:) I am actually still surprised that PotBs is still running to be honest. But there again, isnt it SoE name tagged. If from what i have been reading i think SoE have blundered bigtime, and many core players are not happy, lose them and they will be in serious trouble, especially if they dont go back. How long can a game go on for with the bills struggling to be paid for? Server merges and removal of servers are 1 way to cut costs and stay afloat, but without showing a decent profit margin (if any), it will only take so long before the plug is pulled.

As always the die hard fans will scream and shout, half of it can be blamed on some of those players themselves (new player logs in, ask questions, gets flamed/rebuked for it, another is you get told to FO and go play something else as we dont want you here, and then PvP server gankers/griefers take their toll on new starters on those servers too). easy to go elsewhere (or back to a game you did play beforehand) but left to try something new.

As for word of mouth spreading about how good games are and if they are worth getting, then yes. It spreads really fast thesedays and can make or break games (and companies and even jobs). How good the company is at fixing problems and how quickly and informative they are also helps. Staying quiet and stum really only hastens the wildfire spread of bad publicity. Once the bad starts, it is harder to get rid of.

What is it with the SOE twitch of some people on these forums?  Does it have to do with long-standing grievances over Star Wars: Galaxies?  

The only thing which SOE can be blamed for in POTBS's case is to have picked it up for publishing.  The game is still property of Flying Lab Software, and they alone are to be blamed for any of the above concerns.

The review itself barely scratches the surface.  Skirmish and port governance aren't into the game, that much is obvious -- they're conspicuously absent.  Unintended consequences were the norm, but the problem is that every attempt to solve them led to yet more unintended consequences.  To name a few: Unrest decay turnoff, underdog tools, 6v9 superganks, post-insurance inflation, etc.

The article also failed to mention a few of the particulars surrounding what was going on inside the community: Where is there no mention of  "No Crying in the Red Circle" as the developers' ideological statement in the early months?  Why only mention skill changes, massive and sometimes inexplicable though they were, when they were for the most part deck chairs being rearranged on the Titanic? Why dedicate all this space to a discussion of avatar combat -- the weakest point of the game almost by unanimous consent -- instead of talking about the best point of the game -- its ship combat, which unfortunately cannot carry a subscription-based game all by itself?

Let's talk of the gankers, the closed society production lines wrecking the economy, the game being shipped (by the developers' own admission) with only one leg of the planned economic tripod in place, the ridiculously expensive bundleboats.  Let's talk of the competing visions for the game from the very beginning, the conflict between PvE and PvP, the lack of endgame for nationals as well as pirates, the deficient mechanics (as exemplified by those horrendous red circles), the chronic faction imbalance problem with two characteristically strong factions (British and Pirates) and two perennial losers (French and Spanish), the "magic" skills and the WoW-esque race for gear added later on. 

Let's talk of all that.  I hope too that the future is bright for this game, because I don't want to be condemned to a lifetime of cartoony fantasy WoW clones, and the historical setting of POTBS appeals to me. But if you want a real breakdown of the problems with this game, this blog entry is much closer to the mark.

Originally posted by Vetarnias

What is it with the SOE twitch of some people on these forums?  Does it have to do with long-standing grievances over Star Wars: Galaxies?  

The only thing which SOE can be blamed for in POTBS's case is to have picked it up for publishing.  The game is still property of Flying Lab Software, and they alone are to be blamed for any of the above concerns.

The review itself barely scratches the surface.  Skirmish and port governance aren't into the game, that much is obvious -- they're conspicuously absent.  Unintended consequences were the norm, but the problem is that every attempt to solve them led to yet more unintended consequences.  To name a few: Unrest decay turnoff, underdog tools, 6v9 superganks, post-insurance inflation, etc.

The article also failed to mention a few of the particulars surrounding what was going on inside the community: Where is there no mention of  "No Crying in the Red Circle" as the developers' ideological statement in the early months?  Why only mention skill changes, massive and sometimes inexplicable though they were, when they were for the most part deck chairs being rearranged on the Titanic? Why dedicate all this space to a discussion of avatar combat -- the weakest point of the game almost by unanimous consent -- instead of talking about the best point of the game -- its ship combat, which unfortunately cannot carry a subscription-based game all by itself?

Let's talk of the gankers, the closed society production lines wrecking the economy, the game being shipped (by the developers' own admission) with only one leg of the planned economic tripod in place, the ridiculously expensive bundleboats.  Let's talk of the competing visions for the game from the very beginning, the conflict between PvE and PvP, the lack of endgame for nationals as well as pirates, the deficient mechanics (as exemplified by those horrendous red circles), the chronic faction imbalance problem with two characteristically strong factions (British and Pirates) and two perennial losers (French and Spanish), the "magic" skills and the WoW-esque race for gear added later on. 

Let's talk of all that.  I hope too that the future is bright for this game, because I don't want to be condemned to a lifetime of cartoony fantasy WoW clones, and the historical setting of POTBS appeals to me. But if you want a real breakdown of the problems with this game, this blog entry is much closer to the mark.

This brief summary by Vetarnias is head and shoulders more accurate, and more compelling, than that "review" by a "Guest Writer".

Lately, I've been seeing more and more of these fluffy, ignorantly positive, pieces on PotBS appearing on the web.  Methinks the marketing department is working overtime to change the opinion about the game....even if it means glossing over some of the true bits.

Well said Vetarnias.  This game had a lot more go wrong with it than just "unintended consequences", including issues with the presale boxes(!).  At the very least, call out FLS for being inexperienced at making MMO's, and making some very rookie mistakes, instead of chalking it all up to bad luck.

Although I agree with your opinions I don't agree with your "posture".

Let's think about it this way, is the game better now than 1 year ago? Yes, immensely. Coming from beta I saw many, many bugs get fixed. I saw mechanics that were not working get fixed. Many missions that had problems got fixed. Many skills and ships got rebalanced. Lots and lots of fixing really improved the game.

Then we had a lot of content added, new ships, new eq, new clothes, new missions. We also now have new UI's and new systems like duels and insurance.

Now more recently a whole new avcom system. Is it better now? My opinion is yes, really better than the simplistic old and people having to learn something new (which most people just hate especially if they were good with the old system and now, not so good) is not an excuse to say it sucks.

Also we can still look on the horizon and see more content being added like missions, ships, eq and clothes but also two new systems in the form of skirmish and port governance and maybe some economy improvements.

What all of this shows to me is that FLS is still eagerly behind it's baby and working to improve it. That is very important.

So to come back to my initial remark, i don't agree with your posture. You would be right to be angry and disappointed if the game was dead, if they were not fixing it. So look at the year past, has the game improved? Yes. Look at the future, does it seem like that new stuff is going to improve it further? Yes. Then you should be optimist as should they as should anyone writting a review. Instead, in this WOW world, anything but perfect instantly gets spitted on and it's that behaviour that is really stopping the wow-killers from showing up and nothing else.

PS: In fact I bet most of you are employed by blizzard just to spread bad things about other MMO's to keep their game at the top LOL. I jest, but I wonder if that is really true and they do employ people for that purpose hmmm

Originally posted by Moriwenne

Although I agree with your opinions I don't agree with your "posture".

