Lead designer of Pirates of the Burning Sea Q & A interview
The Warcry Network recently had a chance to ask Pirates of the Burning Sea lead designer Kevin Maginn a round of questions about the upcoming Jack-Sparrow-simulator. The interviewer poses queries about launching with both land and ship aspects already in-game (as opposed to a game like EVE which is only now looking to add land-based play), system requirements for the masses, the beta and stress test processes, population balancing and the user interface.
Of most interest is the question on populations, regarding the different factions in the game. Players can choose to be English, Spanish, French, or the swashbucklin' Pirate. Maginn notes that, during various phases of the beta, the numbers have remained roughly the same -- 35% choose Pirates, nearly as many choose the English, and then the French and Spanish each take 15%. On this he says, "we are working on some population balancing tools, with two goals: make the game more fair if your nation is underpopulated, and make underpopulated nations more appealing, particularly to large PvP guilds".
If the incentives for one race are good enough, it might swing the population the other way entirely. We'll have to wait and see what countermeasures will be employed before the game releases, as the difference in numbers so far sounds fairly staggering.
