Yar! Pirates of the Burning Seas!

Do they have a trial account?

This one is very tempting. I like the big open tropical look. One reason I like WOW. Very little of that cluttered or deeply shadowed environment.

Ok, after an epic play session with Matt and Joe I feel like I'm better able to give some information about this game.

They give a 14 day trail in every box, I gave mine to Seth. Mr. Joe or Vollinger probably still have theirs.

First off, the combat is just like Pirates! The sea combat is pretty slow, but very slick. You have to manage the wind, facing, firing arcs, and ammo type. You have several different ways to take down your opponent, you can cripple their sails (which is useful for more than simply preventing somebody from getting away, if you cripple the enemy's ability to move you can say out of their firing arcs), cripple the deck crew (for easier boarding), or simply blast the ship to pieces. So far I find boarding the ship to be the fastest/most fun way to resolve ship to ship combat, however, simply smashing a ship to bits seems to work better against higher level npcs. Playing in a group really makes the combat feel satisfying (and really rewards shooting out the enemy sails). The combats look amazingly good, the more players/npcs in the battle the more dynamic it looks. Besides not being able to ram the battles are very cinematic.

Ground / Deck combat is pretty well done. Essentially everybody works like rogues from WoW. You have a balance bar which regenerates over time and you expend when you attack. If your balance bar is depleted you both can't attack as often and have a lower defense against enemy attacks. As you attack you can build up initiative which you can use to preform stronger attacks. The three fighting styles use the bars differently. The most interesting thing about ground combat is that players only ever have 100 life, and defense values don't seem to scale based on level. So in PvP a crafty player might be able to take on foes of a higher level. Individual ground combats are over pretty quickly.

The classes overlap quite a bit in terms of abilities, each has a way to boost damage, debuff, and an array of group buffs. However, each has a specialty. As a Navy officer it would be pretty hard to run out of combat upgrades, whereas the free trader gets a ton of speed / evasion upgrades.

I haven't messed around much with the economy, but it seems a lot like EVE online. The only difference is that players never have to gather resources. Instead players buy deeds to structures which produce materials over time. They can then sell the raw materials or buy more structures which can further process the materials (into things like weapon upgrades, ammo, ships, etc). The auction system is similar to the blind system used in FFXI, essentially the buyer has access to the trends for the last few months, but doesn't know how much the sellers are willing to sell their goods for.

So far the quests are pretty good, they include city of heroes style 'clear out the warehouse', fed ex quests, collection quests (deceptively hard), and epic sea battles between two or more groups of ships. You get into and out of your ship often enough that it doesn't feel like a EQ/WoW clone.

I haven't tried out PvP yet, but I'm certainly curious. After every fight you are returned to full health, so there is no preying on people after they have been worn down by the computer or another player. Also level don't mean much besides granting more skills and allowing you to potentially pilot bigger and better ships, so in general PvP is more of a level playing field.

Anyway, having fun so far!

I'm going to talk to Clarissa about the idea of switching over to this game for a bit. It pushes all of my buttons (in a good way) and I REALLY need a change from WoW.

Oh, I forgot to talk about character creation. It is just about perfect in my opinion. They essentially went the City of Heroes route, your appearance has nothing to do with your abilities. You have a slightly different starting clothing based on which nation you start as and you can pick up clothing as you go, but there are no restrictions. My Naval officer looks like a cross between Mal from Fire Fly and John Locke from Lost.

I am a little disappointed by the hair, it is very chunky and in general just doesn't look good (hence why my character looks like John Locke), but all of the other options are great. There are a few clipping issues with different pieces of clothing, but they are either minor or instantly correctable. The best part is that you can change your appearance any time you are in dock, just go to the tailor and whip up a new look for free. Vollinger seems to change his appearance every time he hits port.

There are no options for fine tuning faces and body type, but honestly in City of Heroes you rarely saw more than two or three body types (Athletic Man, Thin Girl, Block of Wood Hulk like Guy). As it is the character generator is just rich enough that I can forgive it for not having these options.

Some of the NPC models need a little work (particularly the ones you fight while boarding low level NPC ships), and hopefully will be updated in a future patch.

Game mechanics wise at character creation you only have to choose your nationality and starting class (if you choose a nation rather than being a pirate). You get into the game pretty quickly with your well dressed and likely completely unique character. While I pine for City of Heroes style power pool character creation, you have enough chances to specialize your character during game play.

Saw this at gencon...its VERY cool. I wish i had money to play it...

downloaded...kind of installed.

So the real question here is, You gonna play for a month or two then quit and go back to WoW? :)

What's this "[u]go back[/u] to WOW?"