Let's think about it this way, is the game better now than 1 year ago? Yes, immensely. Coming from beta I saw many, many bugs get fixed. I saw mechanics that were not working get fixed. Many missions that had problems got fixed. Many skills and ships got rebalanced. Lots and lots of fixing really improved the game.

Then we had a lot of content added, new ships, new eq, new clothes, new missions. We also now have new UI's and new systems like duels and insurance.

Now more recently a whole new avcom system. Is it better now? My opinion is yes, really better than the simplistic old and people having to learn something new (which most people just hate especially if they were good with the old system and now, not so good) is not an excuse to say it sucks.

Also we can still look on the horizon and see more content being added like missions, ships, eq and clothes but also two new systems in the form of skirmish and port governance and maybe some economy improvements.

What all of this shows to me is that FLS is still eagerly behind it's baby and working to improve it. That is very important.

So to come back to my initial remark, i don't agree with your posture. You would be right to be angry and disappointed if the game was dead, if they were not fixing it. So look at the year past, has the game improved? Yes. Look at the future, does it seem like that new stuff is going to improve it further? Yes. Then you should be optimist as should they as should anyone writting a review. Instead, in this WOW world, anything but perfect instantly gets spitted on and it's that behaviour that is really stopping the wow-killers from showing up and nothing else.

PS: In fact I bet most of you are employed by blizzard just to spread bad things about other MMO's to keep their game at the top LOL. I jest, but I wonder if that is really true and they do employ people for that purpose hmmm

I will admit that it's a good thing that FLS remains committed to their game. But does it have another choice? NCSoft had the luxury of pulling the plug on Tabula Rasa -- it wasn't meeting expectations, but the company had other properties to soften the blow, so it was perhaps better to put an end to TR before it got worse and concentrate on their moneymakers.

I don't think FLS has that luxury. Their only other property in their entire history is Rails Across America, a decent strategy game but with completely outdated graphics even when it came out in 2001 (they apparently have another project in the pipeline, perhaps something Flash-related but it's probably in the early stages). So let me put it this way: FLS is out in the middle of the ocean, the ship is taking water, but they have no fleet on which they can transfer (as NCSoft did with TR) if the vessel sinks. Of course they'll remain dedicated to it, with every bucket they've got -- because they have no other choice. When they'll stop improving their game, that will mean the water has reached the main deck.

Unless they're sitting on a cache of money, FLS is fighting for its survival with POTBS, so it's not their dedication or commitment to POTBS which I'm questioning, it's their judgement, instinct, and ability to get the job done. Instead of bailing water, they've drilled new holes in the hull -- consider, for instance, the superganks, which according to the original editorial was just the cause for more unjustified whining. When you remember that the mechanism that led to superganks was implemented as an answer to ganking, weren't players justified in whining? They've often ignored the (admittedly sometimes contradictory) advice of their players to bring in ideas which nobody asked for in the first place. They've refused to take a stand on the PvE versus PvP controversy, which cost them players on both sides, yet they never bothered to even pay lip service to the segment of their players which asked for a FFA PvP server.

I've taken to reading POTBS lead designer Isildur's blog of late, and I'm amazed at how much I agree with practically everything he writes. But as with that now-notorious "Next Big Failure" quote of his that came six months before release, I cannot reconcile his views on gaming as written in his blog with the end product of Pirates of the Burning Sea that was in front of me. I simply cannot. Perhaps Isildur was overruled by Rusty (or others), perhaps he didn't have the team or the budget to make his ideas work in the game (that one leg of the economic tripod would indicate as much). And his going silent on the forums after the release of the game, even before Rusty himself retreated, didn't help matters.

Everything I've seen of late in terms of proposed changes seems more cosmetic than anything else. Fancy clothing? Avatar combat revamp? Okay, the original avcom was often mentioned as the worst part of the game, but it's also very inconsequential. You don't fix it, it really doesn't affect much. Port governance ought to have been Up There in their list of priorities, but it isn't, so I'm thinking either it was a carrot being dangled all along, or that FLS doesn't have a clue about how to bring that in without wrecking other parts of the game.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: POTBS would have worked fine as a single-player game with an automated economy -- it's superior in many respects to Sid Meier's game. But as an MMO, I think it's not going to turn into a success, as the team is too inexperienced to solve the larger problems, which in some cases can't be solved unless the community does it itself (faction imbalance, for starters, by starting new characters in less populous nations), and in other cases can't be solved at all without basically starting over (e.g. the tiny size of the open sea).

I don't care for WoW's polish, because I've grown up in that era when all you needed for fun was stacking blocks of four squares falling with increasing speed from the top of the screen. I'm not looking for WoW's polish -- if anything, it just helps hide the glaring problems with that game -- but at the same time I am tired of being given the excuse that being too poor to afford a WoW-level polish somehow makes bad design choices acceptable. Polish is one thing. A working design is another. I don't want every game to be WoW (which, besides, had 4 years to iron out its problems), but I won't accept a bad game purely because itoffers an alternative to the WoW model.

As for working for Blizzard: I assume you missed an earlier post where I called WoW "ego-stroking instant gratification claptrap"?

Originally posted by Vetarnias

Everything I've seen of late in terms of proposed changes seems more cosmetic than anything else. {...} Avatar combat revamp? Okay, the original avcom was often mentioned as the worst part of the game, but it's also very inconsequential. You don't fix it, it really doesn't affect much.

I find this interesting, because I think it addresses the issue of fixing a game post-release. I tried PotBS because I got it as a gift. I'd been interested in it early on, but once I heard it was going to have a heavy PvP element my interest dried up (there also seemed to be a lot of dev emphasis on user-generated art submissions, which I personally felt was a lot of wasted energy). Still, once PotBS wound up free in my lap I figured I'd try it. One of the aspects of the game I found lacking was "avatar" combat; buckling a swash just wasn't all that fun, and it was certainly one reason I decided to quit the game. (Conversely, the ship combat was really well done.)

The problem is: I'm gone. I am not the existing playerbase, and it's unlikely that FLS is going to woo me back with the chance that they might've finally gotten it right. I figure I'm not alone; MMO players get entrenched in a game and once there it's hard to pry them away. So while I think they flubbed "avcom" hard, I think you're probably right that it's not worth fixing -- it's too late to worry with that. The people who cared about that are now off playing other games.

I agree with you on the fact that probably FLS has no other choice than to keep at it, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's like a small town shop, they will never be big, they will always have small profit margins but it's a family business and they have been doing it for years and they care about it, unlike big projects like tabula that go bye bye just because it's not giving them tons of money (nice reply by the way, good debate skills you have there).

Of course there are always issues, like ganking or others that result from this or that decision. In all truth, if i put myself in their shoes, i can see how hard it is to fix it all and to please the whole community. I remember isildur saying once that the feedback given in the forums is just a small % of what the whole POTBS population thinks about matters and I agree with it. You often see the hardcore fans, that woud like something to actually change, writting in the forums and those are probably some 100 people.

