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

The closure of APB (ALL Points Bulletin) left a lot of MMOG gamers with a foul taste in their mouth. With a reported $100 million in funding, developer Realtime Worlds entered Administration only two months after its launch and by the third month the players had fired their last shot and the game was shut down, making it one of the hugest and most disappointing failures in the entire MMOG genre. But how was life in the game leading up the final hurrah of APB? Phil Hartup recounts the final days of APB in his latest OP/ED, "You Won't Respawn Tomorrow", and disappointingly recalls the game going out with more of a tired sigh than a big bang. We all know that one day our virtual worlds will come to an end, but APB suffered an apocalypse faster than most others.

For myself the last hours in APB were surprisingly dispassionate. I imagined I’d miss the game, the old crew, the streets of San Paro and my trusty and long suffering car, so was shocked that my last cruise through the streets left me cold. MMOs, particularly ones that rely on a single main instance, can feel really empty and soulless if there’s anything less than the maximum number of players on a server at once; you might expect to type in the chatbox and hear your keystrokes echo. APB didn’t feel like that, partly because empty streets are not a new phenomena in the game, but also because the few remaining players were so concentrated in certain areas. There were only two action districts to choose from, so it wasn’t like there was anywhere else to go.