I did the beta of Pirates of the Burning Sea (I think I'm allowed to say that now), but I don't remember a whole lot about it. I'm afraid I never really got into it; probably didn't help that we were just starting to move into Zul'Aman on the WOW side of things and I was a bit distracted with that. If the beta were starting NOW, I'd probably put more effort in. ;-)

[quote="seth lustig"]What's this "[u]go back[/u] to WOW?"[/quote]

Exactly that. I remember WAY back when you announced you were quitting. Then I think you did some DDO, then quit that and went back to WoW...correct? :)

We are playing on Guadeloupe server as the British. My character is a level 17 Naval Officer named Alec Guyler. Vollinger has a level 16 Privateer named Barstow Lowman. Mr Joe is a level 10 Free Trader named Henry Farnam.

So far the game is a lot of fun. The combat is very tactical and things don't scale up too quickly. Vollinger, Mr Joe, and I took on a level 27 when we were about level 12. The game is pretty forgiving, even in pvp (you can respec for pretty cheap, and when you buy a ship it can be sunk 4-6 times before it poofs).

Unless you know that you want to run a full time shipbuilding business (late game Free traders rock at this), or that you absolutely want to ride around in the biggest ships (late game there are Naval officer only ships that are simply way bigger and moderately cheaper than the other classes), go with Privateer.

I haven't come to a decision yet on the fighting styles. Dirty fighting is a lot of crowd control. Florentine seems to be all about steady damage output. Fencer seems to be about burst damage output. I've been using Fencing as it was the default for Naval Officers, it seems really hit or miss. If my big attacks land I'll be done with a fight quickly and barely get hurt, if they wiff I'm as good as dead.

The classes don't really seem to fit with the standard mmo tank/dps/healer setups. There are no healers (although everybody can repair themselves with skills and items), everybody is about equal on dps (Privateers seems to edge out the other two, but there are trade offs), and everybody can tank (depends mostly on the ship you are using, Naval Officers get damage resistance skills, but don't repair as much per skill use). Pirates look all around solid, but if you are going to play with us you need to be British which means you need to settle for Privateer.

The group missions are pretty epic. The first one that you get is called Red Tide, which should immediately clue you into the level of blood shed that will be involved.

The mission starts you off facing down about 10 ships that are trying to make a break for the ocean. Another 2 are shelling a friendly fort. You are given two objectives, get into the port, and destroy the ships before they escape.

We waited until we had slightly out leveled the instance before trying it out so that we could do it with three of us. Our first try we sent two ships to save the fort and left one to run interference (we didn't know how long the fort would last). When you get to the fort you have to kill some raiders, instill confidence back into the commander and gun crews (which returns the fort defenses and launches a few friendly ships). We failed because a few ships got away.

On our second try we sent two ships to handle the escaping fleet and one to secure the fort. It was a pretty epic battle since we needed to piss off every single ship to keep them from getting away. Having 10 ships of any level shooting you will wear you down pretty quickly. This time it worked out and we ended up finishing the mission without a hitch. The reward was paltry, but the mission was so much fun.

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Against NPCs we have found a few nice tactics, first off shoot them in the bow or the aft. Many times I can get the attention of a bigger ship and have it pound on me while Vollinger unloads on the bow or aft. Armor is usually about 20% as thick in those locations and DR is typically less than half so it really pays to concentrate fire there. We can do the same thing without a tank if everybody unloads into the enemy sails first thing, it takes more time to do it this way. A ship with 0% sails is as good as dead since it can't turn to shoot you.

Also try to keep your entire party on one side of a ship and concentrate fire (if you are going for the side of a ship). This effectively reduces the enemies fire power and armor by half. Similarly rotate the sides of your ship that you expose to the enemy, I try to make sure that all of my armor has taken some damage before using repair skills. Avoid sailing between enemies that you don't spectacularly outclass. While it lets you shoot with both batteries and looks totally sweet (doubly so if one or more of your volleys destroys a ship), it means that soon one of those two ships is going to be able to shoot your aft.

Wind is your friend and the computer isn't great at managing it. First off, try to stay upwind of your target, it will let you control your ship better and generally make you faster. If you are looking to board and it looks like the enemy is turning into the wind wait until they do so, they will just about come to a stop (particularly if you have damaged their sails) which will make boarding way easier. Avoid turning into the wind, if you need to change facing it is probably better to expose your aft briefly than it is to turn into the wind (and consequently expose your bow for a long period of time).

I can totally vouch for this game, everything Eric has said about it is spot on except that he got my name wrong (Hubert Farnsworth). I really like the strong economy that doesn't revolve around clicking a patch of rocks for 15 hours to craft a sweet new sword. my only complaint is that the game is a little buggy on my computer and prone to freezing at inopportune moments.