Does FLS their game is perfect? Of course not. The postings from Isildur that you mention reveals that. Ship combat works great, everyone has fun, you barely need to make changes there. Avcom needed some changes so people could have fun with that as well but it will take some time to mature obviously and perhaps in the future it will be possible to add new areas, new content and new systems around that like having ports where you can actually fight at any given time, things like that.

Skirmish and port governance will be great additions and will make the game even better but that's all, there are things that need improving and my view on that matter is that it takes time.

I will stop cursing FLS when they come out and say "this is perfect and we're not changing anything" and then fans react and still they go "you are wrong this is perfect you are just too blind to see". That has never happened, things are not perfect because they haven't had time to do it yet and if something is not pleasing the majority (and not just a group of 10 out of thousands) then they have always been open to fixing. But things take time and most people are not willing to wait.

My biggest biff with the game right now is the endgame. People with high-level toons build stuff, sell stuff to have money to build more stuff but ultimately they want to buy/make stuff and that stuff is but one thing, ships. So the goal is to buy a ship to go and have fun. Now the fun comes  from the pvp on the open sea BUT this is not a FPS shooter where u log, kill some people, log off and its forgotten forever. NO, this is supposed to be an MMO with a permanent world that's why you pay a subscription. But it's not, it's just a big arena for you to log kill some enemies log off and does doesnt produce a good mmorpg where you aim to level your character, to get better gear and to explore new places and experience new adventures either be it by killing some new things or doing some epic quests. Instead with POTBS you have the ports, and you need X to win the round. It's just not enough to produce immersion, it's just like a round of battlefield 2, you get flags (ports) and you win and then a new round starts. Where's the character progression? The adventures? You just need a world to have an mmorpg and potbs is lacking a bit in that respect. But it's still fun to do some economy and to fight in your ship either be it OS pvp or the big port battles and that's what keeps people going, ship combat. Ultimately it is just one more fight instead of a new thing and people leave. As long as you are leveling up it's fine, after that you won't last long.

So in my opinion that's the biggest problem POTBS faces, they can get new players that will reach top level in a month, enjoy the 2nd month up there doing some battles and then slowly play less and less till they cancel because to them it feels they are never going to get anything new cept one more battle. To fix this they need something that is seriously interesting to do at top level and they need it fast.

PS: I assume i missed your earlier post indeed :) must have been a fun one

I had high hopes on this game but encountered quite a few disappointments when starting to play it at release.

The reduction of the death penalty by 80% through the introduction of the insurance system being one of the major ones.

Grinding giving more income than using the admittedly very refined production/crafting system. Then why do it?

Constant changes were annoying. Not as much as "having to learn the game anew" as having strategic choices you made being changed retrospectively.

I sitll think it may be the best option for people that want a more mature player base and a more challening game than wow and its clones.

Originally posted by Moriwenne

I agree with you on the fact that probably FLS has no other choice than to keep at it, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's like a small town shop, they will never be big, they will always have small profit margins but it's a family business and they have been doing it for years and they care about it, unlike big projects like tabula that go bye bye just because it's not giving them tons of money (nice reply by the way, good debate skills you have there).

Agreed.  They can make do with small profit margins, and I was impressed by their accomplishment in getting the game released with the features it has.  Still, I think the money would have been better invested in a single-player game with perhaps a strong possibility for multiplayer.

Of course there are always issues, like ganking or others that result from this or that decision. In all truth, if i put myself in their shoes, i can see how hard it is to fix it all and to please the whole community. I remember isildur saying once that the feedback given in the forums is just a small % of what the whole POTBS population thinks about matters and I agree with it. You often see the hardcore fans, that woud like something to actually change, writting in the forums and those are probably some 100 people.

Perhaps. There is always a player core that will be vocal for every game.  The challenge is in deciding whether their views are representative or not of those of most players in the game.  If, however, you have no way of knowing what the "silent majority" wants, what do you do?  Some people won't bother answering even if you put a microphone under their nose.  Also, the most direct application of saying that only a small percentage of players posts on the forums is to just ignore everything that is said there.  Perhaps this was what led to what the blogger (linked to in my first post) described as the "brick wall" that sprang up between the players and developers.

Does FLS their game is perfect? Of course not. The postings from Isildur that you mention reveals that. Ship combat works great, everyone has fun, you barely need to make changes there. Avcom needed some changes so people could have fun with that as well but it will take some time to mature obviously and perhaps in the future it will be possible to add new areas, new content and new systems around that like having ports where you can actually fight at any given time, things like that.

Skirmish and port governance will be great additions and will make the game even better but that's all, there are things that need improving and my view on that matter is that it takes time.

I welcome and fear what those two elements might do to the game.  Skirmish IS necessary -- because it would be the best way for new players to learn the ropes (or war games, if you wish).  But I fear it might kill open sea PvP. Port governance, well, it would depend on how that would play between societies of a same nation when a few of them, ever in competition with one another if theoretically on the same side, would want to run a Deep Harbour port, especially a convenient one like Cayo de Marquis for the French.  This would add intra-nation struggles into the game, but sadly the mechanics are not there to accommodate them (you can't fight your own side, etc).

I will stop cursing FLS when they come out and say "this is perfect and we're not changing anything" and then fans react and still they go "you are wrong this is perfect you are just too blind to see". That has never happened, things are not perfect because they haven't had time to do it yet and if something is not pleasing the majority (and not just a group of 10 out of thousands) then they have always been open to fixing. But things take time and most people are not willing to wait.

My biggest biff with the game right now is the endgame. People with high-level toons build stuff, sell stuff to have money to build more stuff but ultimately they want to buy/make stuff and that stuff is but one thing, ships. So the goal is to buy a ship to go and have fun. Now the fun comes  from the pvp on the open sea BUT this is not a FPS shooter where u log, kill some people, log off and its forgotten forever. NO, this is supposed to be an MMO with a permanent world that's why you pay a subscription. But it's not, it's just a big arena for you to log kill some enemies log off and does doesnt produce a good mmorpg where you aim to level your character, to get better gear and to explore new places and experience new adventures either be it by killing some new things or doing some epic quests. Instead with POTBS you have the ports, and you need X to win the round. It's just not enough to produce immersion, it's just like a round of battlefield 2, you get flags (ports) and you win and then a new round starts. Where's the character progression? The adventures? You just need a world to have an mmorpg and potbs is lacking a bit in that respect. But it's still fun to do some economy and to fight in your ship either be it OS pvp or the big port battles and that's what keeps people going, ship combat. Ultimately it is just one more fight instead of a new thing and people leave. As long as you are leveling up it's fine, after that you won't last long.

Entirely agreed there.  The endgame needs some work -- all the stuff from that tripod that wasn't delivered (public/private spaces and port governance).  If they do it right, I can even forgive it being instanced, though I think the trend is detrimental to MMO's in general. It detracts from the "permanent" part of the world.  They'll also have to decide what to do with those map resets and ports that automatically flip back.  It's far from "permanent", it's not really realistic, and from what I've seen it doesn't solve the "permanently lopsided" part of the problem which the developers wanted to avoid by putting in map resets.  If the British can roll across the map, they'll do it every single time.  Maybe if they found a way to make the progression of the world more "permanent" without it becoming stagnant.... POTBS is also lacking in the immersion/exploration department, but I don't think you can do it on a map which takes 45 minutes to sail across, so there's no quick solution here apart from starting over.

