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Flying Lab Software on Pirates, part 8
So it's not that bad, but people grind constantly to pay for their PvP ships. We don't want people to do that so we're making it so you don't have to, much the same way that WoW did with the Shattered Sun dailies.
Flying Lab Software on Pirates, part 3
People don't like it and there is a hard core of people who really enjoy it but, frankly, most people avoid it. Well, I sat down and started playing with it and decided that, in fact, it was pretty much what I wanted in terms of how interesting and complex it was. It was just, essentially, totally unplayable.
Dragon*Con 2008: Flying Lab Software on Pirates
At this year's Dragon*Con, we ran into Flying Lab Software's Russell Williams (CEO) and Kevin Maginn (PotBS Lead Designer) who had a lot to say about the design philosophy behind Pirates of the Burning Sea as well as the challenges of continuing to work on a live game. After its release in January, Pirates has continued growing with monthly updates, providing new game systems and new content. How do the designers decide where Pirates is going from here? We've got the skinny on both where Pirates came from and where it's going, after the jump. %Gallery-12977%
Flying Lab Software on Pirates, part 7
Williams: You know, the thing about MMOs, especially if you look at Star Wars Galaxies, when Galaxies came out, not to beat on poor Rat one more time, but here I go – when Galaxies came out, the idea of the sandbox structure was the predominant theory.
Flying Lab Software on Pirates, part 6
We just always assumed that players can always struggle through to find ways of making social match-making but the fact is that we have a lot more casual players as a demographic than in a lot of other MMOs because we have a much broader audience than typically the EQ people. Somebody data mined out all of our ship stats and that's the reference we use for our ships now.
Flying Lab Software on Pirates, part 5
In EverQuest, there's a place called Lake Wrath. When I played EverQuest there was this rumor that there was a sea monster in Lake Wrath and that no one had seen it or that one person had seen it and he had a screenshot – or was it really a screenshot or was it a fake screenshot. The problem is that EverQuest had monsters that only spawned once a year.
Flying Lab Software on Pirates, part 4
I'm sorry but that's the way it's going to be. quot; We had the luxury of ripping that out and going back in and doing it correctly. And so that's why the ship combat is so freaking cool and why avatar combat is going to be a hell of a lot better after we go through this process for it.
Flying Lab Software on Pirates, part 2
Pirates of the Burning Sea is a competitive game in which players take the role of adventurers in a romanticized version of the Caribbean in the age of sails and seek fame, fortune, and glory for themselves and their nations. This is really the vision statement that we should have had five years ago.
Pirates of the Burning Sea gets major website revamp
Team members at Flying Lab Software have launched a totally new Pirates of the Burning Sea website. The changes are not merely aesthetic; there are substantial additions in terms of functionality. They include a game guide, featured forum posts, and other standards. The site was designed not only by your usual web development folks, but also by the game's UI designer and its art director.There are also some more clever changes and community features, like widgets. The widgets aren't enabled yet, though. Still, it's an excellent set of changes (which have been listed and explained in a lengthy news post on the site) that represents another step in Flying Lab's attempts to strengthen and grow the community of a game whose sales performed below expectations.
Flying Lab working on a flash-based kids MMO?
Gamasutra, the well-known games industry news site, maintains a job service board on top of the numerous sites and services they offer. Job offerings, as you may be aware from previous posts to Massively, are often a good indication of what a company has up their sleeve - even if it hasn't officially been announced yet. Such is the case with a curious job posting from Flying Lab Software, the makers of the historical MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea.According to the job post, Flying Lab is considering working on a Flash-based kids-oriented massively multiplayer game. The offering states: "Flying Lab Software is seeking an experienced Flash Game Developer to create casual Flash games for a children's MMO product (ages 8-12 yrs.)." It continues, "Flying Lab Software is currently expanding and supporting our recently released MMO, Pirates of the Burning Sea, as well as working on several new MMO projects." We've put in a request for comment with the company, and we'll let you know as soon as we know more. The meat of the full listing is below the cut.