I think it would be amazing to get a group together and all play as pirates plundering the local villages and ships.

Henry Farnam is simply a better name. Sorry, I tried to post from memory.

Trying to work out some voice communications. For the moment I'm looking at Skype conference calls (great sound, and doesn't need a server). My second choice is vent (ok sound, better for large groups, needs a server).

Vollinger and I haven't run into any problems with stability. This is perhaps the most stable MMO I've played. No crashes and only slight slow downs on loading with the graphics cranked (Goes away with lower graphics settings, probably texture loading). The load times are pretty good compared to other MMOs I've played in the past. The only annoying load times are when you enter a building (mostly because you are almost certainly going to immediately leave the building and experience another load screen).

Vollinger seems to even have good luck on dial up. The ship combat is still smooth, but the deck combat has some lag.

I had a good time last night. I had similar things to Joe's description. Odd buggy stuff just following entering or leaving a building. Graphics would go totally wonky. I did get to see the interior of my polygon head. That was creepy/cool. I also experienced multiple times where, upon entering a boarding action, right before all those crewmen show up, my computer would just decide to restart.

That led me to the conclusion that Sony and the game designers need a shortcut for game startup, bypassing all the junk they throw in before telling you're "still logged in, reloading." I visually froze a lot there too, listening to the battle.

The engagement system is very addictive. You're just trying to sail somewhere, but of course you click on passing ships, and of course some of them are enemies, so of course you engage them. Very hard to ignore.

I beat several higher-powered ships, killing their sails and then parking in front of them, unable to move up beside them, as their guns would have destroyed my already diminished armor. Slow, but effective against dumber ships.

I got my first quest reward weapon. It's a sword named Diego, and the inscription reads "My name is Montoya"

I miss jumping.

Some quick tips. Invest in some hull patches, the player made ones are really inexpensive and really help out. Also invest in the privateer survival line, you'll get a good increase to defense as well as be able to heal your sails and hull for free.

I haven't had much of a use for rum, crew resupply is more of an issue in pvp and for pirates (where they have really cool skills that eat their own men). Mast Braces are handy to have as well, but only certain missions have npcs obsessed with killing your sails.

I'd also recommend getting some hull reinforcement upgrades, if you stack them you can get almost 20% extra armor. Similarly the cannon upgrades can offer up to 10% extra damage output at your level if stacked. They are destroyed if you sink, but they really should only run you about 2k total.

What little I've played with dirty fighting I have to say I'm more impressed with it than I was with fencing. The basic attacks simply deal more damage and have debuffs / DoT effects tacked on. One of the basic attacks deals great damage, reduces balance because of the damage, and gives a nice 15 init and occasionally causes bleeding. Another causes 20 points of bleeding damage. While this isn't spectacular later on, until level 20 or so it is basically a one hit kill on the lower level sailors. Against Captains it still helps a great deal. The crowd control and toughness lines looks solid as well. I might have to make the switch with my main.

I'm still really confused by the skill ups. The red text indicating why something isn't currently working is enormously helpful. I do Elbow people constantly. But holy moses! Blasting a captain to half health in one shot with my pistol! Very nice! I had no idea the game had real aggro intelligence, until I saw the whole enemy crew turn on me after that! Only to have [u]my[/u] crew kill their injured captain for the win!

so....you guys are jerks for getting me wanting to play this, so to compensate, someone needs to give me the trial that comes in the box so that I can try it out.

[quote="Tim"]so....you guys are jerks for getting me wanting to play this, so to compensate, someone needs to give me the trial that comes in the box so that I can try it out.[/quote]

Stop your whining. I have to spend $300 to get my desktop up and running to play it.

So lets just say that my Postillionen Frigate is a wonderful thing. 20 x 8lb guns and 4 wimpy swivel guns. 3 Damage Reduction and nearly 50% more armor than my previous ship. It steers like a cow, but I love it.

News Flash: My Postillionen Frigate is not invincible.

I was killing spanish convoys off the coast of Caracas, slowly upping my targets. First I tried a few level 28's (+6 levels) and that went well. Then I tried out a level 30 (+8 levels) and it went well. I tried 3 level 24's with good results. I then tried two level 30's and handily destroyed the lubbers.

Apparently going after 3 level 27s is where I went wrong. First off this was a tricky convoy. It conned as a 3 ship level 27 Spanish Navy convoy. I expected them to have some fire power, but figured I would be alright since two level 27's wasn't enough to really give me problems. Once I'm in the battle I find out that 27 was the minimum level of the mobs in the fight, there was a level 28 and an elite level 30. I should have run and found easier prey, Mistake #1, but I was high on my previous victories and imagined the riches stored in that elite hull. What I should have been thinking about was the cargo already in my hold, and the cost of my fancy Frigate.