So in my opinion that's the biggest problem POTBS faces, they can get new players that will reach top level in a month, enjoy the 2nd month up there doing some battles and then slowly play less and less till they cancel because to them it feels they are never going to get anything new cept one more battle. To fix this they need something that is seriously interesting to do at top level and they need it fast.

This has always been one of their main problems, though my perspective is perhaps skewed by the fact that every treadmill-based game quickly loses my interest.  In WoW, I'm in my mid-forties, and don't even bother levelling up anymore.  What's lacking from POTBS, however, is a sense of achievement which is completely absent from the game except for PvP e-peen (by the way, achievement is where WoW went over the top by turning everything into one, albeit quickly made obsolete by the next achievement just ahead, and then... you get the idea).  I'm a captain, I want to retire in my cabin, amidst trinkets from my previous voyages.  If I'm a trader, I want to welcome fellow nationals to my stateroom to show them my standing, offer them a cigar (yeah, I know, I'm not being PC), discuss the prosperity of our port and the state of our empire.  Port Governance is part of all that. I want to visit places, hear the local stories, haul goods over long distances and make immense money out of it or lose everything to a pirate ambushing me en route after sailing under a false flag.  Sadly, all of this is missing from the game, and I don't think it can be put in there.

PS: I assume i missed your earlier post indeed :) must have been a fun one

I think it was in the Darkfall section. Everything over there is fun.

Originally posted by Curate

Originally posted by Vetarnias

Everything I've seen of late in terms of proposed changes seems more cosmetic than anything else. {...} Avatar combat revamp? Okay, the original avcom was often mentioned as the worst part of the game, but it's also very inconsequential. You don't fix it, it really doesn't affect much.

I find this interesting, because I think it addresses the issue of fixing a game post-release. I tried PotBS because I got it as a gift. I'd been interested in it early on, but once I heard it was going to have a heavy PvP element my interest dried up (there also seemed to be a lot of dev emphasis on user-generated art submissions, which I personally felt was a lot of wasted energy). Still, once PotBS wound up free in my lap I figured I'd try it. One of the aspects of the game I found lacking was "avatar" combat; buckling a swash just wasn't all that fun, and it was certainly one reason I decided to quit the game. (Conversely, the ship combat was really well done.)

The problem is: I'm gone. I am not the existing playerbase, and it's unlikely that FLS is going to woo me back with the chance that they might've finally gotten it right. I figure I'm not alone; MMO players get entrenched in a game and once there it's hard to pry them away. So while I think they flubbed "avcom" hard, I think you're probably right that it's not worth fixing -- it's too late to worry with that. The people who cared about that are now off playing other games.

Which raises the question: When you tried POTBS, what did you expect to find? A "Port Royale" economic game based on real supply and demand?  A lighthearted pirate romp like Sid Meier's Pirates?  EVE Online in the age of sail? World of Warcraft on ships?  From your post, I'm guessing that this is the ambiguity of the game (and the expectations of its players) which led to many of the problems that followed.

Originally posted by Vetarnias

Which raises the question: When you tried POTBS, what did you expect to find? A "Port Royale" economic game based on real supply and demand?  A lighthearted pirate romp like Sid Meier's Pirates?  EVE Online in the age of sail? World of Warcraft on ships?  From your post, I'm guessing that this is the ambiguity of the game (and the expectations of its players) which led to many of the problems that followed.

(Apologies if I borked the quote -- I'm still not savvy about trimming out parts of quotes.)

What I expected based on what I knew at the time of install was "Sid Meier's Pirates, but with people ganking me and the non-ganky bits not being nearly as fun as Sid Meier's Pirates." This was because my expectations were fairly low. Had I not been handed the box I wouldn't have played. I got surprised, though, because I never once engaged in PvP, so the gankfest  worry never materialized.

What I wanted was "Sid Meier's Pirates, but with more depth and multiplayer action."  To be somewhat specific:

1) Fast-paced action, both in ship-to-ship and melee combat. I mostly got the ship-to-ship combat action I wanted (although a bad wind could make a battle tedious), but the melee combat was drab.

2) An economy that augmented point 1. I found the whole harvesting/crafting aspect of the game dull, more appropriate to a game named, oh, "Traders of the New World" rather than "Pirates of the Burning Sea." The foundation of "you own property that produces goods" just didn't sit well with me. As an endgame prospect, sure, but transporting/pillaging/looting seems more like the economic foundation for a pirate game.

3) Fun exploration. "Go here, traipse inland, discover Olmec ruins or the now-savage survivors of a shipwreck or what-have-you." Now, I'm a fan of how City of Heroes handled instancing, but I think PotBS took that to a terrible extreme -- stand by the port guy (authority? don't recall now), pop in and out of instances, then go to the next town, lather, rinse, repeat.

4) Optional, as-fair-as-you-can-get-for-an-MMO PvP combat. When you have Pirates you have the Plundered, and that setup screams for PvP. From what I read I wouldn't have been pleased by PotBS PvP, but I can't really comment since I never once engaged in PvP.

5) Group-friendly PvE content. I think PotBS provided this somewhat, but I never felt that the game encouraged teaming up all that much. I'm glad it didn't force teaming, but I would've like more blatant reasons to go into an instance with other folks.

Please note that I can't say that the game should meet these desires. EVE Online sounds as fun as lighting my groin on fire, for example, and yet it's a game that's apparently doing quite well and has a loyal playerbase. Clearly not all games should cater to my tastes.  I suspect that PotBS would've done better if it had, though.

---

Originally posted by Vetarnias
Which raises the question: When you tried POTBS, what did you expect to find? A "Port Royale" economic game based on real supply and demand? A lighthearted pirate romp like Sid Meier's Pirates? EVE Online in the age of sail? World of Warcraft on ships? From your post, I'm guessing that this is the ambiguity of the game (and the expectations of its players) which led to many of the problems that followed.

---

Well put, Vetarnias. I've tried to express that very idea to a number of different people at various times on various forums, but never put it quite that way. One person said that any future advertising FLS does would do well to very clearly identify the sort of game it is (that is, primarily ship-based PvP/RvR rather than epic PvE) so as to avoid disappointing people who came expecting to find something else.

I'm sorry Curate but I believe you are the wrong demographic for this game. I don't play moto driving games. If I were to try it I would find many things wrong simply because it's not for me.

Add to that the fact that you didn't play the game enough to have a formed opinion.

Don't get me wrong, you're welcomed to the debate, I enjoy debating with anyone I'm just saying your opinion lacks experience and because of that value. This is not derogatory, just stating a fact.

