Back in April, Dan Rubenfield (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, etc.) ranted, raved, and put MMO developers 'on notice.' And, at the end, admonished developers to "quit making PC games. It's a waste of time and money". Unsurprisingly, people hit back, and now over at GameSetWatch, Joe Ludwig (producer of Pirates of the Burning Sea) has a snappy little response detailing six reasons why MMOs are just plain harder to develop for consoles versus PCs. Does that mean it won't start happening in greater numbers? Of course not:

Up until now, pirates in Flying Lab's MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea have gotten the short end of the stick. While the different nations had a choice of career paths, pirates were pirates, which works fine in PVE but in group PVP it led to an imbalance...everyone knows what they're up against when they're fighting pirates. Well not anymore. The upcoming 1.4 patch of the game is introducing two new pirate classes, separate factions in the Brethren of the Coast. Existing pirates will be become Cutthroats, the more brutal type of pirates, while players creating new characters can opt between that or the new Buccaneer class.

What the fuck is going on here? You all say how sick you are of MMOs with elves and orcs, so Flying Lab go and make one with pirates, and nobody signs up? Urgh. Which means it's all your fault that seven of the game's eleven servers are closing down, in order to bring about a "higher density" of players. Guess at the moment there's a "low density" of players. Hopefully this means those who do enjoy the shivering of timbers and the buckling of swashes get a better experience, and that this isn't the beginning of the end for the game.
Pirates of the Burning Sea Shutters 7 Servers [Game|Life]

Flying Lab Software was released the first content patch for their booty plundering MMO, Pirates of the Burning Sea. This new patch contains a tonne of fixes, changes and additions to the game all of which can be found on the Pirates of the Burning Sea customer support forum. The changes stretch across the board to cover skills, ships, outfitting, combat and many others. It should be noted that these myriad changes are currently only available for North American and European players. All the rest of you salty dogs will have to wait just a bit longer.

Release Notes for build 1.2.67.0 [Flying Lab Software via Strategy Informer]

Perhaps as a tip of the hat to our convict roots, Flying Lab's parrot-and-grapeshot MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea will be released to the Australian public for free. Aussie telecommunications provider Telstra are sponsoring the deal, where all interested persons have to do to nab themselves either a download key or a DVD of the full game is visit Telstra's website and register their email address. And before you ask, no, you don't need to be a Telstra customer to get the deal, it's open to anyone and everyone (though BigPond customers will get 20% off the $US 15.95 per month subscription rate, which you'll still need to pay - you're "only" getting the game for free). My swash is well and truly buckled.
GameArena - PotBS [via PALGN]

Prima, the purveyors of game guides everywhere has announced that their latest guide for Flying Lab Software's new MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea will come with some freebies. The guide, which can be purchased at stores ($US 19.99) or downloaded digitally ($US 14.99) will include an exclusive code for an in-game red parrot and the chance to win a limited edition 8"x10" high gloss ship print signed by the Flying Lab development team. Prima promises an in-depth guide that features details of every ship, a career guide, tables of all skills and recipes, and tips on taking advantage of the user-based economy and trading systems. The print version will also include a pull out map to help pave your way to massive pillaging and booty on the high seas. If you head over to the Prima Games website now, you can download a $US 10 off coupon for purchase of the guide at Best Buy.

I have a confession to make: Nowadays I find it heard to retain interest in a massively multplayer online game for more than an hour or so. They just bore the crap out of me. They're all so transparent, so same, the sameness, I think is what really kills the experience for me.

So the only reason I started checking out Pirates of the Burning Sea was because I'm reviewing it for Variety. What I've found so far is a game, that while still suffering under the yoke of World of Warcraft, manages to introduce at least a few unique elements to the thread-worn mechanic found in nearly all MMOs. I speak of the ship-to-ship warfare which I find very reminiscent of the Ancient Art of War at Sea a game I simply loved.

Ship-to-Ship combat isn't the entire game, for most people at least, but cutting through the water, minding the wind direction and cannon reload times, all in real time mind you, is a pure joy and makes me want to play through the rest of the game, no matter how familiar it might be, just to upgrade the ship to something improbable and monstrous. I'm told, I shit you not, that you can have battles between entire flotillas of these amazing Tall Ships too, up to 25 a side. I haven't experience that yet, but I may actually stick around long enough to try.

I'm not 100 percent sure, yet, if I'd pay the full $US 15 a month to play the game, but you can figure that out yourself now that it has gone live, effective today.

[Thanks to Luke for the bit of photoshoppery on that image, arrr]

Pirates of the Burning Sea, the best piratical MMO I haven't played, is launching its worldwide beta this Friday. North American players can sign up for access to the beta through File Planet, with FP subscribers getting priority access. The open beta is set to go live at 5 p.m. on Friday.

Meanwhile pre-orders for European players is scheduled to start on Dec. 12. Yurpeens who pre-order the game will get:

* An invitation to the "Pre-Boarding Party" allowing them access to the live game up to 15 days prior to launch, and the ability to keep their characters, skills and equipment after launch with purchase of game and paid subscription. (characters will have a level cap of 20 during this time)
Captain's Best Friend - a blue and yellow parrot;
* Mighty Blades - Swedish Rapier, Old World Steel or Musketeer's Matching Blades (depending upon which fighting style is selected) and;
* Original Game Soundtrack CD - 60 minutes of pirate themed music (comes in pre-order box)

I really need to check this game out. I think I must have some sort of mental block after playing through a chunk of one of the early betas for the Pirates of the Caribbean MMO.

Pirates of the Burning Sea

Here's some cool news for fans of all things piratey! If you head over to FilePlanet right now you can join the Pirates of the Burning Sea stress test weekend! It is open to all, and Flying Lab has announced that everyone who gets to level 5 in the stress test gets a spot in the real beta for the game! The catch? The stress test is a 4.57GB download, and it ends tomorrow. Could we have gotten you this news faster? Possibly, but we were busy listening to the Portal song over and over again while petting our cat in one of those rare moments when he isn't trying to eat our hands. Enough reading, there's no time to lose! Hit the link below to join the stress test, and then sleep and hope to god your bandwidth is strong enough to make it!

Pirates of the Burning Sea Stress Test [FilePlanet]

"What happened to the October 23rd Pirates of the Burning Sea preorder start" you ask? Weird, I was just writing up a story about that. Turns out that the death of Gods and Heroes had a profound effect on the distribution of the Pirates preorder boxes, as Sony Online Entertainment dealt with refunding those who had gone ahead and preordered the promising looking mythological MMO. There was a news post over at the official PotBS site which doesn't mention the Gods and Heroes issue, though if you hit the link to the forums below you'll get the full story, as well as several tracks from the game's soundtrack offered as a sorry for the delay from Flying Lab. Pirates of the Burning Sea preorder boxes should be in stores November 13th, containing all of the parroty goodness promised.

PotBS Pre-Order Update [PotBS Forums]