Pirates of the Burning Sea Correspondent Ernest Ross takes a look at the troubles of the game's Oceanic Defiant server and the difficulties that this game has had in reaching the Australian market.

Back in November, after weeks of promising an ailing Australian playerbase that a solution for their problems was in the works and an announcement would be made "soon," FLS CEO "Rusty" Williams delivered a devlog in which he outlined Flying Lab's decision to discontinue their business relationship with BigPond. BigPond, a subsidiary of Telstra (which is about as popular with Aussie gamers as Sony Online Entertainment seems to be with everyone else), had been Pirates of the Burning Sea's distributor Down Under and from the very beginning the majority of Australian players protested FLS's decision to work with "failstra," promising that no good could come of it. They were right.

So what was the solution? To dump BigPond and fire up a brand new server with a Port Battle schedule timed to cater to the Australian and late Pacific Time Zone players who had been expressing their own discontent ever since the PB Schedule system was put in place to prevent "night flips" (for those who don't know, this is the act of taking advantage of time zone differences by putting a port into contention while the bulk of the port owner's players were sleeping, generally carried out by European players on the North American servers and US players on the European servers, resulting in a port battle scheduled for a time when the defenders could not hope to field a full fleet). Since the beginning, FLS has chosen not to impose geographic restrictions on their servers. Among the reasons for this decision they have cited that many of today's MMO gamers are adults with jobs whose available playtime may not always coincide with the majority of their own time zone's players. The new Aussie server would be called "Defiant" and would be handled through SOE like the rest of the servers. FLS would also ramp up advertising in the Australian market to try and make up for the lack of advertising provided by BigPond.

Read Defiant's Growing Pains

Having had first hand experience with Defiant's community I would advise other non-australian players to tread carefully if they want to play on Defiant mainly due to a bad community that some players create due to being insular & disrespectful of others.

Also it is known that FLS forum moderation is biased towards Australians.

Originally posted by DJXeon

Having had first hand experience with Defiant's community I would advise other non-australian players to tread carefully if they want to play on Defiant mainly due to a bad community that some players create due to being insular & disrespectful of others.

Also it is known that FLS forum moderation is biased towards Australians.

More like your first hand experience being one of the asshats that made it unfriendly.  Must be nice to rewrite reality in your head all the time.

Originally posted by BingoBango00

More like your first hand experience being one of the asshats that made it unfriendly.  Must be nice to rewrite reality in your head all the time.

The childish arguments were going on long before I joined & populations increased while I was there.

If the community improves a bit I might come back but as it is today I'm not the slightest bit interested.

For me its not that Potbs is a bad game it attracts the wrong kind of people that land up pulling it down.

The FLS boarding party leader thinks that introducing Ship soccer is a great idea, that tells you something about the immature mentality - If someone brings out an Age of Sail game based more on historical accuracy & respect I'll be there.

The thread topic is hardly news as it has been flogged to death on other forum threads; far better to let it die.

Originally posted by DJXeon

Originally posted by BingoBango00

More like your first hand experience being one of the asshats that made it unfriendly.  Must be nice to rewrite reality in your head all the time.

 

The childish arguments were going on long before I joined & populations increased while I was there.

If the community improves a bit I might come back but as it is today I'm not the slightest bit interested.

For me its not that Potbs is a bad game it attracts the wrong kind of people that land up pulling it down.

The FLS boarding party leader thinks that introducing Ship soccer is a great idea, that tells you something about the immature mentality - If someone brings out an Age of Sail game based more on historical accuracy & respect I'll be there.

The thread topic is hardly news as it has been flogged to death on other forum threads; far better to let it die.

 

That's the second time you've linked Daeke's playful post as if someone whose title is Community Intern Liaison has his every whim converted into code and made an in-game reality.  Next thing you know, they'll have ME rebalancing classes for PvP (The days of FT OPness has passed, now it is the day of the BU.  When I am king, CTs shall reign supreme!).   I can't see how that's on-topic in relation to an article about a poor choice in distribution deals and a mishandled server launch.   But as I also didn't catch your use of the video game term "ganking" in reference to the activities of real-life pirates such as those operating out of Somalia, I guess I'll give it the benefit of the doubt...

I'd like to compliment the writer for having done such a well-written article. Unfortunately the articles here in mmorpg.com have lost much of their professionalism through the years but yours kept a professional style and point of view.

I recently transfered 3x lvl 50 chars with high end ships and a couple of alts to Defiant to make room for another nation on another server. The little I have played on Defiant since then people seem friendly enough and even though there isnt a lot of action going on there seem to be some of it, enough to keep you busy if you just take the time and effort to head there. To me it seems a small, low population server but far from a dead or very unpleasant one.