That said I'll take the opportunity to add that, FLS knew this going in, they knew they were not making a wow and because of that it will have a small community because many would just not like the genre. I tried to get several friends hooked and failed everytime. Sure they play mmo's and sure the pirates theme is always appealing but all of them come from wow's and other avatar based games and the idea of you being a ship and the slow pace of the game, it's not for most.

Still, the first say 3 months to 6 months i played the game, everything was so new, everyone was leveling, things were getting fixed and the servers were so full of life that people had loads of fun. I played on the Roberts server by the way. Then slowly many people left and it was obvious that this game doesn't work very well without a server full of people. It got a little better after the free trials but it's still not quite there. Work to be done in that area. They need to come up with ideas to solve such matters. I'm actually eagerly awaiting for the skirm and port governance to come so that after they can start working on the big issues and improving the fun factor. They can do it, they just need time.

Originally posted by Moriwenne

I'm sorry Curate but I believe you are the wrong demographic for this game.  Based on Curate's answer, I think so, too. But at least he didn't have to pay for his original copy. I don't play moto driving games. If I were to try it I would find many things wrong simply because it's not for me.

Add to that the fact that you didn't play the game enough to have a formed opinion.

Don't get me wrong, you're welcomed to the debate, I enjoy debating with anyone I'm just saying your opinion lacks experience and because of that value. This is not derogatory, just stating a fact.

That said I'll take the opportunity to add that, FLS knew this going in, they knew they were not making a wow and because of that it will have a small community because many would just not like the genre. I tried to get several friends hooked and failed everytime. I'm curious. Can you expand on this? Sure they play mmo's and sure the pirates theme is always appealing but all of them come from wow's and other avatar based games and the idea of you being a ship and the slow pace of the game, it's not for most. At the same time, I think FLS was trying to go for mass appeal if we consider the popularity of the genre (especially after the PotC films).  I'm not prepared to say that no players were expecting a decent avatar (and a decent combat system to go with it).  It's part of the pirate mystique, from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp.  So I suspect a game which not only used avatars but which was in fact avatar-driven was what a large part of the community expected.  "You are your ship" might be nice in practice, but in theory it just sounds bleh.  However, in the current form of POTBS, avatar combat is an afterthought, and shouldn't be a priority for improvement (except insofar as every naval fight might end up with a boarding).

Still, the first say 3 months to 6 months i played the game, everything was so new, everyone was leveling, things were getting fixed and the servers were so full of life that people had loads of fun. I played on the Roberts server by the way. Then slowly many people left and it was obvious that this game doesn't work very well without a server full of people. There were distinct waves of people leaving, with some pretty good posts on the official forums detailing each and every one of them.  The first to go were those dissatisfied with the ganking.  After that, you had those who were faced with exploits by the larger factions and the indifference of FLS to the issue (Blackbeard French in particular). Then it was the economic players who perhaps foresaw that closed society production financed by grind would come to dominate the game because it was the most efficient way to fund bundleboats, bypassing them completely.  After that you got the "next shiny new thing" crowd doing their patented "kthxbai" routine and leaving for Conan, Warhammer, or both.  Then you had the various groups dissatisfied with the way the developers were going after "No Crying in the Red Circle" went the way of the dodo, early June. And then there were the pillars of the community, who just got bored (all of Rackham, once the boisterous PvP server par excellence). Then you had Jack Simple coming back and leaving at least three dozen times, and all the other people who got fed up with FLS's twisted sense of priorities at one moment or another.   It got a little better after the free trials but it's still not quite there. Work to be done in that area. They need to come up with ideas to solve such matters. I'm actually eagerly awaiting for the skirm and port governance to come so that after they can start working on the big issues and improving the fun factor. They can do it, they just need time. Still, based on the review above, Rusty's slate is full for the next three years.  I don't think they have six months, much less three years.  Everything that they will decide to do will matter.  Let's hope they make the right choices -- port governance among them.

Originally posted by Havohej

 

---

Originally posted by Vetarnias
Which raises the question: When you tried POTBS, what did you expect to find? A "Port Royale" economic game based on real supply and demand? A lighthearted pirate romp like Sid Meier's Pirates? EVE Online in the age of sail? World of Warcraft on ships? From your post, I'm guessing that this is the ambiguity of the game (and the expectations of its players) which led to many of the problems that followed.

---

 

Well put, Vetarnias. I've tried to express that very idea to a number of different people at various times on various forums, but never put it quite that way. One person said that any future advertising FLS does would do well to very clearly identify the sort of game it is (that is, primarily ship-based PvP/RvR rather than epic PvE) so as to avoid disappointing people who came expecting to find something else.

Unfortunately, the sort of game POTBS is has never been advertised by FLS, either because they wanted subscribers from every type of player (surprising if we consider "no crying in the red circle"), or because they never quite knew themselves what they wanted to do with their game.

The minute we can explain why FLS attached itself to "no crying" for five months or so before unceremoniously ditching it, we will be able to understand why FLS did or didn't pursue a certain course in the early months.

But the problem is that after getting rid of "no crying", they've been adrift in their attempt to articulate the soul of their game. When even an enthusiast like GB is taking his distances (though I certainly didn't always agree with him, especially that last bit on the POTBS forums about how bundleboats should trump everything else in the game), something is not quite right.

lol GB is a carebear, but I like going back and forth with him. He sent me a PM over there saying he's re-subbed <3

The 2009 MMOG Developer mantra should be:

You Can't Bullshyt Your Way To Success Anymore.

PotBS could succeed like Eve if they would recognize their core market and cater to that niche.

Suggestion: Have a chat with Joel Billings, ceo of Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI) (who developed awesome strategy and rpg games) about how to make games for your fanbase.

Originally posted by Moriwenne

I'm sorry Curate but I believe you are the wrong demographic for this game. I don't play moto driving games. If I were to try it I would find many things wrong simply because it's not for me.

Add to that the fact that you didn't play the game enough to have a formed opinion.

Don't get me wrong, you're welcomed to the debate, I enjoy debating with anyone I'm just saying your opinion lacks experience and because of that value. This is not derogatory, just stating a fact.

Two points:

1) I agree with the demographic issue: I was the wrong demographic for the game. However, I have to wonder if there is enough of a right demographic for this game to thrive rather than be another Matrix Online hovering on SOE Station Pass life support. As I said at the end of my post, I am definitely the wrong demographic for EVE Online as well, but I'm pretty sure that game's getting along just fine. The broader issues are how PotBS was marketed, as Havohej mentioned, and what preconceived notions the gaming public en masse will bring to "a pirate game." I'm not sure it was marketed poorly; what I knew about it made me think I wouldn't like it (as I said), but I gave it a shake when it was handed to me. It's the latter issue I wonder about. Would the gameplay as it stands had been better served if the game had been plugged as (say) an economic trading game rather than pirates? 

2) I played the game long enough to have formed an opinion, in my opinion. I figure I invested about 20 hours into the game, and I feel that if I don't find a game fun after that amount of time I can pipe up about it -- especially if an issue is that people aren't sticking with the game. Wandering back to my entry point into the discussion, I feel that the avcom changes are targeted to people like me who came, didn't like it, and left. They may be inconsequential to the game as it stands, but is the game as it stands viable?

