It isnt' the keyboard's fault - AoC disabled the emotes for a time, and the same with Follow - follow is buggy and therefore the follow key does not work.  to get follow to work, you have to disband and regroup after every zone and i am told after every time someone levels up.

Funcom is the problem with the keyboard - they told the Zboard people what was offered and then disabled those functions.  Some of the functions are indeed back.

The combat system is a freaking nightmare to try to map to a keyboard - the alt key is permanantly bound to switch to a hotbar that you can't reach any other way.  redoing the keybinds means you can't really help anyone who asks you questions about the game's commands/keys so that's a pain in the butt early in the game.

According to what my guild snoop has been reading, they are attempting to make it audible to all, so you can have group talk, public talk and private whispers - just like what we  have now. 

I have always resisted speaking just in group or guild but now its habit - its rare to see anyone actually talking in /say.  Often you cannot even get people to reply except by private message.  Maybe this will help.

According to what i read, they will have 'public' area based chat, so that could be a good thing and maybe encourage people to talk more.  They'll have mute features so you can get rid of someone annoying, just like /ignore. 

I'm slightly hopeful about it and i'll be trying it on the test server friday, when i'll have time to both download and mess with it.

No word on the skeletal revamp but Guild housing is aimed for September - early October.  Rumors about the skeletal revamp - they were talking about skirts as part of the clothing options forthcoming and either skeletal revamps are so far in the future they're just going ahead with the planning for new clothes without considering the revamp since it won't be for some time, or the skeletal revamps are so close that they have the info they need and are in testing now with the new clothing.

fun enough that 3 of my cheap friends who were only playing because it was free switched to pay to get the extra content.

Its a hell of a lot of fun.  And relatively kid safe so i can rec it to my friends who have rug rats.

yes, there was a monthly subscription if you didn't want to see the ads and wanted all content unlocked. 

nevertheless, there WAS and still IS  a free to play version.  And there is nothing to buy unless you want the unlocked content - bigger ships, bigger badder weapons.  We are all on the same servers and can play together.

I know this as several of my freinds played for free for months. Some dropped out long before reaching cap - it wasn't their thing enough to pay to play, or they lost interest.  Some chose to pay to play.  Some just play now and then and there is no reason for them to pay for a game they only play for 5 hours a month.

If you think that because you can't get the same thing they paying members get that it isn't fair, then all I can do is giggle at you and move on - there will always be people who think they should be handed things for which other people pay.

this game, PotC, has always been free to play or pay for additional content.  there was never a 7 dollar fee.  I've been in the game since early beta. I have had several of my friends come to join me and all of them either found it not to their liking right away and quit - about a third of them - started in the beta and chose to pay to play, or played free content until they ran out and then chose to pay to play.

Gamecards seem to be difficult for people outside the USA to get - I buy them for my british friend and just email him the code.  If you have american friends, you can try that.  they sell the cards at target but you can't seem to order them online. v_v

My guild and i play it every week - we like the break from games like everquest and other games that can feel like work some days - its light and fairly easy but has some challenges - its on the high end of casual games.  Try the free version first - nothing to lose.  if you like it and don't want the hassle of canceling, use a gamecard.  you can get them at Target.  they're back with teh video games and mp3 players.

The art is what it is.  Its not superrealistic.  its fun. 

It is however, kid friendly, and some of the MMO players that are in my guild ran away from it because it does not have the usual mmo style.  If that is what you are looking for, don't bother.  Still.  Its free to download and try. if you hate it, delete it.  ::shrug::

To solve lag problems - go to the map and find a quiet server and it will let you switch from the map.  Quiet servers = less lag.  just beware - it also means none of the bigger tougher characters have taken out the tougher meaner ships if you are going to hunt at sea.

I was in beta for this and for pirates of the burning sea.  I was very pleasantly surprized by PotC and i was very disappointed in Pirates of the Burning sea.  If you love the latter, don't bother with the former. 

i got a warning and never could get them to tell me what it was i did or show me a log so i can't really say for sure,  I just know i do not cuss in open channel so ...

I'm presuming they're combing the logs with some kind of program.  they *might* have lightened up since launch, i do not know.

well...swear on line and they'll cancel it for you?

Still love it.  might not have the best graphics out there but it has beautiful, beautiful sunsets.  I wish i could take the skys from this game and replace every other one of my games skys with these ones.

I like PotC and find Pirates of the Burning sea to be beautiful but tedious.  yawn. 