One Shots: Sunday on the seas
For the people who attended SOE's Fan Faire this weekend, today is a day to relax and enjoy the company of good friends -- or in several cases, the day to travel back home. But if you want beauty and travel all at once, you have to admit Flying Lab's Pirates of the Burning Sea does an excellent job of it. Sadly, we didn't get a note with server name, location, or any backstory on the image when Phil A sent it in to us, but it certainly doesn't detract from the beauty of the scene at all.Do you have a lovely screenshot you captured while traveling in your favorite game? If so, we'd love to see it. Just send it in to us here at oneshots AT massively.com along with whatever information you'd like to give us about what's going on in the scene. It's fun, it's easy, it's free! %Gallery-9798%
Pirates of the Burning Sea dumps skirmishes overboard
If you were waiting for skirmishes to be added to Pirates of the Burning Sea, you may be out of luck, at least for awhile. In a recent announcement at SOE's Fan Faire this week, Flying Lab game designer Drew Clowerly stated that it's simply a matter of losing the developer who was working on that aspect of the game. "We had one guy working on them, but he got a great offer and left. It was an opportunity to work on a brand new start-up, and nobody could turn that down," Clowerly said. In light of the recent troubles in MMO developerville, Clowerly was quick to point out that this doesn't mean PotBS is in any kind of trouble. Skirmishes are still planned, and it's something that art director Bruce Sharp says they'd like to bring aboard sooner than later.If you're unaware, skirmishes were planned to allow players to create their own instanced PvP ship battles, with full control over everything from the victory conditions to the number of participants. "Skirmishes are an opportunity to just go in and have fun without risking your ship, as you'll be able to select the consequences for any battle failure, and that could be something like just gambling on doubloons," Sharp says.
Mythic's Paul Barnett and Jeff Hickman coming to PAX08
If you happen to find yourself up in Seattle Washington on August 29th-31st, then you may want to check out the Penny Arcade Expo. Chances are that if you do, you'll be able to find both Paul Barnett and Jeff Hickman roaming around the convention halls yammering on about waaagh! and other juicy bits of information. Warhammer Online has always had a good booth presence at PAX but now we'll all get to experience the one-two punch of a Hickman-Barnett combo. If you ask us, that alone is worth the price of admission for any nearby WAR fan. Did we mention juicy info bits? With this news, Penny Arcade Expo 2008 is shaping up to be a real treat for anyone interested in MMOs. Mythic Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Blizzard, Cryptic Studios, Flying Lab Software and CCP are all going to be there with games and/or content to show off to attendees. So don't miss it if you can go!
PotBS to close the gap on high level ships and add eleven new ships
Ahoy Captains, an overhaul of high levels ships will take place in the next Pirates of the Burning Sea (1.6) patch build. Also, you may see some never before seen ships on the waterways as eleven new ships will deployl. The ships setting sail are: Archelon, Cyclone, Dauntless, Mastercraft Couronne, Mastercraft van Hoorn, Monarch, Treason, Cruizer, El Dragon, Minerva and Trinidad. In the latest developer log on the official PotBS website an explanation is given for these changes and the new ship additions. It's stated that a huge power gap between a level 50 in the right equipment versus other high level ships. To bridge this gap without nerfing the best ships in the game the stats on other high level ships will be boosted. This rebalancing act also presented the opportunity to add new ships. Captains should be wary. Your ship is always at risk from being hit with a stealth nerf when balancing occurs at a large scale. The ships and ammo change list is available after the cut, and there is a discussion taking place on the PotBS forums.
Meet the Flying Lab Software team at Gen Con Indy
Any Pirates of the Burning Sea fans heading to Gen Con Indy this year will be able to catch up with the folks from Flying Lab Software. They will be there representing their game in the Exhibitor Hall at Booth #1033, but if you really want to get to know the team, then you'll want to go along to their meet-up at the pub!On August the 14th, wear your PotBS shirt if you have one and head on over to Loughmiller's Pub. From 6pm to 9pm -- and probably later -- you'll find yourself in good (albeit pirate) company, with members of the FLS team and your fellow fans. There will even be some prizes up for grabs, so if you're going to be in the area, register for the meet-up and treat yourself to a night of PotBS fun.