I do believe in the adage "you got to dance with them what brung you," though, and much like the NGE merely alienated much of SWG's remaining playerbase it's possible that the current changes to PotBS will be fruitless because they don't address the issues of the people who've stuck with the game.

Right now it looks like PotBS can go an EVE route, not setting the world aflame but slowly and steadily growing a dedicated and profitable fanbase, or it can go the SWG route, trying to reinvent itself to attract more people and only losing those who still love it. I hope for the former simply because I hate seeing games fail.

Originally posted by Curate

Originally posted by Moriwenne

I'm sorry Curate but I believe you are the wrong demographic for this game. I don't play moto driving games. If I were to try it I would find many things wrong simply because it's not for me.

Add to that the fact that you didn't play the game enough to have a formed opinion.

Don't get me wrong, you're welcomed to the debate, I enjoy debating with anyone I'm just saying your opinion lacks experience and because of that value. This is not derogatory, just stating a fact.

 

Two points:

1) I agree with the demographic issue: I was the wrong demographic for the game. However, I have to wonder if there is enough of a right demographic for this game to thrive rather than be another Matrix Online hovering on SOE Station Pass life support. As I said at the end of my post, I am definitely the wrong demographic for EVE Online as well, but I'm pretty sure that game's getting along just fine. The broader issues are how PotBS was marketed, as Havohej mentioned, and what preconceived notions the gaming public en masse will bring to "a pirate game." I'm not sure it was marketed poorly; I'm not sure it was marketed at all.  If you want to blame SOE for something POTBS-related, here's your chance to do it.  The game community seems to have developed on word of mouth alone.  what I knew about it made me think I wouldn't like it (as I said), but I gave it a shake when it was handed to me. It's the latter issue I wonder about. Would the gameplay as it stands had been better served if the game had been plugged as (say) an economic trading game rather than pirates? 

2) I played the game long enough to have formed an opinion, in my opinion. I figure I invested about 20 hours into the game, and I feel that if I don't find a game fun after that amount of time I can pipe up about it -- especially if an issue is that people aren't sticking with the game. I like to hear people's impressions if they haven't played that much, because you get an idea of what newbies/lowbies think.  If you said you needed to be level 50 to comment, you'd perhaps miss on all those comments by people being stung by the fact they were told to pass for port battles because they weren't high enough.  I played Warhammer Online six days, yet it was plenty of time to see what I thought worked and didn't work with that game.  Wandering back to my entry point into the discussion, I feel that the avcom changes are targeted to people like me who came, didn't like it, and left. They may be inconsequential to the game as it stands, but is the game as it stands viable?

I do believe in the adage "you got to dance with them what brung you," though, and much like the NGE merely alienated much of SWG's remaining playerbase it's possible that the current changes to PotBS will be fruitless because they don't address the issues of the people who've stuck with the game.

Right now it looks like PotBS can go an EVE route, not setting the world aflame but slowly and steadily growing a dedicated and profitable fanbase, or it can go the SWG route, trying to reinvent itself to attract more people and only losing those who still love it. I hope for the former simply because I hate seeing games fail. The problem is that we cannot really compare SWG and POTBS in this instance. As far as I know, SWG by the time of NGE was an aging but still popular and profitable game, and Sony, greedy as always, figured out that the best way to get new players was to roll out the red carpet and make everything easy. POTBS, on the other hand -- we don't know, really, how many subscribers they have or used to have, or how many they need to turn a profit. It might well be that they have been operating at a loss for a while, perhaps going back to the "no crying in the red circle" era. In which case it becomes a question of not whether change is needed -- it is -- but what change it should be.  The initial EVE-inspired model, in my opinion, did not work in POTBS because the latter lacked the kind of persistent universe one expects of such games (could getting rid of map resets help?) as well as player influence on the world (port governance could solve this).  That was the question I always asked: Why didn't EVE players show up, and if they did, why didn't they stay?  I think my theory explains it: You can't carve the world map.

However, based on what the game includes, it's easier to go the EVE route than the WoW-on-seas route, even with the popularity of the subject. The quests are too repetitive to sustain interest, and to FLS's credit, they've carried them as far as they could.  And there are too many "carebear" (how I hate the term) pirate games out there already.  But FLS's crime is to not have made it clear in its design from the start.  The red circles in particular are the best evidence of their attempts at reaching a compromise in the PvE-PvP debate.

The entire recap could have been boiled down to this: PotBS = crappy SOE station pass game.

Well to be fair FLS did say several times that they could run all the servers for One full year With out a single sub. ATM they have 5? and are on the Station pass, so I think they will be good for some time to come... will it be enough to finish the game? who knows.

"The entire recap could have been boiled down to this: PotBS = crappy SOE station pass game."
 

Cheap shot as SOE had nothing to do with the game other than host it.   PotBS is a rather fresh breath of air in need of a better high end that others have commented on "engaging".  Those waiting for a finished game for any MMorpg will be waiting for eternity as no online game will ever be finished!  Flying Labs does need to make a discission on what crowd they are trying to attract and refine the game toward that crowd. All in all a pleasant game for those who like RvR type games in my opinion.

Originally posted by buegur

"The entire recap could have been boiled down to this: PotBS = crappy SOE station pass game."
 

 

Cheap shot as SOE had nothing to do with the game other than host it.   PotBS is a rather fresh breath of air in need of a better high end that others have commented on "engaging".  Those waiting for a finished game for any MMorpg will be waiting for eternity as no online game will ever be finished!  Flying Labs does need to make a discission on what crowd they are trying to attract and refine the game toward that crowd. All in all a pleasant game for those who like RvR type games in my opinion.

I never said SOE had anything to do with the game other than host it. Doesn't change the fact that it's still a crappy SOE station pass game.

Originally posted by Moriwenne

Although I agree with your opinions I don't agree with your "posture".

Let's think about it this way, is the game better now than 1 year ago? Yes, immensely. Coming from beta I saw many, many bugs get fixed. I saw mechanics that were not working get fixed. Many missions that had problems got fixed. Many skills and ships got rebalanced. Lots and lots of fixing really improved the game.

Then we had a lot of content added, new ships, new eq, new clothes, new missions. We also now have new UI's and new systems like duels and insurance.

Now more recently a whole new avcom system. Is it better now? My opinion is yes, really better than the simplistic old and people having to learn something new (which most people just hate especially if they were good with the old system and now, not so good) is not an excuse to say it sucks.

Also we can still look on the horizon and see more content being added like missions, ships, eq and clothes but also two new systems in the form of skirmish and port governance and maybe some economy improvements.

What all of this shows to me is that FLS is still eagerly behind it's baby and working to improve it. That is very important.

So to come back to my initial remark, i don't agree with your posture. You would be right to be angry and disappointed if the game was dead, if they were not fixing it. So look at the year past, has the game improved? Yes. Look at the future, does it seem like that new stuff is going to improve it further? Yes. Then you should be optimist as should they as should anyone writting a review. Instead, in this WOW world, anything but perfect instantly gets spitted on and it's that behaviour that is really stopping the wow-killers from showing up and nothing else.

