Gentlemen, start your pitchforks. A detail savvy player on the All Points Bulletin forums has discovered that, in addition to requiring players to pay a subscription (be it in hourly increments or in monthly flat fees), Realtime Worlds has also decided to place advertisements in the game’s VOIP feature. And what could be better than getting advertisements in a paid game? Paying an addition fee to not hear them. RTW is offering 30, 90, and 180 day specials to not hear advertisements.
According to Community Officer Toxico, who was quick to respond, the advertisements only play every three hours, while loading a district. The prices are pretty cheap, starting at about one dollar for 30 days (40 rtw points). People naturally don’t like advertisements, but if one ad every three hours is enough to ensure RTW won’t be charging for VOIP, I think the APB players will survive. You always have that mute button when entering a district.
More on APB as it appears.
MMO Fallout 
Thank you for treating this not as if it was the end of the world; the commentators on RPS seem to think this is the end of times.
I have my gripes about All Points Bulletin (yes, I preordered), but if anything is going to kill this title, having to pay one dollar for a month for not hearing one short ad every three hours (and by that I mean hitting the mute button for a few seconds while entering a district) is not going to be on the list of deciding factors.
I didn’t call people out as trolls on this because I understand their fears. Some of these players are probably still having nightmares from in 2006 when Shadowbane went free to play and started showing advertisements upon opening and closing the game, and upon death. In the realm of MMOs, advertisements are something of a sign that the developer holds little faith in the game surviving much longer (except in the case of Runescape where ads fund the free to play portion).
I still stand by my claim that APB has one of the best subscription systems that offers a deal to both hardcore and casual players, something I hope that players can agree on even if they don’t think the game is worthy of a subscription.
Personally, with the way I roll through MMOs, the 50 (60 with preorder?) hours of action-time I get are going to last me a long time. I’ll be adding a counter to the “This Month In Review” for June with how many hours I use up each month.