APB Reloaded Open Beta Begins May 18

GamersFirst, the company that rescued APB from the smoldering ruins of Realtime Worlds' empire, has announced on its official blog that the game's open beta will begin on May 18.

However, if you're interested in getting in a little early, all you have to do is sign up for a GamersFirst account and then use this email address to sign up for the APB newsletter. The team is gradually "turning up the heat" on the servers in an attempt to avoid the usual MMO problem of millions of new subscribers all attempting to join at once.

The team has been "monitoring" hackers and cheaters to observe their behavior in an attempt to come up with a "radical" solution to the problem, which they promise to reveal soon. They say there's a "good solution" in place already which will start to see benefits by the time Open Beta starts.

The game looks set to follow a similar development cycle to other free-to-play and social games in that the initial release will be fairly "barebones" but include a working microtransaction shop, with additional features to be added over the coming months. Let's hope GamersFirst manages the game better than Realtime Worlds did.