PS: In fact I bet most of you are employed by blizzard just to spread bad things about other MMO's to keep their game at the top LOL. I jest, but I wonder if that is really true and they do employ people for that purpose hmmm

 You see them as having "improved" the game, I see them addressing window trimings and lawn chairs; not the problems with the game that drove the vast majority of initial players away from the game.
 

Dressing a turd up in tinsel and painting it red still leaves you with a turd...and thats all FLS has done.

The original "review" was beyond pointlessly optimistic, it read like it was written by a damage control specialist in FLS marketing, not a real player. Most of the real problems have been mentioned here and they aren't being touched by FLS.

PS. SOE gets dragged into the discussion because they are the ones keeping PotBS on life support. If the game was a stand alone, unsupported, it would have closed already.

the thing that really ticked me off about this game was going to about 30 ports, talking to some NPC to see how much logs (or furs or something like that) would sell for, writing that down and then finding out how much it would cost to produce.

i wanted to see if i could set myself up in a port, create some kind of raw material (or slightly refined) and transport it to a distant port for a profit (rinse a repeat until i wanted to move into more advanced crafting).  reviewing the numbers i found that my reward was the same cost as producing it.  In other words my whole, trader/merchant of the sea was crushed.

oh dear

A review which basically damns the game and its developers followed by posts saying that the article is understated.

Glad I stayed clear of this release.

And no! I dont hold "hope that the game ends up doing well" I actually like seing MMO's dying off quickly than a long drawn out affair.  NCSOFT has the right idea - if its not working, get rid.

Originally posted by ericbelser

 You see them as having "improved" the game, I see them addressing window trimings and lawn chairs; not the problems with the game that drove the vast majority of initial players away from the game.
 

Dressing a turd up in tinsel and painting it red still leaves you with a turd...and thats all FLS has done.

The original "review" was beyond pointlessly optimistic, it read like it was written by a damage control specialist in FLS marketing, not a real player. Most of the real problems have been mentioned here and they aren't being touched by FLS.

PS. SOE gets dragged into the discussion because they are the ones keeping PotBS on life support. If the game was a stand alone, unsupported, it would have closed already.

A bit strong language but I think it addresses the point very well.

Certainly better than the:

"Some gamers will argue that we've heard such promises from Flying Lab befre, and in fairness that is certainly true. However, given all of the changes that have taken place to bring Pirates of the Burning Sea where it is today, I think the outlook for 2009 is very bright indeed; it's shaping up to be a very happy new year for PotBS and all of its players!"

Then again one can argue that an item wrapped in tin foil and painted red looks bright.

I was a beta tester and heavily involved in the pve-pvp debate.

You wont be surprised that i never bought the "finalized game" .  They wanted (my interpretation) the best of both worlds and ended up (once more in my opinion) with a terrible compromise.

Still, the theme has my fullest attention ( i really would like a pirate game, not a game with pirates) and the moment they will get their act together i will jump a board.

i agree with all the people that say that your character should be improving (evolving) even when you reach the maximum level. That is something high on my prio list.

Originally posted by ericbelser

Originally posted by Moriwenne

Although I agree with your opinions I don't agree with your "posture".

Let's think about it this way, is the game better now than 1 year ago? Yes, immensely. Coming from beta I saw many, many bugs get fixed. I saw mechanics that were not working get fixed. Many missions that had problems got fixed. Many skills and ships got rebalanced. Lots and lots of fixing really improved the game.

Then we had a lot of content added, new ships, new eq, new clothes, new missions. We also now have new UI's and new systems like duels and insurance.

Now more recently a whole new avcom system. Is it better now? My opinion is yes, really better than the simplistic old and people having to learn something new (which most people just hate especially if they were good with the old system and now, not so good) is not an excuse to say it sucks.

Also we can still look on the horizon and see more content being added like missions, ships, eq and clothes but also two new systems in the form of skirmish and port governance and maybe some economy improvements.

What all of this shows to me is that FLS is still eagerly behind it's baby and working to improve it. That is very important.

So to come back to my initial remark, i don't agree with your posture. You would be right to be angry and disappointed if the game was dead, if they were not fixing it. So look at the year past, has the game improved? Yes. Look at the future, does it seem like that new stuff is going to improve it further? Yes. Then you should be optimist as should they as should anyone writting a review. Instead, in this WOW world, anything but perfect instantly gets spitted on and it's that behaviour that is really stopping the wow-killers from showing up and nothing else.

PS: In fact I bet most of you are employed by blizzard just to spread bad things about other MMO's to keep their game at the top LOL. I jest, but I wonder if that is really true and they do employ people for that purpose hmmm

 

 You see them as having "improved" the game, I see them addressing window trimings and lawn chairs; not the problems with the game that drove the vast majority of initial players away from the game.
 

Dressing a turd up in tinsel and painting it red still leaves you with a turd...and thats all FLS has done.

The original "review" was beyond pointlessly optimistic, it read like it was written by a damage control specialist in FLS marketing, not a real player. Most of the real problems have been mentioned here and they aren't being touched by FLS.

PS. SOE gets dragged into the discussion because they are the ones keeping PotBS on life support. If the game was a stand alone, unsupported, it would have closed already.

I don't know how the review was written, or whether there were external forces involved in the outlook of the text (though I doubt it).  I'm not even sure of the author's preferences when it comes to gaming.  If he comes from WoW-type games, it would turn out one way; from EVE Online, another.  Since the writer is new, and did not expand at length on his own preferences, I can't guess and would prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt.

What I will say, however, is that there is an "official" tone to the article that in its worst iteration in journalism consists of rewrites of press releases, with perhaps a rebuttal from the "official" opposition tacked on to the end (if as much).  It's not as bad as that here.  However, what annoyed me was that the writer seemed to have based his review on a blend of FLS devlogs and patch notes, and maybe the occasional interview or article here and there.  That in itself is fine, but there's something missing -- and what exactly?  Pretty much any sense of what you could call the "oral history" of the game, and this you get from player blog entries (there are a few) and forum posts (whether at FLS or here).  And this is what is galling: There is a subforum on POTBS on this very website, and the author gives no indication of ever having bothered checking it out and reading a few of the threads.

Who knows, maybe we denizens of said subforum all come across as, in the words of a certain American politician, nattering nabobs of negativism.  But there is factual evidence there, buried among all the theorycraft and the occasional SOE-bashing: We're talking about the exploits that were used, weaknesses in game mechanics, the outlook of the game, the failure of the economy.  You get a feel of the game that you can't glean from a bunch of devlogs, Rusty interviews and screenshots.  Many of us have written a few hundreds if not thousands of words on Pirates of the Burning Sea.  We played the game.  Some of us still play, some don't (I fall in the latter category, though I'll look into the Winback programme to see if anything has changed).  And we know what has happened and what is going on with it.

