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Choose My Adventure: Out of drydock!
It was a happy return to the high seas for Arienne Sauvage. You might have noticed that Choose My Adventure went dark for a couple of weeks, and that's because of the unexpected downtime from the attack on Sony Online Entertainment. Now that things are back up and running, I'm ready to set sail for the last few entries of my adventure in Pirates of the Burning Sea. Join me this week as I evaluate the Welcome Back rewards, polish up my ship combat skills, and search for buried treasure!
Pirates of the Burning Sea launches their avatar combat redesign
Avatar combat was always the stepchild system in Pirates of the Burning Sea. Where ship combat was polished, intense, and very different from your standard MMO combat fare, avatar combat just seemed plain weak and added in at the last moment. In fact, it was one of the last things added to the game, as lead designer Kevin "Isildur" Maginn tells us in his developer blog.But as of today, with the new "Clash of Steel" patch, avatar combat has gotten a complete redesign. Thar' be a major update, mateys! Kevin has been working on the avatar combat system for months now under the radar, telling us at Massively about it with Flying Lab CEO Russel Williams at his side back during DragonCon."I liked the avatar combat system, we had a good base system, but things just seemed off," said Kevin Maginn about the new revisions. "I was playing Dynasty Warriors 6 a lot, and I think the new system reflects that. I wanted a system that allowed players to move through combat quickly and have fun with missions instead of killing one man, waiting, killing another, and waiting."With today's patch we finally get to see the fruits of the development team's long labor. Even if you're not a subscriber to Pirates of the Burning Sea, you can still jump on a free trial and check out the new system along side plundering the sparkling seas of precious booty!
Mythic Worlds and FLS CEO on PotBS
Mystic Worlds is among the many blogs (including ours) who have been posting impressions of Pirates of the Burning Sea during their beta, but she got something that not many other sites have gotten: answers from the CEO of Flying Lab Software himself. Russell Williams, FLS' CEO, emailed her about what she'd posted, and countered a few of her concerns about the game before launch.To her point that the female avatars look the same as men, he replied that FLS wanted customization to work across both sexes, so they had to use the same models (with a few modifications, obviously) for both. He says that the swashbuckling does need some tuning (and keep in mind that there are still weeks before the game launches for FLS to fix some of these issues), and that the invisible walls and tiny spaces in the beta are being worked on. He also says that a lot of the late-game instances and towns are much bigger-- as we heard in the press tour, FLS got better at designing as they went along (does that mean they should have designed the end of the game first?).Finally, he says that the three "star systems" FLS targeted were sailing combat, organic PvP, and the economy, so if you're looking for those in an MMO, they'll have something to offer. Of course they're working hard on everything else as well, but those were the three key things he says they aimed for.The date is almost on us-- after January 22nd, the game goes officially live for everyone, and then Williams has to let the game speak for itself.
PotBS updated once more, build 1.0.25.0 live to open beta
Whew. Just a couple of days ago, Pirates of the Burning Sea was updated to build 1.0.22.0, but build 1.0.25.0 has already gone live. This revision includes the planned changes to Ships of the Line, bringing them closer to how they were originally intended to be.Also in 1.0.25.0, swashbuckling has been tuned quite a lot, and some new voice acting from foreign speakers has gone in. The invisible avatar problem hasn't been fully resolved yet, but we're promised some more progress when the next patch is released.Once again, this is but a small portion of all the changes in the patch, and the full list is pasted after the break.
Zorro to leave his mark (exclusively) on the Wii
Between all the sword-swinging in the currently released Twilight Princess, Red Steel, and Wario Ware and more to come in planned Wii incarnations of Dragon Quest, Dynasty Warriors and Star Wars, you'd think developers would be getting a little tired of using the Wii remote to emulate a blade. Well, think again. On Friday, Zorro Productions announced that Pronto Games will be bringing the famous fictional swashbuckler to the Wii with "The Destiny of Zorro" this holiday season. Pronto President and Creative Director Randy Angle told Joystiq that they have been working on the game since last August when they got the license from Zorro Productions. Angle said the game would build off of existing Zorro properties while presenting a totally new story that gets into the origins of the character and brings the player "fully into the moment of Zorro-ness." The game is currently planned as a Wii exclusive, a decision that Angle said was predicated on the controller. "We would do a very different game if we were working on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360," he said. Players will get to control Zorro as he uses his trademark sword and whip, according to Angle, but that the moves will most likely be linked to abstracted Wii remote motions rather than a one-to-one representation of real-world movement. "Players tend to do better and get less tired with abstraction," Angle said. "It's not a sword-fighting simulator." Pronto, which also works on Wii middleware, has already secured a publishing partner in Europe but is still looking for a stateside publisher. They hope to have the game ready for production in September in advance of an early November release. [Via VG Gen]
