Massively^™

Back at E3 2005 I had the opportunity to interview David Jones, creator of Grand Theft Auto, about their cops and robbers MMO, All Points Bulletin . Since its announcement at E3 not much has been revealed about the game... until recently. Last week rumors swirled that APB was going to turn into GTA Online, then there was the re-acquisition of the IP rights by Realtime Worlds from Webzen, and now we have an in-depth and revealing interview with Walter Kong, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Realtime.

While the concept of APB may sound similar to Grand Theft Auto, it's not. In APB gamers can play as either cops or robbers within the three dimensional, open world. What's more, Realtime is going to use "players as content. " Basically, they are attempting to take the PvP experience and craft missions around it. Most games are either PvE or PvP; APB will bring those two very divergent styles together.

According to Kong players will have missions and goals -- a "directed experience" if you will, but the enemies will be real human players, not AI controlled enemy bots. Thus, players end up actually creating content for each other that fits within the whole cops versus robbers premise.

APB is, at least initially, aimed squarely for PC purists. While they have not ruled out plans for a console version, Kong said it would be "subsequent to the PC version." And don't let the lack of information, screen shots or gameplay footage fool you. APB is "in a fairly late stage" and most of the development challenges have been solved. In fact, they're shooting (pardon the pun) for closed beta to begin in the second half of this year.

There's a lot more interesting nuggets of knowledge in the interview, so if you can't wait to throw some virtual cuffs on your friend... check it out.