GamersFirst, the development team behind the re-launch of MMO third-person shooter All Points Bulletin, has announced a date for the game's open beta release.
Writing on the APB Reloaded blog, GamersFirst COO and CTO Bjorn Book-Larsson revealed, "With the builds over the last week fixing most critical issues... we are now heading forward with removing all restrictions to joining the game on May 18, 2011."
Book-Larsson also noted that there is a strong chance of players being invited into the closed beta before that date, simply by signing up for a GamersFirst account and the APB newsletter. The plan is to add an extra 40,000 player accounts to the closed beta later today.
He also had some strong words for cheaters too, explaining, "We have on purpose not kicked hackers for over a week to monitor what they are doing. That clearly will change."
"One semi-famous aimbot site realized that we had caught a slew of their users over the weekend (though we did so silently), then they stopped their own hack, and then earlier today re-enabled it. Sigh... when will they ever learn."
The original APB, developed by shuttered Scottish studio Realtime Worlds, was taken offline last September, after Realtime's administrator Begbies Traynor said it could not find a buyer to save the game.
Maybe. I never played the original because I heard it was truly awful, and then I forgot about it, so this seems like a new product to me. Pretty sick of free-to-play at this point, though; I like the old model of buying these things and getting the first month free.
Cheating and Balance issues killed this game. If it wasn't for those two major issues I would say this was the breath of fresh air that many gamers had been looking for last summer. And yes, I know there are other Third person mmo shooters so APB wasn't the first but it was the first that was done with quality in my humble opinion. If they aren't able to tackle cheating and game balance properly, it will undoubtedly fail again.
Putting that aside though, you have to admit, for the first few weeks that you played this game there were some really awesome moments that happened completely because of chance, but also freaking AWESOME. Cant get that in alot of other games... Please Gamersfirst, bring my baby back !!!
It needs more variety in mission types though, that was my biggest gripe with it.
Putting that aside though, you have to admit, for the first few weeks that you played this game there were some really awesome moments that happened completely because of chance, but also freaking AWESOME. Cant get that in alot of other games... Please Gamersfirst, bring my baby back !!!