The impression I'm getting is that the writer perhaps tried the game and maybe even played it at length, but obtained most of the information in hindsight, and jumped right over the essentials. The failure to mention "no crying in the red circle" when it was all over the forums, here and at FLS, from roughly January to June 2008, strongly indicates that either the writer supports this type of gameplay (or otherwise chose to bury his head in the sand), or was not playing in the early months.  It was impossible to not mention it when we consider the controversy it generated over a four-month period.

(And for the record: I, for one, never read patch notes unless they are meant to solve a major problem affecting me personally.   I don't have the patience for it, and I'm not one of those gamers who grabs a calculator to see how it affects my leetness every time the developers change a comma in the coding of their game.  But if a patch is underwhelming, or adds new problems, the official forums will fill with posts -- and those I still read on a regular basis.)

I was a Beta tester for two months, and then played the game for the first three months before giving up on it.  So I don't know if that qualifies me at all.  :)

I came across this article while looking to see if anything has changed, whether it is worth returning to POTBS.  It doesn't sound like it.  What I wanted was a historically-based game that featured lots of PvP and had a large, functioning economy.  I wanted realism, in other words.  I felt like FLS retreated from their original claims (I started following it on the forums in 2004 or so) more and more as release came, a bad sign of reverse feature creep.  My problems with POTBS when I left:

- PvP was crap.  I could either blunder into a red zone as a loner, and get jumped by 6 ships at once, or I could sail around in a 6-ship group for hours, and never once see an opposing player.  Every port battle on my server (Antigua) got scheduled during the day when I was at work.  I even skipped work one day, but didn't get picked or the servers crashed or something.

I wanted PvP everywhere, not just the Red Circles.  That idea has got to be the dumbest one I've ever seen in an MMO.  Personally, I was hoping for more of  a WWII Online thing, where your character was in charge of a fleet and you could jump in an out of your various ships to battle, so if you lose some it's still a pain, but it's not your one big expensive ship.

- The economy was bad.  I kind of like the setup originally, it was novel.  But the very bad flaws became apparent right away.  FLS spent so much time balancing things out into their production chains that would make everyone just specialize in one small area and ensure an active marketplace - yet in-house guild chains rapidly made the marketplaces a sucker's bet.  No one needed anything because there guild was doing it, and no independents could make stuff because there was nothing available in the marketplace for a reasonable price.  Also, the whole economy was based on making ships - and if no one is losing ships, then nothing is moving.  Two friends and I set up our own consortium, in a big guild, and had shipyards sitting idle for a week at a time due to lack of demand.

I felt the economic aspect would have been better if there were other things to do, like various ports and cities requesting other non-ship goods, so that PC merchants could actually make a living producing bulk items and selling to NPCs - and being prey to pirates.

- The avatar combat was retarded.  It was the NGE in Star Wars all over again.  Click click click click.  Tell you what, the avatar combat system in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean is way, way better.  FLS kept saying they could never do a point and click-timing avcom system (like Mount & Blade, what we compared it to back then) due to MMO restrictions, but Disney seems to have done it.

And I really disliked the "buffs".  Stupid cartoony magic stuff.

- The PvE was boring.  I wanted some PvE, mostly to explore new things.  And FLS made such a big deal about their mission editors and their 1000 different missions, etc.  Sadly, there were three missions with all kinds of window-dressing for about 95% of those.  I could navigate the Jungle setting and the Pirate Beachead setting in my sleep I did them so many times.

- The sailing was meh.  I was stunned when he devs talked about how they forgot or overlooked water depth when designing their engine, and basically said it would never be implemented.  How in the world can you claim an accurate sailing game when sea depth makes no difference?  In that day and age, in that setting, water depth was only slightly less important than the wind.  I thought that was kind of disappointing, making it more gamey than I wanted.  Similarly, the sailing itself is only slightly better than Sid Meier.  People who talk about its accurate representation never sailed a boat with more than one sail.  It's a joke.  Personally, I wanted to be in charge of designing and calling for various sailplans, requiring players to learn the difference between a spanker and a spritsail, a topgallant and a mizzenmast.

- The developers were not nearly as cool and interested in the community as they claimed to be.  Some of us beta testers (it seemed like most) screamed that the game was not ready, but it blundered ahead into a release too early.  And we were right, things were badly balanced and tons of easy bugs still present.  They needed a big release buzz and totally flopped.  Maybe they can get by, but it was brutal.  A quarter of the stuff in release was never ever tested in beta, and that stuff has been causing most of the apparent overreaction and overreaction to the overreaction since then.

And then once the crap hit the fan, the devs and all the dev logs and friendly interactions just dried up.  They no longer need that pre-release buzz, people were paying them money, and they bolted the forums.  I guess this happens in any MMO, but it was disappointing after they claimed to be so different.

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So, to sum up, has any of this changed significantly?  Should I try it, or not bother?  To know where I am coming from, I like EVE, but didn't love it, have never played or even seen WOW or EQ, and am currently playing WWII Online though I am tired of it after a year and a half.

Before I quickly get my2 cents in, i will say that i only played beta, never bought the game, although intention was there in the begining.

I found out about PotBS about 12 months before beta release. Got into finding out info about the game, and followed it until they got their own forums set up. Got into the forums, and then into the beta. Played tested, and even gave back several reports back in beta forums concerning feedback and bug fixes.

From my first report after about a week in beta, none were realy toughed throughout beta. When I hit them up, they talked baout dealing with more important inssues.

Strike One!

In beta forums, a question was raised, and polled by one of the official dev's regarding PotBS bringing SoE into the mix, as a publisher. Testers were furious, demanded that SoE be ignored. Developers responded that SoE would have nothing to do with the game, only the publishing and advertising of the game. Still fans were upset, and asked that the dev's not make the mistake of bringing SoE to the table, who has killed every MMO they have touched. SoE came to the table with one of their shell company names... Then in the middle of beta, devs said they were goign to open beta early, and would be releasing and publishing game on the recommendations of their publisher ASAP.

Strike Two!

Im am from Australia. Some might think, what has that got to do with anything, well i will tell you. All servers are opened, game is released, pick a server you want to start playing on. WRONG, it you live in australia, you get the choise of the Australian servers ONLY. No one else can play on our servers, we cant play on theirs, all alone in this little server of our own.

Testers in Australia are pissed, hit the beta forums in protest. Ask why, how, what can be done to fix. Dev's came back at first defending their actions. At first blaming their publisher and a game stores, saying that because an agreement could not be made before release, everyone missed out.

People started supporting the australian players, when they were getting the wrong boxes, recieving australian copies, or not recieving copies at all. Uproar on the forums. Instead of the publisher (SoE) or the developer stepping in and solving the issue. all went quiet. The forums were a riot and the admins, devs all went quiet.

A few days later, the forums were deleted, new ones were in place, and anyone complaining on the first original forums was banned from their foums.

Strike Three!

So in summary, they dont care, dont listen. nothing was going to change, money money money. I dont get their companies and their short sightednes. Now they will be hard pressed to ever release a successful MMO, and as for SoE, has just reinforced my thoughts on them. To say the least, after being igrnored, deleted, banned and refused an international copy like the rest of the world, i did not buy a copy on release, and let the game store keep my beta deposit.