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APB Music Editor Introduced in latest Podcast.

This alone will end up consuming a lot of my time simply because its a lot of fun. I love this stuff, I eat it up. Matter of fact it reminds me a lot of an old program I had for making tracks called eJay (many many years ago) but the idea in itself is incredible to me. We’ve all talked about how in most MMOs you want to affect the quests or story or whatever. In APB, you are making up damn near everything from the characters, clothes, cars, quests, stories, and now even the music.

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APB interview with Kitkat & Deum

Well holy shit. I’m finding it pretty hard to find a coherent way of saying this but I’ll try. On Monday the 18th (basically after this coming weekend) I along with joe and Roger from our For the Lore podcast will be interviewing Lead Creative Designer Stephen “Kitkat” Hewitt and Community Manager Chris “Deum” Collins from Realtime Worlds and the upcoming game APB. APB is essentially the most anticipated game to be released in 2010 and if you haven’t yet looked into it, what the fuck are you waiting for?

I’ll give you the best description of the game as possible since it happens to encompass pretty much the most awesome bits of everything we’ve ever played.

It’s a semi-sandboxed persistant world like GTA 4 (and spearheaded by the man who created the original Grand Theft Auto and started this whole thing), but plays as a 3rd person shooter with leveling and different weapons and upgrades but no stats or “gear” so no MMORPG treadmill like the gear grinder games but there’s different factions and extreme PvP with customizeable player owned cars on the level of the Need 4 Speed games with a character creator that makes Aion and Sims 3 look like a fucking joke and it also streams Last.fm coming with 100 songs at ship and you can jack in your own music libraries and customize the music so enemy players can hear what you play for them for example when you kill them.

One sec need to catch my breath. So in short, this game is going to bring the balls back to the MMO.

The game takes place in a modern-day, fictional city where there is a constant battle between “Enforcement” and “Criminals”, and the player will need to decide to which Faction they want to belong. The two sides battle out for control of the city, with territory within the city being contested continually 24 hours a day, so that players must concern themselves with both offensive and defensive moves.

Other activities involving missions within the game allowing the player to earn extra money, which then can be used to upgrade weapons, vehicles, and their character appearances, all that influence the game itself. For example, several Criminal players may rob a convenience store within the game; the game will then seek out one or more Law Enforcement players of equivalent skills and other criteria, and will issue an all-points bulletin for them to stop the robbery.

APB also claims it will be the first Massively multiplayer online game title where the player’s skill determines the character’s progression, as opposed to the normal model of time investment.

At GDC 2009 it was announced that Vivox would be providing voice chat for the game, the software allows players to customize the voice of their characters with voice fronts, and also to communicate using 3D positional audio.

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APB Gameplay Footage

The more I hear about APB, the more I want to give it the time of day. It really does feel like a unique and different experience as far as MMOs are concerned. You do have a pseudo-leveling aspect in the game which will grant you accolades and better weapons/upgrades for your vehicle and person, but ultimately there are no stats in the game. You’re not going to get a backwards baseball cap of the bandit, or any of that nonsense. Your character is your character and your own prowess at being able to shoot accurately and maneuver yourself will decide who’s the best. It really is a game of skill at this point.

Also, the built in Last.fm support and custom playlists, and music creators (when you kill a guy it will play him music you made/chose) is just freaking incredible!

I’ve never been good at 3rd person shooters/action games though (platformers don’t count) and this really does feel a lot like the customization of Aion only 10x better, the sandboxed/free world of GTA4 (only with hundreds of other live people), and the player controlled factions of Planetside (only with less Hamburger Hill firefights). Coming to you from APB Zone is a gameplay doubel feature where you’ll get to see how some of the mechanics work.

One caveat to remember is that this is in the very early beta and thus a lot of spit & polish isn’t present in the game. With that said however, the individual character customization is jaw-dropping. I am going to have some fun with this ladies and gents. Now if only somebody at Realtime Worlds reads this and sends me a beta invite.

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More on the story of APB: The Organizations of San Paro Part 2

So a while back I showed you the 13th episode of the APB Podcast airing over on YouTube. Hopefully a bunch of you subscribed or otherwise though the game worth giving a chance, I’ve learned my lesson over the Fall season from other games but seeing as how the developers and community folks don’t come across as pretentious jerks drinking of their own Kool-Aid, I’m more open to give it the time of day.

In this video we have part 2 of the back story where we learn the ins and outs (ever so briefly) of the Enforcers (the good guys I guess, the cops). When I get a chance to pick this game up (obviously after launch unless by some amazing grace I get into the Beta) I’ll definitely be playing as an Enforcer because you know, that just fits my personal kit a lot. Either way enjoy.

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APB: An innovation in the MMO world

I’ve been seeing a lot of different MMOs over the past 2 years crop up and fall to shit simply because there’s no innovation. Everything seems to be copying the same model and trying to throw own different little gimmicks that don’t ever mesh well with the trinity of MMORPGs (Healers, Tanks, DPS). I won’t go on listing the titles here but safe to say that juggernaut World of Warcraft is the only title that seems to have done things right enough to continue fielding new players and rake in the cash.

All Points Bulletin really has my attention. It had it a while ago during it’s announcement and even now it’s managed to go up a few notches. I’m already pretty cautious after the complete fucking failure that was Aion (let’s hope NCsoft changes things and give players more incentive to give them a second chance) so the idea of yet another MMO-type game has me leery.

Concerns not withstanding, APB looks like an interesting game. Here’s their latest podcast where you get to actually see some of the story behind the game, the lore if you will.

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