The Average Gamer » APB

APB Reloaded to Crack Down on Botters

Debbie Timmins (Weefz) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:43:12 +0000

For some reason I impulse-bought All Points Bulletin about a month before RealTime Worlds went under. It was pants. Most annoying was that you could spend hours customising your character, creating the most amazing tattoos that look beautiful in the high-res character viewer. Then you’d go in-game and discover that a bird has shat down your back.

New owners GamersFirst have just invited former players to a closed beta. I had a potter around the APB Reloaded blog today and am glad to see that they’re sorting out the aimbot problem.

PunkBuster was able to successfully detect every single commercially available aimbot for APB. Over 1000 cheating players were silently identified and logged by the system, but unfortunately RTW was already having financial difficulties by then and we never had the opportunity to get our hands on the list of cheaters to ban them (since once you stop paying the people with the info, they are unlikely to give it to you)…

…This isn’t set in stone yet, and some parts of it may not even be finished during beta, but this is what we would like to work towards:

If a player is positively identified as running a known aimbot, he/she will be immediately kicked from the district and a notification message will be sent to all other players in that district. The cheater’s account and PC will be immediately banned for a period of time, during which the person will not be able to play using that account on any computer. If an aimbot is detected a second time, the account and computer will immediately be permanently banned, all monies paid will be forfeited and any upgrades or customizations will be revoked…

…there really is no excuse for aimbotting and this time around it will be treated with zero tolerance.

By giving people two chances they certainly have an interesting definition of zero tolerance… still, it’s nice to see they’re taking bot problems seriously.

If you’re interested, sign up for the APB Reloaded closed beta on the official website.

APB Clan Metropolitan Police Service

Debbie Timmins (Weefz) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:42:10 +0000

I had sworn off MMOs since Aion took over my life for 6 months – you can see the effect on my Wakoopa usage stats. However, I caved today and bought APB. While checking out leagues/clans/guilds to join, this league of Enforcers was too awesome not to post.

Yup, they’ve created their own Met Police uniforms, cars and a police station. I had no idea you could go to such levels of customisation in the game. (Yes, I have not been paying attention to any of the pre-launch marketing. Traumatised from Aion, remember?) Sadly, this clan does not yet have a website but here’s the APB Metropolitan Police Service clan recruitment thread. I feel obliged to point out that they probably have no affiliation with, and are unlikely to be endorsed by, the actual London Metropolitan Police Service.

Edit: Now with added female officer!

APB – Looking For More Beta Testers

Nick Silversides (CaptSkyRocket) — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:18:30 +0000

Realtime Worlds is looking to recruit more testers for the latest closed beta of their APB MMO. So if you fancy being one of the lucky few then you need to sign up here. As it’s a closed beta, places will be limited, so good luck. NOTE: You also have to be over 18 to take part in the beta.

We’re looking forward to welcoming thousands of new players to San Paro in the coming weeks. said Dave Jones, Creative Director at Realtime Worlds, As APB enters this final stage of closed beta testing, we’re anticipating a huge surge of interest with gamers from all over the world applying to take part and provide invaluable feedback to the development team preparing us for launch.

APB is due for release later on this year only on PC.