Gamersfirst has quite a record of their library being filled with one of the two: dying MMORPGs and Korean MMORPGs, or any combination of the two. In May, Gamersfirst announced that the company was restructuring to focus more on in-house developed games rather than the usual library of Korean cookie-cutter titles. As a result, War Rock and Knight Online were spun off to new publishers, and Fallen Earth was brought in to be developed by G1 rather than outside contractors.
Reloaded Games, best known for reviving the All Points Bulletin MMO shooter, has merged with Gamersfirst as a subsidiary of K2 Networks. It will continue to be known as Reloaded Games.
BRAWNDO’S GOT WHAT PLAYERS CRAVE! Brawndo’s got electrolytes. And that’s what players crave. They crave electrolytes. Which players crave. they crave electrolytes. Which is what Brawndo has. And that’s why players crave Brawndo. Not water, like from the toilet.
Good news, All Points Bulletin fans. In the latest APB dev blog, Gamersfirst is proud to announce that serverside lag has been almost completely eliminated. The issues stemmed from the manner in which the server would attempt to invoke various external libraries, causing congestion in the server. After some work under the hood, and the help of some new hardware, the team believes that this is the end of APB’s lag problems.
In fact, the system works so well that Gamersfirst touts players connecting from Australia to Frankfurt, and achieving a reduction from 1500ms to 500ms, the remaining 500 due to distance rather than congestion. They do want you to know that you may still experience lag, but that it will be mostly your fault.
Will you or some of your friends still see game lag? Sure – under three conditions; (1) your home network runs in to congestion, (2) your ISP has a freak-out and messes up its routes to its peers or (3) your home computer is not up to spec and you end up lagging all the time (but that’s of course client side lag which is a whole different beast).
Reading K2 Networks (GamersFirst) talk about cheaters reminds me of the black knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Even though King Arthur continues to hack the black knight apart, limb from limb, he continues his volley of verbal assaults at Arthur’s ability with a sword, to the point where, in defeat, the knight offers a draw.
In an alternate reality, I might be complacent with Gamersfirst’s handling of cheaters, but given their work in titles like Knight Online (which is full to the brim with cheaters, bots, and gold farmers), my hope for APB’s future is on uneven grounds. Of course, if you go by Gamersfirst’s words, back when Realtime Worlds was still running All Points Bulletin, the company had the information to ban the high number of cheaters, but simply chose not to enforce the rules. The implication being that the new host will be enforcing the rules.
With the latest K2 Networks blog, the APB team has offered a thank you to the cheaters for providing them with useful information.
For the past 3 weeks we have been watching and observing user behavior in Closed Beta. We’d like to extend a “thanks” to the 60 odd players that have been toying around with various hack tools (about 0.4% of the players). Thanks to your hard cheating work, we are now much better equipped to deal with you going forward. How? I guess you will find out.
I wish GamersFirst the best of luck with APB, and I will be there when the game comes out. Unlike their other titles, however, APB isn’t going to survive if it is filled with cheaters. The first failed launch should have been enough of an indicator.
Who wants All Points Bulletin: Reloaded? Scotland wants APB: Reloaded. So much so, that Scottish Development International offered a cash incentive for K2 Networks to open up an office in Scotland, as well as a two hundred thousand in “regional selective assistance” from the Scottish Enterprise development agency, in order to set up shop. Well, K2 has bitten the line, and opened up a new office with the intent to hire 22 people, with future expansion.
This is where the story gets weird. Gamasutra notes that the General Manager of the new office is Michael Bonafice, previous IT Director at Realtime Worlds. In addition, the location itself isn’t too far from the old Realtime Worlds offices. The CEO of Reloaded Productions, the subsidiary of K2 Networks, and the team that are working on the APB: Reloaded relaunch, said:
“After visiting Scotland, meeting some extraordinary game development professionals and also seeing the Scottish Government’s enthusiastic support for creative and technical ventures, we decided to invest in a Scottish team focused on the core game engineering and key creative design tasks.”
APB: Reloaded is already showing major interest, especially in the ongoing beta test. If K2 are wary about the relaunch’s potential, they aren’t showing it. Then again, Realtime Worlds opened a new office right before their launch, too.
