited to get one, but when he finally did, it was a piece of garbage with a long reload time, barely any ammunition, and took 3 shots to kill someone. Not like you ever saw one, since people who wanted to win would just pick the Sub-machine gun or the AK-47. These unbalanced guns were ridiculous. I distinctly remember sniping someone at max distance with my sniper rifle when he pulled out his AK and killed me. From max sniper range. I understand that RTW increased bullet spread and fixed a lot of things wrong with the guns, but it was too little, too late.

That doesn't even begin to cover things that the game completely failed at. The requirements were one of the main issues that hindered sales, I think. My computer is decent, and I still froze or crashed every day or so. Joe could barely run the game. I they had some sort of graphics optimization, they probably would have sold a few more copies. Lag on the servers was terrible as well. There were also glitches like crazy.

I distinctly remember one time where three of us were matched against six guys, a couple of them had better guns than us. We held out until the last part of the mission where we needed to deliver suitcases to a point on the other side of the bay. Joe and I loaded a car up with the loot and drove off. We were pursued, but only on foot. It seemed like we had gotten away when all of a sudden, the car we were in decided to flip over onto its back randomly, in the middle of even ground. Completely even ground. We got killed and the spot was camped until we lost. We came back and tried to recreate the event, but never did. It was a stupid bug that made us lose a mission for no reason.

There were so many things wrong with the game. I remember Joe saying something like "I'll come back when the game is out of beta" when he quit. I stopped playing later the same day, since I was tired of the same old issues. I wanted to go back though, and I had been thinking about it still. You'd think that with all of the problems, I'd have learned my lesson and uninstalled the first week. I just saw the game for its potential, not its reality. If RTW could have ironed out all of the issues, they would have made one of the greatest action MMOs of all time. Instead, we're saying goodbye to APB this week.

I hope all of the laid off developers can find work. Good luck.