Pirates of the Burning Sea

[Ian(not Ian)]

Avast me NTSC-UK Hearties

PotBS is released and live tomorrow 22/1/2008 chums.
Anyone thinking of plundering the Caribbean as a British Officer, Frenchie, Spaniard or Scurvy Pirate?
Indications are this MMO has decent ship to ship combat similar to Eve-Online, lots of PvP potential, land-based fighting and treasure hunting with yer wee avatar and a deep crafting system with so many facets no one character can do them all, hence crafting salty sea dogs who team up will win the day. Capping it all there are supernatural adventures to shiver yer timbers* with Ghost Ships and the like to chase across the high seas and islands of the Caribbean.

A jolly good overview to be found here....

http://www.whitewolfclan.net/pobs/review.htm

11 servers going up it seems, so if anyone is interested please post the server you choose and hopefully any and all NTSC-UKers will choose the same one.

* should that be shiver me timbres?

A sucker for MMOs I am

[elaniel]

Is this the Pirates of the Caribbean online game finally out outside the uSA?

Or is it another one?

[GluedOnBeard]

I think its another one as this just hit stateside too looking at the foums, it looks great but appears to have several flaws (such as I think Pirates can not attack each other?) so I am waiting to see how it pans out, I am playing EVE at the moment but depending on how this does I may be tempted to switch as I deiced I left it too long to go back to ffXI

[Zanza]

Playing this at the moment. My characters name is Morse Argyre, currently kaining this with a couple of people I know online, there are about 4-5 of us at the moment. Anyone is welcome to join in the fun, we have a vent server up and running, give me an add in game or a pm if you want details.

As for the game, I'm really enjoying it so far, it works a bit like the dungeons and dragons/guildwars style mmo's, where the quests are in contained dungeons. That said, there is the open ocean to conduct your fighting in too. This game is as close as you will get to something like Sid Mieres pirates as an MMO.

[mikewl]

Been trying this out on the preorder early access, im not really sure yet whether its a game I will stick to for any real length, the ship to ship combat is very well done, but the rest is quite dissapointing, avatar combat and all the ports being so similar, also im not a fan of instances and this game uses them by the bucket load.

Still giving it the odd go here and there to see if it clicks at some point, always takes awhile to get stuck into an mmorpg.

[Ian(not Ian)]

Which faction are you playing Zanza. Scurvy Bilge Rat of a Pirate I am....'Tomahawk Kid' Level 8 at the moment with a wee 8 gun schooner.
Aye it is probably as near as you'll get to Sid Meier's Pirates in an MMO, but I do have a few niggles with it gameplay wise, niggles which will likely not be resolved for a very long time, or maybe even never at all.

Land based combat is total rubbish, and I mean rubbish. afore-mentioned The Dungeons & Dragons sports a real-time stat based 'get-stuck-in' style of combat which PotBS could have emulated to good effect, instead Flying Labs put up a total bag o' ****e.

Ship battles are indeed very good, but already I'm seeing repetition despite the dev's assertion that no two battles will be the same. Sure...they won't but only (f'r instance)because I may choose to use extra gunpowder in one encounter, but not in the next.
For some reason last night's battles when viewed from a more dynamic close up camera proved impossible as the ship's sails refused to change to transparent.

Crafting....Perhaps the deepest thing the game has to offer is a dull affair. Buy a warehouse and some workshops and set them to work, all well 'n' good, but you never get to actually see these structures you've bought. Surely a wee map where you could postion your buildings is not beyond the wit of Flying Labs.

As mentioned above towns and ports look exactly the same. I actually landed at a port last night, thought 'oops', thinking somehow I'd been turned around in open sea and was back where I started.

Graphics, even when maxed, look like they were designed with the PS2 in mind, adequate, but nothing to write home about. Annoyingly the camera will not pull back nearly far enough to make moving around ports comfortable.

No built-in Voice-chat tut tut.

On their own nothing game-breaking, but this is 2008, we expect one of the 'M's in MMORPG to mean 'MORE'.

Dunno If this one will stay on me ol' PC after the first month. We'll see.

[Zanza]

I'm with the English Ian.

After a bit more play I'm totaly in agreement. It had me hooked for the first few hours but I'm not feeling quite so drawn in anymore, infact I havn't touched it for the last two days - playing undertow instead... I doubt I'm going to put any serious time into this one, even when playing with a bunch of mates the repetition is brutal. I've not really had a go at any pvp stuff yet, maybe thats where the fun lies.