So long APB
Tonight “The Department” gear up for possibly the last venture onto the streets of San Paro, as the MMO All Points Bulletin prepares to close the servers down.
I realise that I haven’t captured any video of the game during my time playing, but then I struggle just to run the game so aim on taking some screen-shots tonight. I don’t plan to write about why thing are, like they are, there are other people that have far more knowledge and do a better job explaining things than I ever could.
Through-out the last month it’s seemed that not only the gamers players but the global gaming community has held it’s breathe following the news about RealTime worlds. As with things of this natures there were countless questions asked and as “stories” started to surface there came a realisation that things were rather bleak for the company and game.
I was reminded of those MMO titles have come and gone in recent years and there is no denying that the impact of the events around RTW and APB are going to impact the MMO and maybe to a lesser extent the Gaming arena for some time.
So, good bye APB, you were a game that delivered a truly amazing environment and unparalleled character customisation. I hope lessons are learnt from your demise.
Thought i’d capure the Patchers text today, It’s below
Going Rogue Soundtrack
I was rather happy to see and announcement that there is a soundtrack purchasable for the upcoming City Of Heroes expansion Going Rogue. The music has been composed by Jason Graves who I feel as capture the features of the existing game music, enhance and twisted it to reflect the new world that is fast approaching.
The track list is as follows:
- Welcome To Nova Praetoria
- Just Another Day In Utopia
- Run Resistance, Run
- Chasing The Dream
- Beyond The Horizon
- Shadow Of Doubt
- Building A Better Tomorrow
- Very Dark Places
- The Dark Side Of A Perfect World
- The Tempest
- Stepping Into The Void
- Ghost In The Machine
- The Hamidon Wars
As you can see the titles have some reflection of the new content and how it is going to feel, Well sound (music-wise), to us players.
If you are fan or just interested I’d head over to Amazon and sample the previews. And don’t worry the second song isn’t a Phil Collins cover.
Patchy at best
Hurrah its time for another ranty post. This week my chosen subject is MMO client patchers.
For those of you that don’t play MMOs, they tend to have continuous updates released for the game, which automatically patch your files to the latest version when you start-up the game client. At times it can be frustrating but if you regularly playing a game, patches are normally small.
But my main annoyance isn’t at the patches nor at the patchers, it’s more where within the games start-up sequence they sit.
Example 1
I recently tried to start playing Planetside again, (flocking with my old outfit), the only issue is that SOEs method of patching won’t allow you to update the game files without an active subscription (or free-play if they have one running). This means unless I subscribe I can’t get the latest version of the game.
Example 2
I received an email from CCP to re-activate my account for 5 days. Great stuff, I boot up the game, which announces a patch is needed and it downloads the files and my client is update.
All of this occurs with-out me even going near a login box and infact the 5 days hasn’t even been activated yet because I would prefer to use it when I have time available.
I can’t understand why anyone would employ such a old style system any more and indeed recent MMO titles have taken this on board and understand that players don’t want to sit staring at a loading bar for hours of their subscription, welcome-back or even free trail time.
