Pirates of the Burning Sea

http://www.warcry.com/articles/view/interviews/4809-PotBS-Server-Mergers-Explained-Our-Interview-With-CEO

My personal favourites:

"Earlier this week, Flying Lab Software made the most dreaded of announcements: server merges. Typically, this means an MMO is in trouble, but according to CEO Russell Williams, that is not the case for Pirates of the Burning Sea, which remains a healthy game, for the most part in line with their projections."

&

"So, the bottom line is simple: Are Flying Lab Software happy with the level of popularity they have received? "If you take Spain out of the equation, yeah," Williams said. Further to this, while there has been the inevitable decline in players associated with the loss of those free accounts from launch, the actual numbers have trended positive. "Our paid subscribers have been going up.""

I will limit myself to the observation that I would hate to know what would Russell Williams labels as unhealthy game with subscriptions going down.

Enjoy.

I'm at a lost... really.

Paid Subscriber count is going up.

User activity is low (actually downward trend from launch).

Add in server mergers.

Currently having about 65,000 subscriptions for approximately 3 months

Well if there is a logical truth to this...

I guess there are a number of people paying, but not playing.  Kind of forgot to hit the cancel button or just too lazy to do so.  If that is the case, those are the best customers to have; they pay, consume no resources and say nothing.

Other than that, going by what has been put out as true, I can't think of anything else how that would compute.  This doesn't fit the Eve-Online Model.

I thought this part was both telling, and unfortunate:

"This forced them to think about merging that Spanish server; once they were on that path they began looking at the game in general and decided that their players would be better served with more players in each world."

So, they weren't even thinking about merging the servers until they made the decision on the spanish server?  The dozens and dozens of requests from beta and launch to merge servers wasn't moving them at all?  They just upped and decided one day that "more players in each world would be better".

Jeez...what were these guys doing in Feb. and March.  Server merges were the main topic of conversation on the boards.  These guys must have been out for a long lunch.

BTW:  I thought the comment about being pretty sure the boxes got on the shelves in Spain was funny.  Glad they paid SOE to distribute....nothing says "worth it" like a job you're "pretty sure" got done.

Originally posted by Bountytaker

...

BTW:  I thought the comment about being pretty sure the boxes got on the shelves in Spain was funny.  Glad they paid SOE to distribute....nothing says "worth it" like a job you're "pretty sure" got done.

I can give 'some evidence' that the game is available in Australia too.  It is the cover disc on this months ATOMIC magazine.  But Bigpond clearly asked SOE about marketing and promotion because aside from that, unless you know about it, you would be hard pressed to find it.

The lesson from this is clear IMHO.  If you sign a distribution deal with a  company that says they can make things go "like clockwork" then make them put their money where their mouth is - have penalty clauses for $$$ and performance benchmarks.

Use your community too.  The internet allows you to contact people all around the globe who can physically check if a game is on a local shelf.

i love it when i load up a brand new MMO to find 10+ servers to choose from.  they have to be kidding themselves to think that they can fill 10 servers at launch.  as for Pirates of the burning sea, its a niche market so they will never fill more than 3 servers

Quite honestly what do you expect from a developing mmo company?

They are all going to use spin to promote their ideas, they are certainly not going to paint a picture of doom & gloom.

Weather you accept it or believe in it is another matter.

Originally posted by DJXeon
...

Weather you accept it or believe in it is another matter.

Whether you believe they should have included weather?

65000 eh? lol ,do you not think this might be tied to station subscriptions?  there is no way on this earth Potbs has or has had 65000 people playing it ,  id be surprised if it ever had 6500 tbh,

SADDAAAAAA

Why didn't FLS listen to us when we warned you about selling your soul to the devil and agree he publish PotBS? Rick, I wished FLS the best but eveything SOE touches turns to smelly baby poo after a bucket of caramel ice cream. Take another look at the SOE line up of MMOs is there one that seems to be going anywhere? One game that hasn't run out of steam 3 months after release? One MMO company that has dropped more bombs than SOE? Hell SOE has dropped more bombs than the bloody Luftwaffe did on the east end!

SOE dropped the ball on all of thier responsibilities, servers merged after 3 months and now Rusty is taking an SOE crash course in damage limitation. SOE no doubt offered an attractive short term deal on paper, but now I bet you guys are thinking "I should've wiped my butt with that contract and flushed it".

You'll never turn this situation around until SOE is out of the picture in my opinion. If you had published PotBS yourself over the net would you be in a worse position than you are now? Go the route that CCP did, a few years ago they had about the same amount of subs and bought out thier publisher before that. Well S&S pulled out of it and CCP had to buy the rights or sink. Why not do that? Wouold it be all that difficult to get the servers going to host the game and download it? Maybe I'm talking out of my back end but it's what I believe, and what I believe the best chance for PotBS and FLS is.

BTW Rick Sadaa doesn't do push ups, he pushes the planet down!

I remember when Rick was over here in damage control mode after announcing they were teaming up with SOE.  He actually said that they realized they were losing people by having SOE on their product, but that they felt they would get 10x the number of subscribers by having SOE put a physical box on the shelves.

How is that working out for you now Rick?  Do you still feel that "SOE has marketing and distribution down cold" like you said a few months back?  Do you feel like you got your full monies worth?

I can only guess that seeing how things turned out in practice rather than theory, you wish you had listened to those who tried to warn you.

**this comment was to funny and describes the whole distribution mess to a tee.

"BTW:  I thought the comment about being pretty sure the boxes got on the shelves in Spain was funny.  Glad they paid SOE to distribute....nothing says "worth it" like a job you're "pretty sure" got done." -Bountytaker