Rumor: Epic in Talks to Buy APB

[Landslide]

Epic's got a nice big new shiny building to fill with staff for other titles. Been down there a few times. It's a certainty that if they did buy the IP, it would be a carefully considered decision, friendships aside. Also, they wouldn't re-release it with the same flaws intact (bugs, thin content, etc.). If it's not-salvageable, they simply won't buy it. At worst, they'd keep it to have an MMO-capable version of their engine that someone else put $100MM worth of development into

Sounds pretty smart to me.

 

[Jhereg42]

I think this would be a smart move by Epic.

It's a almost complete MMO for next to nothing, it's a 3PS title which is their specialty, with a staff that is easily rehired, based on their own technology. . . if anyone can make money off of this deal it's Epic.

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

It died because of griefing players and unbalanced upgrades and weapons. And sometimes the missions too were unfair. It'd be a good start if they just sorted that out.
I personally hope it won't die, since regular MMORPG's aren't my thing. I've wanted an action MMO for years, and this came close.

It died because the company making it was tens of millions in debt and hardly anyone logged in day one by day four the studio announced it was bankrupt.

Sure the griefers and balance don't help new people come but if they were so reliant on launch week it makes no odds.

From Epics point of view this is an complete game they can pick up on the cheap polish up and re-market. If it only pulls a couple of million players it could still be worth it after buying from financial administrators.

The only reason I (not being Epics management) can think of to avoid it is the Fiasco surrounding it's current incarnation. If their interested it must be 'as is', I mean who would buy the IP of a dismal failure? So fingers crossed.

 

[Jared]

There may still be life in it...dosnt know what it wants to do!

 

[cerebus23]

they would have to shelf the game retool it, relaunch it, etc. i mean the custom stuff was great but everything surrounding it was a bloody mess. the maps were very small, the cars handled like garbage with kb, they whole game was half assed it wanted to be a sandbox but did not give you enough options to truely be a sandbox with the constant dispatcher missions that half the time were so mismatched or all the way across the map with no time to get to them. exclude the cheating the total and complete lack of balance, this game needed another year or two in the pipe to get to anywhere near ready for launch.

when the driving is so bad you rather run across town to get to an objective, and you could run the entire maps in like 10 minutes, you know there is some major fail going on since many games are prefectly drivable with a kb.

imagine if this game went all the way and had districts in each map that were owned by robbers and cops, each side had to take and hold territory and got rewards for doing so, each side had decide for themselves what areas to hit and try and hold. would that not have been more fun than endless spam of missions that meant very little other than if you won or lost you got a few points for stuff but all you did was the same few missions over and over, with no real sense of achievement win or lose a mission meh i got points and i will get another in 2 minutes anyway big deal.

for the money they spent on this game i find it hard to see wth it went exactly. would think that with that kind of money they could have done a gta4 sized city and just pasted their missions and junk in that would have been better than these tiny little city blocks they gave the game.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Hell they can buy it cheap, throw out everything but the customise engine, and then put it in future epic games.

That or do a little work and make it into a single player game.

 

[Landslide]

I see a future:

 

[Amnestic]

I see a future:

If I could +1 this post, I would.

The only way Epic could draw players to APB after this fiasco, would be to make it a free MMO AND to fix the game.

Best scenario would be a new name, a new paint job, fresh advertising and doing the hardest part: making a good game. APB is only worth the art and animation that went into it.

As someone who is actually writing games, the fact that you left out the whole storylinw of the good parts of this game seems odd to me. Was there something about the story that you didn't like?

I don't play games for a story. Gameplay is king.

This.

It's an MMOFPS. Story doesn't even register.

I'm confused, are you saying you don't want a story in an MMOFPS? Why?

 

[Korias]

The only way Epic could draw players to APB after this fiasco, would be to make it a free MMO AND to fix the game.

Best scenario would be a new name, a new paint job, fresh advertising and doing the hardest part: making a good game. APB is only worth the art and animation that went into it.

As someone who is actually writing games, the fact that you left out the whole storylinw of the good parts of this game seems odd to me. Was there something about the story that you didn't like?

I don't play games for a story. Gameplay is king.

This.

It's an MMOFPS. Story doesn't even register.

First, it's an MMO3PS.

Second, any MMO needs to have a compelling setting to keep the player returning. Without it, players will have no sense of connection to the world. It's why EVE players are so good at EVE is because they immerse themselves in it. There's a story there. The same thing with WoW: Quests have story lines that flow into a greater narrative.

APB had, from my experience, a compelling storyline behind it. The only detracting issues were the immersion breakers: imbalanced matchmaking, poor driving mechanics, and other issues.

 

[Ken Sapp]

I could be heartless and say to let it die. But I will be nice since there are evidently people who want to play and say that if they can find someone who is willing to take on the tasks of running the servers and keeping it up then more power to them.

Personally the game never appealed to me and most of the news stories that have comeout over the last few months concerning it just made me want to stay even further away.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

My being a fan of the game aside, this is something that could be a huge success for Epic Games. They'd get a lot of technical work and innovation on their flagship engine on the (seriously) cheap, and if they chose to run with it... well, I think one of Realtime Worlds' failings (as seen in an article with an ex-employee also here on the Escapist) was that they took on something with scale and complexiity well outside their experience. Epic Games, on the other hand, excels at working with big, new ideas and also has the industry experience and "cache" to draw attention to their projects.

Granted, the chances of this happening, and of APB returning in a form even remotely related to its first iteration, are fairly slim. But hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

 

[Fearzone]

There are part of APB worth owning. The netcode is laggy but would be good once optimized. The customization features are great, and the overall MMO engine could yield some good results if it drives a well designed game.

I doubt Epic would bring APB back. I'm guessing they want to use it for something else.