My initial plan was to go after one of the two smaller gun boats first and leave the elite for last. While elites certainly do more damage, they are primarily more damage resistant. On the approach I only had a clear line of sight to the elite and rather than waste time I put my initial volleys into the elite. They were not particularly effective and I should have taken that as a sign and switched over to one of the lower level easier to deal with ships. However, I figured that I had already made good progress on the named ship and switching targets wasn't worth it. Mistake #2.

That is when my armor started to fall fast. I continued to pound away at the named and was making decent progress. I had gotten past his armor and figured that once he was down the fight would turn around. I used all my healing and continued on with my ill fated plan. This was my last opportunity to run, Mistake #3.

Just as I sunk the elite ship. I realized my error, my armor could take the damage, but my hull was seriously beaten and there was no longer any chance I could get away or survive until my hull repair ability came back. For a second I entertained the possibility that I could escape, but it was far too late. I lamely sent a few volleys toward the remaining ships, and collected the loot that would never make it back to port. It took remarkably little time after sinking the elite to be similarly sent to the bottom of the sea.

Such is the lesson that every young captain must learn when he gets a shiney new ship.

So the other day I decided to install the newest version of the driver for my video card. It has been a while and there was the outside possibility that Pirates could look even better. I installed it and things started to go wonky. The ocean would flicker and all manner of sadness ensued.

So I checked the support forums and found a little info. The flickering ocean problem is a known bug with Nvidia's official drivers. They have a download for a version that doesn't flicker. Since installing their version of the driver (which isn't on Nvida's own site yet), the flickering went away. In fact the slow down right after loading I mentioned before seems to have gone away. So if you have an Nvidia card download the driver posted on their forums.

I also read that there is also a slow graphics memory leak that they haven't fixed yet. This might be the reason that others have been having crashing issues. (I have a metric ton of graphics ram, 756MB of delicious graphics ram, so I would need to play the game for a LONG time to run out.) If you have 128MB or less you can pretty much expect the game to crash after a couple of hours depending on how often you enter battles. They are aware of the leak so hopefully they'll be able to fix it in the next patch.

Yup. That whole thing where you repair your armor, thinking it will keep your damaged "inner" hull safe is a mistake I made too. Cannons can do hull damage even if your armor's all back up. Poor Her Magesty's Mighty Wind" took her last trip to the bottom. I had three bastards circling me with sail killer shots too. That was a surprise

Hoy! New patch Tuesday was big, but I have seen some marked improvement in performance, leaving me to have faith that, although my system is sketchy, some of the issues were on their end.

I am still amazed that such a wide range of levels can play in the same fights, as well as you mentioned, Griff, levels of ships.

For those reading along at home, your pc can be at one level while the ship you are currently captaining can be anywhere at or below your level. Also you can get a ship with more guns, more armor, more speed, bigger crew, etc...and then further tweak whatever stats you choose, allowing for a pretty nice array of options.

One thing, I will persue when I can actually afford it, is to set up a ship for group fighting and another for solo play. [i]And then,[/i] [u]one more[/u] for fast transport of goods!

Whee!!

Alright, I ended up getting this game for my birthday.

My character is a british privateer (on your server) I am currently level 8, and I am currently at a major pvp area near in a spanish port. I'm trying to head to port royal, but damn that place is far away.

my characters name is Wallace Gromat

Cracklin' Toast Gromot!

H'yarr! I thought last night I should come on here and post that my 20-something British Privateer's name is Sylvia Trench, but I was too busy building vineyards and wasting my time in far off lands.

We're in a guild {For King and Country} run by some strange folks. It's more of a recruit first, ask questions later, veriety. Very good for starting out, if you ask me. The officers are active and very oddly officer-like. I expect you'll be happily invited if you want, and they do a lot of activities together.

I wouldn't worry about far off ports, Tim, or buildings for a while. Unless you insist on learning by wasting large amounts of money and time (like everyone else except Joe does) you are truly better off doing the massive number of quests in the early area, and understanding the dynamics of buildings before spending loads of cash just to tear them down a day later. But you'll be itching to get rid of all your easily early-won dubloons, so spend away, then discover how badly it went, like me!

[b][size=18][color=red]An[/color][color=blue]d H[/color][color=green]appy [/color][color=yellow]Birth[/color][color=indigo]day![/color][/size] Buy me a drink now?[/b]

And btw, I'd trade you some dubloons, but it's likely you have more than me right now.

I have the starting ship plus a crap ship for teleporting, and a big civilian ship for combat. and somewhere around 9k dubloons. I'm currently a dirty fighter, but I might change to florentine at some point