One of the last major patches basically screwed a lot of things up including non-premium players. Initially non-prem players would only get paid about $200 or less each mission whereas prem players would get $200 + $2500 extra in some cases (often it was just a few hundred extra).

With the few patches before today's, they screwed up every car in the game and made premium basically the only way to play. The Morai for example no longer has that great ramming power and its speed has been gimped as well. My Doltan Broadwing is now one of the fastest non-sports cars available and has the ramming power of the old Morai (and then some). The big ol' security truck is useless now. It has about half the health it had before, ~30% less ramming ability, swerves on tight fast turns, and drives like the old civilian van (hell the handling is basically the same).

As if to add insult to injury, the premium Whisper (weapon) now owns everyone and anything. It has better range than a sniper rifle. Super great accuracy at full auto or burst/semi. Every other weapon is basically crap in comparison now. A few other weapons have changed as well. The HVR and DRM (sniper files), for example, has 6 per mag and 18 rounds instead of 35 rounds reserve. Meaning instead of 7+1 mags of ammo, you now have 3+1 mags instead. The JG for example can no longer be used out the window of a car. The NFAS auto shotty has a much wider spread than ever before. All shotguns have a reduced damage per pellet (I think).

The last patch (before today) and today's patch rebalanced the money earned issue. Now non-premium players get a bit more (upwards of $1000-$1200 on tough missions). There's strong hints that the Russian players will be moved off to their own server (basically removing most of the asshats and cheaters) from the EU and NA servers. Threat levels are being lowered and rebalanced so you aren't getting Threat 5 in a matter of a few missions. A bunch of other changes as well.

What pisses me off the most besides the rampant cheating and general asshats is the fact that premium players get stuff that are leagues better than non-premium players. Basically ruining the game as this causes a pretty wide gap to form.

It's still pretty clear the message GamersFirst is sending: APB Reloaded might be a free-to-play game, but you should have a premium account.