Realtime Worlds' Troubles Confirmed, Faces Liquidation

[samsonguy920]

I think they have to blame the failure of that game on really poor advertisement. It's release was alot like Aion's to me; I didn't even know it existed until about a week before launch. The little bit of information I got made it sound like a GTA clone with some kind of jacked up multiplayer shoehorned in so I didn't buy it.

I have to agree with that, the only way I knew of it was it being released thru Steam. Otherwise I saw diddly for ads or promotions and no word of mouth. Sad.
Best way to do a theme like this is if Rockstar were to have dedicated servers for GTA V. Not necessarily an MMO per se, more run it like Valve does TF2.

 

[IAmTheVoid]

Speaking as someone who just used up his 50 hours and doesn't really have the inclination to renew, I'm not surprised RTW are going under. APB has sparks of genius, with the creativity of the players combined with a nigh-perfect character creator and symbol creator really bringing the game to life. It's just such a shame that the actual game beyond the customisation is just incredibly average- the only thing which I'd say is above average are the environments to fight in, and even then there's the roof camping.

It's a shame. And like the poster above, I wish someone would pick up the character creator. It was the crux behind me buying the game- I love customisation a little too much- and it definitely lived up to its hype.

 

[Delusibeta]

The plot thickens. Apparently Activision is preparing to swoop into Dundee and try to scoop up the newly unemployed developers (and anyone else with the skills required). Source. [http://www.develop-online.net/news/35649/Activision-attempts-RTW-staff-rescue]

Activision: they don't miss a trick.

 

[NLS]

I didn't know about this game until a friend told me he was in the beta.

 

[Antari]

If thats all they can get out of 80-100 million? ... Then I think its a good idea that they just roll over and die.

 

[Callex]

Damn shame, I hope the character creator tech doesn't die with them, like the space/land transitions for battlefront 3 did with pandemic...

 

[Gennadios]

First heard about this off of BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-11003456

But this is really a story as old as time.

1)Designers leave prestigious development house to fund their own.
2)New development house opts to create an MMO
3)Payroll settles on a very questionable subscription scheme.
4)Publisher gets tired of waiting for an unproven developer to polish the game and forces it out the door way too soon to little fanfare.

And that's how Hellgate: London, err, APB was born.

 

[Blackjack 222]

if they wanted to make more money they should not have made it a pay-to-play and made it for more than just pc

And made it good, made the AI smarter(lifelike is not standing in front of a shotgun cowering like a *****), made the controls maybe 3 notches above mediocre, and given it more than one game mode. Combat was cheap, driving was hell, game-play in general was mediocre. PvP only MMO's are things you make when your coders can't make AI smart enough to do anything but walk in circles(and in APB they failed at the walking around bit).
While i admit nice having something that wasn't a WoW clone innovation only works when you do it right. In short APB was a mediocre game, run by idiots who thought they had an IQ that was "OVER 9000!!!!!!", and made some of the dumbest decisions i have ever seen.

For all they did with what APB could have been its a good thing they die and sink into obscurity.

 

[Rigs83]

All I can say is: [HEADING=3]Aaaahhh poor thing. Let me snap your neck to end the pain.[/HEADING]

 

[Daipire]

APB was released?

Man, I'm so behind...

 

[Fearzone]

It wasn't lack of advertising that killed the game. I've been hearing of it for a long time on the gaming sites. Having played the game, it definitely wasn't the advertising.

If it they really spent $100 million to make it, that is about as epic as fails get. I mean, that's what StarCraft 2 is reported to have cost. Better check some Carribean bank accounts if that is really how much was dumped in to it.

This is good news in that it sends a message out there that crappy games like APB just don't cut it. Don't make games like APB or your company will go under and your employees will be living on food stamps after working years on games like MyWorld that will never see the light of day. That's what happens when you release games like APB!

 

[squid5580]

The plot thickens. Apparently Activision is preparing to swoop into Dundee and try to scoop up the newly unemployed developers (and anyone else with the skills required). Source. [http://www.develop-online.net/news/35649/Activision-attempts-RTW-staff-rescue]

Activision: they don't miss a trick.

OMG Activision is trying t ohelp some poor down on their luck unemployed developers who blew 100 million bucks by offering them jobs?? Bobby you evil bastard.

 

[grammarye]

Well, I honestly think APB is a game ahead of its time in some ways. It needed to be done five years from now, because right now what they tried to do just doesn't work on enough people's hardware. They should be applauded for doing a game with such customisation and technical challenge. Alas, the gameplay is not on par with the environment, and should have been addressed long before release. They could have done so much more with the persistent world they had.

A shame that most of the time when games try to innovate, they fail in just enough ways to make gamers go 'oh this isn't what I expected, it must be rubbish', and hey presto, no income. One of these days the games industry will just be pumping out clones and we'll all be complaining that nobody ever innovates any more. Heck we might already be there; almost all the hyped releases this year on the PC are sequels...

I'd like to hope that someone will take up APB and make it into the game it should have been at release, but I doubt it.

I would have bought APB if it weren't for the crappy payment method.

What? You got:

*) a monthly subscription or
*) buying hours cheaper if you don't game enough for a month to justify the monthly sub or
*) selling good designs in-game and earning points to pay for game-time 'free'
and that's with the social district time being free regardless!

This was the first innovative payment model we've seen from MMOs since EVE's GTCs traded for in-game currency; crappy isn't the word to apply. Unless you actually meant 'I'd have bought APB if I didn't have to pay for it at all', in which case that's a completely different complaint and I misunderstood you.

Either way, something has to pay for lots of servers running all the time, and NCSoft's GuildWars model works only because they have lots of games funding their infrastructure (and ArenaNet's investors took a leap of faith). RTW very clearly didn't have anything like the financial backing to run 24/7 servers at a loss until the game succeeds.

 

[The_Emperor]

they shoulda listened to the play testers

 

[Epictank of Wintown]

they shoulda listened to the play testers

This.

This here.

See, MMO developers? This is what happens when you don't fucking listen to your playtesting community.

"The game isn't ready!" we shouted as loud as our text could get the message across. "The matchmaking is broken, the weapon balance is terrible, the driving...improved, actually! You aren't ready to release this! It needs to be FIXED first!"

But, nope. We didn't get heard. Or, if we did, they ignored us.