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Gotta be the shortest lived MMO around !
haibane
Member Posts: 178
APB's officially dead !
RTW really did an awesome job of totally screwing a game in their inability to balance weapons, get rid of hackers / exploiters, and provide content for their shiny graphic'ed game.
EA decided to pull the plug and nobody wanted to buy the game (which is understandable).
So, APB lived for like July to mid September, for the 2nd most expensive game in history (after GTA IV), this is quite a gigantic failure.
As their head of Q&A said : "Press F for jobseeker allowance" cuz dudes, besides ur artwork team, nobody's gonna hire u guys.
You're a Hardcore Survivor!
You not only survived the zombie apocalypse, but did it with style! Your mastery of zombie knowledge, survival tactics, and weaponry is nearly unmatched. Congratulations, for you are hardcore!
Comments
Source?
Hm, i'll have to find it, but IGN made a list of the most expensive games, and APB was 50 millions £ and was between GTA IV (100M $) and "too human" i believe.
Edit : not hard to google it ^^, IGN updated their list with new games now, and APB's 7th (somehow they changed too from 50M£ to 50M$ not sure why). It still makes it the most expensive MMORPG ever, combined with maybe the less successful one considering its life span.
http://boards.ign.com/ps3_lobby/b8269/189575009/p1/
You're a Hardcore Survivor!
You not only survived the zombie apocalypse, but did it with style! Your mastery of zombie knowledge, survival tactics, and weaponry is nearly unmatched. Congratulations, for you are hardcore!
Actually, it is number 7 but it is still horrible (source: http://www.digitalbattle.com/2010/02/20/top-10-most-expensive-video-games-budgets-ever/).
Too bad, they did have some good ideas but there was too little to do, this game should at least have launched like a B2P game, few people would be paying monthly fees for a FPS game.
Also, there should have been a lot more things to do in the game, every mission were more or less the same.
I hope they re use the engine for something else, and the character creator.
The 50mil budget is true but no the game isn't second, not even in the top 5 actually. Second is gran Turismo btw with around 88mil.
Also it is indeed the shortest lived online game ever, from what i've read anyways...never really bothered to look too much into it.
That's too bad. I liked the game and was very disappointed when it closed. How could the developers or anyone ignore the problems? I'm just so disappointed.
This game failed because the company making it didn't know what the hell they were doing.
MMO companies should really hire veteran players as consultants, because I saw this coming from a mile away.
1. Subpar FPS combat. If the combat was on-par with Call of Duty or Counter Strike it would have done way better. This is where the development should have been focused, all of the customization things should have come after the combat was nailed down.
2. Subscription based. The game should not have charged a subscription, that was probably the stupidest business model to put this game under.
3. The game should have either went full open world non-FPS combat or decent FPS combat with closed map instances (instead of the in-between 100 man maps so they could try to justify their subscription fee). Either of these options would have been better than what they did. The latter option would have boiled down to a modern day FPS game, but with a huge amount of customization.
"There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
You can't be the shortest lived MMO if you were never an MMO to begin with.
Red Dead Redemption had a ~200m budget I believe. I've been told so many times, don't feel like looking it up so could be wrong. Just something to be aware of as a possibility I guess.
Objectivity is delivered with a lack of personality made for the mainstream but never used for the mainstream.
On one hand it is sad to see yet another gaming company go under, but on the other hand i hope to god that game developers take this game and use it as a case study on what not to do. I hope that the MMO development community learns something from the way this game failed. You can no longer release a really buggy game players have too many other options these days. If you want the money make it worth it one or 2 features that are really cool dont make the game the whole thing needs to come together. I hope that finally this is the red flag for the development companies and their investors you can not push crap out and have it make you money we wont pay.
Very true. If the game actually cost them $50m to make I am incredulous that they ended up with such a shallow product. Don't these guys actually ASK a wide variety of gamers what they would like to see in a game BEFORE they shell out millions?
Funny. Couple months ago I was at GameStop and held the game in my hand. I got to the desk and mistook a $10 bill as a $20 (I was short the cash). Went out to the Jeep, grabbed the "emergency" funds and decided to pass.
The clerk said that this was the new big game and had a really solid playerbase that will be around for years.
________________________
Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
This is the perfect example that some good ideas do not make a good game. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It is execution that matters.
Wait Wait Wait! A salesperson misled a customer! This is an outrage and must be stopped before it spreads to other salespeople in the world.
I wouldn't shop for a car if I were you.
Give $50 million to a company like BioWare or Blizzard and they'd make a game twice as "good" (as considered by the majority, which is all that matters). You can't just throw money at a project and expect to succeed without competance or proper execution.
That being said, they had solid ideas that didn't translate well into reality. Most design concepts end up this way, which is why hype is astronomical during development but plummets once people actually play the real thing. It's rarely as good in practice as it is on paper. If the game had had more variety and perhaps a more standard pricing model, it would've done better. The cutomization was unmatched, but the other game(s) with good customization - CoH/CO - are still kicking because they play more like traditional MMOs. More to do than just mission running.
Edit: SnarlingWolf above made me LOL.
I saw this post and out of disbelief checked it up, found out it was true then nearly soiled myself laughing!
I remember playing Global Agenda and all these dweebs were doing their doomsaying about how APB would gut the playerbase and GA would die a horrible death. Well GA is still up and running with plenty of people playing and APB has disappeared into silicon hell!
This will keep me giggling over the weekend
I guess paying to play a crappy GTA multiplayer with a cash shop, full of hackers only decimated it's own playerbase, MUAH HAH HAH!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
I'm saddened beyond words. I truly enjoyed APB and spent hours in the game; however, I did have problems with it that I won't go into detail on.
Suffice it to say, I miss APB and hope some day it gets picked up again.
~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!
Come Join us at www.globalequestria.com - Meet other fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic!
There may be some light at the end of the tunnel. According to the BBC there are a few companies looking at buying it up including EPIC GAMES (Gears of War) http://kotaku.com/5640623/gears-of-war-studio-to-buy-failed-mmo
If one of these companies pick it up and put another year or 2 development in we may end up with something decent at the end. Of course we might end up with a crappy cash cow seeing as they'll get it cheap.
I said that with irony. I just find it funny that how the game flatlined. No need to be a dick. Besides, I build my own vehicles. =]
________________________
Two atoms walk out of a bar. The first exclaims, "Damn, I forgot my electrons." The other replies, "You sure?". The first explains, "Yea, I'm positive."
If they'd asked MMO players to check over the ideas first and even maybe suggest alternatives, it might have fared better. They couldn't have done any worse.
They did ask but weren't allowed to change direction due to how much had already been invested. The funding was drying up and the amount needed to fix the failure it was headed towards wasn't being released to them. They had no choice tbh.
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