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Fansites have always been a labor of love. People create, share and maintain them at a cost simply because they're passionate about something. In the case of APB-Evoloved.com that passion lies with Realtime Worlds' upcoming grand-theft-style MMO All Points Bulletin. Their love for the customization-centric MMO certainly isn't singular. In fact, another thing that their love for APB isn't is unnoticed. The fansite's webhosting woes were recently resolved through a $1,000 donation made by none-other than Realtime Worlds itself. How's that for fan appreciation?

This is by no means a common occurrence for fansites and certainly shows how much Realtime Worlds appreciates what the guys at APB-Evolved.com are doing for their game and its community. Although this isn't the first time that the fansite has seen some love from the developer. With a fully open beta coming sometime in the future it's starting to seem certain that All Points Bulletin will have a very strong community -- especially if these sorts of things continue to happen.

[Thanks, Tom]

"There's a misconception among MMOs," says Realtime Worlds' Colin Macdonald, "that they don't need to look as good as other games." Macdonald, studio manager for the developers of upcoming street-crime MMO APB (All Points Bulletin), was speaking about the general state of MMOs at the GameHorizon conference in Newcastle, England. "We think that when people look at a screenshot of APB, they won't think 'it's not so good, it must be an online game' -- they won't know."

While we definitely agree that APB is turning out to be an excellent looking game, we thought that World of Warcraft and EverQuest II had settled the 'no compromise, great looking game' issue ages ago. Modern releases like the oft-maligned Vanguard and more recent titles such as Lord of the Rings Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea and Age of Conan have spared no effort in making sure their games are as graphically luscious as possible.

Mr. Macdonald, it's great that you're proud of APB's graphics, be real. Modern MMOs are every bit as graphically gorgeous as single player games.

There's a clip over at GameVideos (embedded above) that depicts All Points Bulletin's character customization system. We say "customization" instead of "creation" because we doubt all the exhibited features will be available to new players. We learned at GDC (in the very same session this video originated from, actually) that visual customization options will be among players' rewards for successful play.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Kieron Gillen was nevertheless impressed with all the options. He commented on the exhibit, and posited that APB has that Grand Theft Auto je ne sais quoi. The culprit: the art style, which when combined with creativity will give the game a human quality that transcends the mechanics of the game. Because of that, Gillen is looking forward to APB more than he is to any other MMO.

He took a jab at World of Warcraft, saying that because each item of clothing in WoW has critical stats tied to it, no one expresses him or herself through clothing. Stats are more important than self-expression in WoW society, right? Gillen prefers the City of Heroes approach, which he believes APB shares. But does it? We don't really know yet, do we? Maybe your clothing style affects your skills. That's something to wonder about. We'll see.

We haven't heard too much in the past month about the cops and robbers MMO All Points Bulletin from developer Realtime Worlds. At least not until recently, we haven't. While gameplay information may still be scare at least we now know that APB is entering its Alpha stage with an eventual fully public beta on the horizon. This information all comes from Mario Rizzo, Realtime Worlds' business development manager.

While it's no official announcement, it is the next best thing. We can certainly understand why a public beta would do a game like All Points Bulletin a lot of good -- it's not exactly your typical MMO or sandbox action game. Heck, it's very likely that many players will simply be enamored with the character creation process that was such a smash hit at GDC this year. You can count on us spending the first hour or two of our time with the game's beta making an awesome character.

The supposed "war" between consoles and PCs has been raging since the time the great MC Hammer walked the earth, with proponents of both sides taking pot-shots at the other for nearly as long as we can remember. We thought we'd heard just about every kind of comment that could be said between the two sides, but a recent interview with NVIDIA's Roy Taylor has proved us quite mistaken. According to Taylor, the future gaming as we know it is going to be a flip of the trend we've seen over the last ten years ago. Where once PC games served as the baseline and were ported over to consoles, now console games will be the baseline and PCs will be the recipients of enhanced ports. In other words, the end of the PC-exclusive is nigh.

If you just look at MMOs, which continue to drive the popularity of PC gaming, you can see that this is plainly false. While there are a number of MMOs scheduled to be released for consoles, with high profile names like Age of Conan, Champions Online, All Points Bulletin, and perhaps even Dungeons and Dragons, nobody has proven they can navigate the "maze of challenges" that come with cross-platform MMO development, let alone make a profit doing it. And in this blogger's mind, until MMOs officially cross-over to the dark side, it's too early to proclaim the PC-exclusive dead.

All Points Bulletin is one of those games that fans of Grand Theft Auto have been wanting for years. Merely saying 'want' cannot convey the unbridled desire that a number of people have expressed for an urban crime game where you're not completely isolated from other players. There is a certain person on the Massively team -- blown away by GTA: San Andreas years ago -- who would go to sleep with whispered prayers in the dark, that his deviant rampages could be shared online with his equally deviant friends around the world, day or night.

The allure of this type of game is strong, but equally strong is the likelihood of an overdose on pure chaos. One imagines a map full of amped up Criminals in desperate need of Ritalin, taking to the streets with RPG's and flattening traffic jams in backward-firing tanks, countered by a legion of overzealous Enforcers dispensing 'justice' with reckless abandon. Therein lies the problem: Part of what makes GTA so successful is that as Tommy Vercetti, or C.J. (or any of the other questionable protagonists a player becomes in the legacy title), there's no one else out there who's as badass as you. But what happens when mobs of Criminals or Enforcers of your caliber are turned loose in the city? What if they're even worse than you are? Welcome to the blender.