The PotBS "Great Testbed Screenshot Hunt" is on
Pirates of the Burning Sea players now have another contest to take a crack at if the video competitions don't strike their fancy. Flying Lab Software has announced the "Great Testbed Screenshot Hunt", which involves players logging on to the Testbed server, performing particular tasks and then screenshotting them.The ultimate goal of this is to make the testing process a little more fun, but there are tangible rewards as well to spice things up a bit. After you've emailed your batch of eligible screenshots to FLS, you'll be in the draw to win one of 10 game-cards granting 30 days play time, or one of two PotBS t-shirts. Head over to the contest page to see what you need to snap to be in with a chance -- and make sure your character name is visible on each shot!
Winning video chosen in PotBS boarding tutorial contest
The Pirates of the Burning Sea video contest that we looked at a few weeks ago has drawn to a close, and a winning video has been selected. The aim of the contest was to create a video that could explain the process of boarding other ships to a new player, with a graphics card on offer for the winner.Embedded above is the winning entry, from PotBS player Al "AlanB" Bradbury. It does a great job of outlining the boarding rules of thumb, and is an entertaining piece to boot, thanks to the surly pirate teacher and his interrupting parrot companion. New video contests from Flying Lab Software will be coming up in the future, giving players more chances to win prizes and show off their video creations.
PotBS patch 1.5 hiccups, fixes, and character transfers
Ye sea loving scallywags looking for adventure better look to Pirates of the Burning Sea, it has plenty of adventuring waiting in the latest 1.5.46.0 patch. Fitted just last week a build discrepancy caused sails to rip apart, a server reboot followed causing disgruntled nations on Rackham to take cover but the storm has since calmed. There will be twice a week scheduled server restarts to work out the remaining kinks on both NA and EU servers set to take place on Tuesdays and Fridays at 1:30am PST. There's a lot of new content in this patch, including a new six man epic mission in Fortaleza Da Luz. The mission is intended for level 50 players and balanced at a high difficulty. Numerous other changes and updates in this milestone update can be viewed at the official Flying Lab support site. Also, both the testbed and live servers are now in synch with the same build and players can now copy a live character over to the test server. Forewarning, any active auction listing will be delisted. Vote on your favorite PotBS video, transfer a character or stick to plundering on a live server, it's time to get back to playing and drinking some rum!
PotBS policy updates on cross teaming and selling durability
Pirates of the Burning Sea's 1.5 patch deploys tomorrow morning, but effective immediately are two policy changes. In regards to cross teaming which is when a player uses two different accounts to play as a separate nation on the same server. The rule will be enforced and now applies to multiple accounts tied to individual account owners. It's not possible to play two characters of opposing nations on the same account so players would bypass this by using another account. The second policy change is that the selling of durability to Pirates is no longer allowed. Players with multiple accounts that play as a differing nation on the same server will be given the opportunity to transfer their characters to another server. If players have any further questions regarding the new policy changes please petition in-game. The announcement also warns that repeat offenders are subject to further disciplinary action, most likely the ban stick. Joe Ludwig is responding to some dismayed players over on the official PotBS forums.
PotBS video contest offers graphics card bounty
The Pirates of the Burning Sea community site has posted a neat guide to making videos of their game, covering a number of different programs, and the finishing touches that can turn a good movie into a great one. It's certainly a nice guide, but you might wonder if there is any particular reason that Flying Lab Software is educating their players so -- and of course, there is.A new series of contests are on the way for PotBS subscribers, and the objective is to come up with some top-notch tutorial videos. The first contest is based around the art of Boarding Combat, and the winning video should be something that can explain to new players exactly how to succeed at this. The creator of the best video will sail away with a GeCube ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card, and entry closes on the 30th of June. You can visit the competition page to get all the specific requirements, and begin your career as a pirate teacher.
