Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

This is hardly surprising since both games have a huge similarity at their core, both are the creations of David Jones.  APB, according to developer Realtime Worlds Executive Colin Macdonald in an interview with vg247, is “the bastard child of everything we’ve been striving towards over the 15-20 years" and "what Dave’s always wanted to do from GTA and before Crackdown and APB." While the moniker of massive may not apply as well to APB as it does to other MMOGs, it is still appropriate given that you will be able to interact with significantly more players than most LAN style games allow and the while the world may not be completely persistent, your character is.

Character advancement in APB will be vastly different from anything currently on the market as Realtime Worlds has stated that there will be no leveling in the game and that upgrades to your character will come in the way of weapons, currency and the ever popular bling.

APB bridges the gap between single player console style games and the persistent world MMOG

This is a pretty bold move for a company to take and one that, while often promised during initial development, is almost never delivered. It will be interesting to see if this deviation from the norm will go over well with the typical carrot on a string crowd.  This point of contention, more than any other, may be what keeps the typical MMOG player from giving this game much of a chance.

Another key component to long term game success comes down to market share a game can gather. The PC market is vastly different from the console market in both demographic and buying habits, so it remains to be seen what sort of cross over factor there will be, but I suspect that the allure of playing against (and with) a larger number of players that the typical console provides will be quite attractive.  If the launch of the game goes smoothly then I believe APB will get the attention of a lot of traditional MMOG players that are hungry for a new experience in their favorite genre, even without the traditional leveling model.

From all indications it looks that APB will be able to bring together two fairly different crowds to explore, exploit and battle it out on the rough and tumble streets of this adult themed game, keeping them there, however, will be the harder part and the true test of the games mettle.  Stay tuned to Ten Ton Hammer for more news and articles about APB and all the games in this rapidly expanding genre of MMOGs.