You know, I’d forgotten how good All Points Bulletin looked, not to mention Realtime World’s plans to overhaul driving and shooting before the shooter went defunct last year. The latest video from K2 Networks showcases driving like you’ve never seen in the game: functional. Although the driving isn’t perfect, the system is leaps and bounds ahead of what RTW presented when the game went live last year. Back when the original APB was still being patched, the developers laid forward plans to overhaul driving and shooting, and it looks like K2 Networks has fully implemented both.
By the way: If you watch the video, pay attention to how many deceased civilians are laying strewn about the sidewalk, that weren’t hit by either the criminal or the cop. Also note the improvements to the ragdolls and AI. The less civilians that run in front of my cop car, the better.
All Points Bulletin and Earth Eternal shut down around the same time last year, give or take about a month, and since then only one of the two has been getting much of any news coverage, and that tile is not Earth Eternal.
Over on the APB front, K2 Networks has been putting out regular blog updates on how the company is planning on dealing with free players, cheaters, private servers, and more. The latest blog post details hopes for a late-February launch of the APB closed beta, although any difficulties may extend that date into March. Closed beta details will be listed next week, but those of you tech-inclined folk may find some interest in the rest of the blog, detailing what K2 is currently doing to get the game back up and running.
Meanwhile, we’ve heard nothing new out of Earth Eternal. Neither the game’s Facebook or Twitter have been updated since around September, although off-site reports indicate that the game has been sold to Time Warner and will be rebooted sometime early this year. I am somewhat disappointed to see the lack of news out of Earth Eternal, especially since the buyer has never officially come out and announced themselves.
With All Points Bulletin, Earth Eternal, and hopefully Hellgate: London being brought back this year, who knows? Perhaps 2011 will be the year of MMO necromancy!
Small change in the LBMF structure. Now that November is done, companies are going to have to ramp up work if they’re going to get their game out and hit that 2010 release date. According to the MMORPG.com game list, there are more MMOs apparently slated for release this month than I can care to count.
My biggest disappointment with November was probably that there won’t be a 2011 MMO calendar. The 2010 MMO calendar on my wall, many of the months having various autographs, came out last year to benefit St. Jude Childre’s Research Center, and apparently is not coming back for 2011. I may just buy a Guild Wars 2 calendar, or perhaps just use my Nintendo 2011 calendar I received as part of the Nintendo Club.
The Good:
Star Trek Online Free To Play: Sure, Cryptic may be bribing us by saying “play Champions Online free to play and perhaps spend some cash, and maybe we’ll consider throwing you a bone in Star Trek Online,” but who cares? Star Trek Online may be going free to play! Although it will be limited, a free to play transition for Star Trek Online should be just what the game needs to get some big traffic, especially with the changes in response to player gripes, and the introduction of user generated content.
K2 Networks Picks Up APB: K2Networks, also known as GamersFirst, picked up the rights to All Points Bulletin and plans on reviving the game early next year, after an extensive patching to make the game suitable for its new free to play environment.
PvP In Alganon: Well, technically to have player vs player combat you need more than one player, but we can work on that at a later date. In the November patch, Quest Online added a system for flagging for PvP, as well as dueling. In future patches, Alganon players will see a keep/siege system similar to Warhammer Online, as well as a renown system that players will level up for gear.
Pirates of the Burning Sea now Free: Flying Lab Software released the free to play transition to Pirates of the Burning Sea this month.
The Bad:
No City? I’m On Break: A company royally breaking their game in a patch is not all too uncommon, in fact I can name at least one game (rhymes with ShroomTape) where such an event occurs every other week. When Mortal Online released a patch that inadvertently removed a city, killing its occupants and creating a gigantic void for players who came anywhere near it, much of the angry response came not because of the glitch itself, but because of the response. The players were told that the missing city could not be replaced for a few days, because the developers were off for the weekend.