I like PotC simply because i can get my friends, we can all jump on the same ship and be hunting and questing together in a matter of minutes, high or low level doens't matter.  give me playability over the pretty pretty avatars any day.

I prefer PvE.  PvP is purely a fantasy, a 'wouldn't it be nice' sort of thing where the 'bad guys' would play to lose or to defend their own turf rather htan gank people.

I am not a competitive gamer - what i want is to go in and fight with, not against, other players to take down opponents.  I actually don't *care* if its pvp or pve as long as i am having fun with a group of friends.  Until roleplaying games came along, i did not play games.  like... at all.  having to compete with any friend - poker, chess, atari shoot em ups - whatever - they really lacked appeal.

WITH.  not AGAINST!

Always.

>>>Unfortunately do to an unfortunate incident involving kicking out a csr from a town and then ganking him, the ability was revoked. <<<

Omg tragically funny. 

Sadly though, that's what happens to *all* strategy in the games - someone figures out how to exploit it and the ability is removed, leaving us with the same homogenized pap that all games start to deteriorate into as time passes and rather than find and aggressively ban people who exploit, they remove the exploitable content.

I understand - its business, and they just can't get rid of everyone who does it without catching some people who are not doing so and they can't just ban everyone or the games would be kinda empty.  But trust me.  I've complained about some really nasty behavior in game, and i've worked as a helper in a game and found that we're not actually able, in most open-to-the-public  games, to do much about it until certain legal lines are crossed.

I don't raid - its boring.  I don't PVP - its frustrating since the same guy you popped 15 minutes ago will be back and in your face again with no real penalty for death.  Don't get me wrong.  I've played PVP - Planetside was a little bit of a thrill ride even though i sucked most heinously 90% of the time - the problem is many fold - preventing 'exploits' can also prevent strategy from being effective and it can come down to who has the best gear which can be ebayed by the impatient or camped for levels and gear by the jobless who actually have time to spend 80 hours a week *just* playing the game.

All i want to do is hang out, kill a few things with my buddies, maybe have a tavern to play cards in or dice or something while we socialize and wait for the rest of the party to show up, do some crafting that isn't as tedious as taking up the profession in real life, nor so easy that its a push the button get 200 bandages or whatever, do some funny stuff, and be able to smack mouthy 'tards up side the head. 

PVP *sounds* great, and in theory, i'd be all over it.  except it isn't great.  Its full of griefers who camp people 20 levels lower than they are because somehow it makes them feel good to kill things that are no challenge and prove their manhood.  Corpse camping, zoneline camping, and note above - exploit prevention actually favors the griefers because there is no acutal executable strategy available in most games to sneak past em/outsmart em etc etc.

The effort of learning to survive long enough in a pvp world to enjoy it isn't cost effective in time - i only have so much time to devote to the game per day and trust me, i have more than a lot of people.

I'd like to see a more realistic game world run by players, where animals behaved like animals and deer didnt' turn to attack when you shot them with a bow, bunnies didn't chew your peasant legs off, and a fox could not kill a level one ranger in 2 hits. Where if some player character named KILLYOUALLNOOBS! was being a pain, people could band together and kill him - permanantly.  

I just don't think its ever going to happen.  Too many people are more interested in exploiting the games than playing within the concept and rules to make that sort of environment work.

One of the better ways for casual lazy folk like me is to get guildmates who are Obsessive Compulsive to drag me through the quests. hehe.

I am a pretty causal player.  I dislike raids and endgame content which is mostly 'stand around and wait for the raid to start and try not to fall asleep, then everyone dies 3 or 4 times and someone (not me) rolls fat lewt.'

I think you need to find some like minded friends to quest with.  My own guild has 'guild day' which is friday, where we meet up and try to get quests done for each other, with the understanding that during the week you do the parts you can solo. 

Fine a nice casual guild.  and you will have balls of fun.

I'm in the game.  over the last week, they've improved lag a lot, and without breeching the NDA, i can't really say much about game play.  I enjoy it.  A lot.  I crashed a lot the first week - i've played all weekend the last two days and i had two crashes total, which is not bad at all for a game in beta during a stress test.

yes, they need better community, forums, support, something, but really - its a nice game, good for casual play, which is what i need - i already have eq2, and that's a freaking career of a game. 

The graphics are fairly simple.  I like them.  They could be better but i like the 'cartoonish' feel to it.  and you can get a heck of a lot more character variation in this game than in some others i could mention.

Bottom line - i like it and if i can fit it into my game budget, i will be playing it and bringing my guildmates from 3 other games.