How APB's Persistent World Will Work

Edge Magazine recently sat down with David Jones, creative director for Realtime Worlds, the studio behind upcoming action MMO APB. He spends some time talking about their thinking behind the game, and he also gets into how their persistent online worlds will work. Quoting: "... you absolutely want 'moments' in the game. Even if it's just for thirty minutes, you want people to become celebrities — OJ Simpson on TV with the police chasing after him: you want those kind of moments in the game. We can't create them, so it's about what mission can ultimately lead to those kinds of experiences. We have what we call heat mechanics in the game, so if a criminal has just been on a complete rampage, recklessly blowing stuff up and killing people, heat builds up until eventually we unlock him to every single enforcer on the server. It's not part of their missions, it's just that this guy has become number one wanted and everyone has the authority to take him down. That's a fun mechanic from both sides; everybody who's a criminal is going to want to reach that and if you're on a mission for the enforcers you'll see that guy and wonder whether you should break away to get him. You get a lot of compound stuff which we never planned for, because it's a hundred real players interacting in ways we don't expect."

Am I missing something?

[Fluffeh]

I thought the whole concept of persistent world meant you could build up your characters (level, skills, possessions etc). If you keep swapping between good guys, bad guys and celebs, how is it persistent?

Re:Am I missing something?

[Yoozer]

If you keep swapping between good guys, bad guys and celebs, how is it persistent?

Hey, Hollywood hasn't magically disappeared since it was founded in the 19th century, so I'd call that pretty persistent.

Re:Legitimizing trolls

[dangitman]

I have to wonder what the result will be in APB when everyone is seeking their 15 minutes of fame.

Yeah, sounds like the Employee of the Month Award in The Simpsons, where the plant is contractually obligated to give the award to every employee at least once. Real fame is rare, and some players simply won't be good/outrageous enough to reach that level. So, you either end up with people getting disillusioned with the promise of the game, or the concept of "fame" gets diluted so much as to be worthless.

P.S: Excuse my ignorance, but was Kuro5hin actually a site devoted to trolling? Not that I ever read it, but I was under the impression it was a run-of-the-mill discussion board like Metafilter.