Final Fantasy XIV: Not Satisfactory: It isn’t often a company comes right out and says “our game isn’t satisfactory,” but Square Enix did with Final Fantasy XIV, and after bad news on the financial grounds, they are committed to keeping their current subscribers (who haven’t paid a dime in subscription fees three months after release) and bringing in new players. To top off this need for players, I found that stores in the US, and possibly other countries, are pulling Final Fantasy XIV from shelves. Target and WalMart are now only selling the title online.
Star Gate: No More Resistance: Square Enix isn’t the only group getting a double whammy this month, as Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment announced that they had won the lawsuit against Fresh Start Studios, gaining their assets back for Stargate Worlds. Unfortunately, MGM terminated the agreement with Cheyenne over the Stargate license, meaning for right now the MMO is dead. Later on in November, Fresh Start announced that Stargate Resistance would be shutting down early next year.
Aion Million Man March: Later on in November, mmosite reported on a protest in Aion China against the rampant botting in the game. An estimated thirty thousand players appeared to congest cities in a number of servers in protest, shutting down four servers in the process.
The “What’s Happening in December?”:
Earth…Something or Other: Earth Eternal shut down back in August after the developers stopped paying the bills, and I think it’s safe to assume that Sparkplay Media’s CEO is now unemployed. We still don’t know who purchased the game, although all signs point to Time Warner, and there is no indication when the game will be brought back online. Guess we’re in for another month of waiting.
Anarchy In The Cash Shop: Anarchy Online last month launched the game’s brand new cash shop, offering everything from level packs, stims, and more for a nominal fee. I’ll be watching to see if there are any financial reports gloating on the success of the cash shop, or if its existence is merely pushed to the back as something of an embarrassment.
Cataclysm Shakes WoW: Oh look, a mention of World of Warcraft on MMO Fallout! Although the damage to the World of Warcraft has already been done, for the most part, in the Shattering event, Cataclysm launches in just a few days bringing new races, new areas, and generally a whole lot of new to the World of Warcraft.
I get something of a twinge in my leg when a company somewhere either says or does something that provokes a potential customer to say “well they just saved me the cash I would have wasted checking this out,” so naturally I carry a House-like limp at all times. So when my femur fractured in three locations last week, I had a good feeling that something was up and after four or five days of investigation I came across an interview between Eurogamer and K2 Networks (also known as GamersFirst), the new owners of All Points Bulletin, to be relaunched as APB: Reloaded next year.
Currently a team of 24 people are installing a free to play, microtransaction model into All Points Bulletin, where players will be able to lease weapons in order to get into the game quicker. The game that was once promised to players by defunct studio Realtime Worlds? That is going to take a lot longer to release, in fact you’ll likely be finished with Left 4 Dead 5 by the time the fully realized APB is out. According to owner Bjorn Book-Larsson;
“Oh no [six months isn’t long enough] – we think it’ll take four or five years,”
Four or five years, so by 2015 the full incarnation of All Points Bulletin should be out. Larsson then goes on to explain that K2 Networks plans on launching APB as close to the notorious unreleased patch as possible, with the addition of leased weaponry, and a few other updates. In other words, APB is going to relaunch small to test the market, and go from there.
“After that, presuming there’s an interest in the game, we expect this to be a multi-year development process where we continue updating the game.”
Key phrase being “presuming there’s an interest.” There is still no guarantee that K2 Networks won’t shut down APB again, gut the code like a fish, and make use of its extensive customization engine. K2 has committed two years to the game, hopefully enough time to bring back old players and flesh in some new players.
It’s a good thing APB: Reloaded is launching as a free to play title. I’d hate to think my subscription money was going towards a five year long beta.
Rev up the Wikipedia, because All Points Bulletin has a buyer…well, it always had a buyer, but now we know who that buyer is: K2 Networks. To save some of you the work, K2 Networks is the gaming company behind the Western localizations of Knight Online, WarRock, 9Dragons, among others. Given that K2 operates solely on Asian f2p grinders, the likelihood that All Points Bulletin will follow the free to play cash shop model are very high.
An official statement is coming next week. You can read the full story on Eurogamer, and I guess it’s time to stick All Points Bulletin in the Upcoming category. Bet you never thought you’d see that. But today the Realtime Worlds APB saga comes to an end.
MMO Fallout 