Two Hammers at MMO-centric blog gamebunny writes that Webzen is slowly making a retreat from the North American market. The Korean publisher, currently developing the much-anticipated Huxley, has cut Parfait Station and Wiki (aka Project Wiki) from its game roster on the North American site. Although Webzen has not announced cancellations of the titles, only three games remain displayed on the site: MU, Soul of the Ultimate Nation, and Huxley. Release dates are not set for SUN and Huxley.

The disappearance of Parfait Station and Wiki comes on the heels of Webzen relinquishing their publishing rights to All Points Bulletin, three years after having obtained them. Real Time Worlds bought back the rights to APB in April. These changes could diminish Webzen's presence in the North American market for the foreseeable future, and their radio silence on where Huxley is in terms of release doesn't help matters. Quite a number of people seem to be excited about Huxley, particularly among the Massively team; we can only hope that Webzen is just re-prioritizing their projects and releases for North America, and that they're not going to disappear on us anytime soon.

Massively Speaking Episode 5 runs down news and features from Massively.com for the week of May 5th - May 11th. There was just a teeny bit of a news drop last week from Blizzard. Join your regular hosts Michael and Shawn as well as guests Brenda Holloway and Akela Talamasca as we deconstruct the Lich King news, the APB/GTA rumor, and our exclusive previews of Vanguard game update 5.

Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot us an email to massivelyspeakingpodcast AT gmail DOT com. Maybe we'll read your letter on the air!

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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.

Eurogamer is reporting on rumors of what could be the holy grail of online gaming: a Grand Theft Auto massively multiplayer game. Rumors are circulating that Realtime Worlds reaquired the publishing rights for their in-development All Points Bulletin for a very specific purpose. Originally to be published by Webzen, Realtime now hopes to sell the game to Rockstar as a framework for a GTA MMO.

According to the site, they were tipped off that a GTA transition was the rationale behind the rights re-purchase. The article goes on to report that Realtime is claiming ignorance of this rumor. They admit that they pulled back the APB rights from Webzen to "give them some options", and that they'd be open to working with other companies to see the game published. Rockstar hasn't, as yet, commented on the rumor.

Have you been enjoying GTA IV? Would you jump into a GTA MMO?

If you somehow missed All Points Bulletin back when it made some serious waves at GDC '08, then here is your chance to get all caught up. GamesRadar has a preview up that pretty much sums up what we know so far about the title. While the preview is short, it only serves as a reminder to why we're prepared to give a pinky finger or two for this title. Well, the pinky finger offer is only good if the game is able to deliver on its promises, as we're somewhat attached to them.

We're pretty excited to see how development of the game will progress now that developer Realtime Worlds has secured $50 million in funding. Our imaginations are going fairly wild thinking about what new features could make it into the game now.

[via WarCry]

It seems like a natural progression for Rockstar to bring their venerable series to the massively multiplayer arena. After all, you've got a built in, recognizable franchise name based around the most classic multiplayer concept known to man – cops and robbers. I think every child has played a real life version of this game at some point in their lives (although perhaps more G rated). It's one of those universal themes that everyone instantly "gets", and yet, no MMO developer has cashed in on the concept. The time seems ripe for Rockstar to join Blizzard in the money printing business.

So how realistic is it that Rockstar might be producing a Grand Theft Auto MMO? Is such a game already in development? I did a little digging and I'll show you what I've been able to find thus far after the break. I'll also fill you in on a few MMOs with similar concepts that you might be able to play as early as this time next year.

In a new interview with Walter Kong, the Senior Vice President of Business Development at Realtime Worlds, explains the logic behind his team's recent reacquisition of the publishing rights for their upcoming game All Points Bulletin. Their latest round of fund-raising, which netted them a cool $50 million, gives them the a much higher degree of flexibility than they would have had under Webzen, so they took the opportunity to go independent, for a while anyway.

Kong explained that just because that just because they moved out from under Webzen doesn't mean they are necessarily looking to self-publish; they just want to keep their options open. What seems clear from the way they've handled themselves so far is that all the veteran blood, including CEO David Jones -- the brainchild of the Grand Theft Auto series, has made them shrewd in the ways of the business. Here's hoping they're as savvy at making their game as they are financing it.

Gamasutra is reporting that Realtime Worlds, makers of the Xbox 360 title Crackdown, has regained publishing rights for their in-development MMO. All Point Bulletin has been in development for some time, and the publishing rights for the game were sold to Webzen (Mu Online, SUN, Huxley) back in 2005. A large round of venture capital investement has afforded them this opportunity, though the article notes it hasn't been publicized what those rights cost.

Grand Theft Auto creator David Jones is head of the company, and says that this move 'marks a major milestone' for Realtime. The Urban MMO is slated to be arriving on PCs and Xbox 360s in the near future.

A crime MMO might seem like a great idea, riding on the coattails of such gaming successes as the GTA series and Max Payne, but what about in the MMO space? Would killing the mafia boss or jumping your car over a moving train be quite as fun and translate as well if it were done as an online multiplayer experience? Well, so far we have two shots at it (pun intended): All Points Bulletin and the recently-announced CrimeCraft. Will these games, and the possible onslaught of copycat games be able to recreate the success of their single-player ancestors?

In a recent article at MMOcrunch, they take a look at these possibilities and break down the genre according to what most interests us. They make a very good point about how most of the fun in these games is usually the destructive environments and generally screwing with the AI by blocking the streets with burned-out cars and downed telephone poles. This would not work quite as well in an MMO setting, unless someone at Realtime Worlds or Vogster Entertainment can prove us wrong.