Dear Shooter/MMO Fans:

The last few years have been rough for many fans of the Shooter/MMO genre.

Several innovative game titles with great communities have folded as they sought to bring together those of us who enjoy the fast-action, intense pace of a shooter, but also the character progression and persistence offered by MMOs.

Today, we mourn our latest fallen colleague, APB. In making APB, Realtime Worlds had a bold vision to make an MMO devoid of traditional tab-targeting, cast bars, and die-roll combat. We honor their effort and innovation, and greatly mourn the game's closing.

Sadly, the APB server shutdown leaves their entire community with nothing to shoot or blow up tonight!
So between today and Friday, September 24, 2010, we are offering refugees from APB and other Shooter/MMOs an opportunity to join Global Agenda's growing community more easily and affordably than ever.

We figure you deserve it. And you'll fit right in since you already know how to aim.

All players that purchase Global Agenda on the game's official webstore prior to September 24, 2010, using the promotion code "LongLiveShooterMMOs" will receive a 30% discount off the game. That's $20.99, £13.12 and €15.75!

This one-time purchase gives you full access to the game's content, with no monthly fees.

And, remember, you can try the game before you buy by playing the free trial, available here..

We at Hi-Rez Studios believe strongly in the Shooter/MMO genre. We celebrate and thank all developers advancing innovative Shooter/MMO concepts, as well as the fans that dedicate their time to playing and supporting these games.

Todd Harris
Executive Producer, Global Agenda

......Happy New Year to all APB-ers. I hope you had a great Holiday, and just like us, I hope you are ready for some really exciting things in 2011. Our New Years vow is simple; launch APB in 2011

So based on the transition work and R&D over the last several weeks, we now have enough clarity to at least make an initial prediction of when we will launch Closed Beta. Right now it looks like sometime in late February if everything goes exactly according to plan (and we know how often that happens ), but let's at least put it out there, CB will likely start sometime in February. Over the next week the team (lead by Jon-Enée, aka. Neume) will share exactly how you will be able to apply for participating in the CB, and we will then post the CB signup info as part of next week's update (and Neume will then also start sharing the details on the message boards as soon we are ready).

This week time to share a key deadline; in order to be considered for the first wave of Closed Beta keys, you need to submit your email at http://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/ by midnight PST on Tuesday February 15.

Once that registration closes, you will be assigned a Beta Registration ID. You will receive an email with this ID along with a custom link that will take you to the actual Beta Activation page. You need to log in to this page using your Gamersfirst ID, then you will need to fill out various survey questions, test a couple of ping times from your system to some of our sample locations, submit you DxDiag info, and then agree to the Closed Beta NDA. Presuming you fill all this out correctly, after passing the basic information review we will then activate beta access to the game using your specific Gamersfirst account.

The Beta will be geographically rolled out, with three different regions planned; US-West, US-East and Europe turned up at slightly different times. Tentatively we are aiming to turn up the first Closed Beta during the week of February 28. Given the million of infrastructure items and dependencies that we are handling in order to get this out the door, we reserve the right to delay the launch of the Beta for any reason if we think that the first launch needs additional infrastructure tweaks or if QA catches any last minute issues.

Well over a hundred thousand people have registered their interest in the Beta thus far! By the time we cut off the registrations I will make a new post with the final number. We also presume that about half of everyone who initially sign up will complete the second step in the process and activate the Beta accounts, so we will far exceed the number of people we actually expected or even needed for the first Closed Beta. But that's clearly great news. Stay tuned, and we will make a quick mid-week update with the final numbers and more launch details this week.