They have. The fact is that hacking was -seriously- rampant for a while - Reloaded did this intentionally to figure out how people were hacking, and to make certain that they were going to be able to net hackers and only hackers.

Since January, several rather massive banhammer sweeps have occured, and the official forums contain lists of who's been banned. My last few dives in have seen a massive drop in hackers - still encounter them now and again, but it is now 'once every 20 to 30 missions', if that.

Of course, the problem with Idlers is still fairly common, so the old "Find 4 friends and go in as a group" still applies. Heavily.

... OK. I've played APB on and off since original release.

I've had to say this ... a few hundred times between then and now.

APB is -not- an MMO. It -is- a team-oriented FPS who's entire core gameplay mechanic is PVP. There's no actual quest-givers. "XP" exists, but not in the traditional sense.

Attempting to compare it to WoW, or any other current MMO on the market is invalid. The only reason it even falls under the umbrella term MMO is that the servers are able to support multiple concurrent discrete matches in one 'city' - by that ever so thin stretch of logic, it's an MMO. By that same stretch of logic, a 64 player TF2 server would be classed an "MMO".

No quest givers? Accurate. Your "Contacts" are just that - general supervisors in the chain of command, and they'll sell you some goodies if they like you enough or feel you've 'earned it'. The Missions make sense - a criminal is going to want to take advantage of what they can get when they can get it, the Enforcers will want to stop them. Ideally, one shouldn't -ever- have a mission without opposition - it does depend on servers and time of day, but it still is what it is. The backstory exists, from what I understand, but RTW and Reloaded seem content to sit on it, by and large - this is not really unexpected, as PVP shooters usually don't roll out with epic storyline progression.

Since you are the -first person ever- to bring this up, however, I feel a need to point something out that is logically inconsistent : On the point of "not being able to talk to the npc's" - Let me put a hypothetical out there. Let's say you're the NPC, and I will assume you don't mean a contact for obvious reasons, but just the random sheeple walking around town. You sure as hell don't trust the criminals, and there's some really big doubts in your mind that the enforcers are much better. Someone carrying an AK-47 walks up to you and says "Hi!" - are -you- going to stop and ask them to help you find your lost cat, or do you think it's best to possibly -try and get away from the bullet magnet- before a member of the opposing faction decides that they feel like spraying lead in that general direction? ... thought so. Head down, walk -faster-. Or, umm, you know, run in fear - the NPC's do that a lot. I don't much blame them.

As far as innovation - the game -did- innovate from an FPS viewpoint. Multiple concurrent yet still independant 'matches' that can in theory call in backup from each other occuring in one 'city' that can, on the drop of a hat, go from CQB to Vehicle to Vehicle combat. I can't easily think of -any- FPS title that does that.

... all that said? I agree with your overall score, although for reasons that have nothing to do with your own. You raised a few valid points even if you came at this from entirely the wrong angle. The sad reality is this game has no buisness being regarded as an MMO, and you can't really send an MMO reviewer into what really is a Pure Shooter and expect the review to make an awful lot of sense.

OK. Best choice I have for this, I think, is my reliable ol' dark / mace tanker on Liberty ... The Hare Club.

Wait, seriously? You guys are allready whining about new content? They've had the IP for less than 2 months, they've not even gotten a full dev staff on it yet, they haven't even started to address the balance issues or hacking - hell, they're working from a patch that never even made it to live ... and you're -allready- citing 'no new content' as a reason for not looking forward to it?

Good grief people. Let me put this in perspective for you : You're complaining that the used car in question doesn't have GPS and a Spoiler, when the engine isn't even fully installed and the transmission is missing gears.

Let's first see if they can get what they -have- working right, then, and only then, should we say "So where's the extra stuff?" I've played this game. I enjoyed this game. It was far from perfect, but it was slowly improving. I'm going to give Reloaded the time they need to get this game on it's feet, out the door, and functional before I start asking why there's no new X, Y, and Z.