Pirates of the Burning Sea
Posted January 29, 2008
Pirates of the Burning Sea is a MMORPG that takes advantage of the reemergence of pirate popularity caused by the PotC movies. The game tosses the player into the role of a sailor on seas in the area of America, Mexico, South America and Cuba. The game divides players by nationality and allows players to fight over territory. At the outset, the story is launched by an attack on your captain's ship. The resulting attack kills the captain, thus promoting you, and puts your character into control of a treasure map. This map will start the story arc for the remainder of the game and spin a tale about the Knights Templar and the Holy Grail. The story is moderately entertaining, but fails to really captivate the player due to the lack of cinematic quality in the production.Gameplay
When you first jump into the game, you are asked to create a male or female character. Besides choosing nationality and career choice, you can modify the look of the player. While the character creation options are nowhere as deep as a MMO like City of Heroes, there are a large number of options to alter the types and amount of clothing. I did find the number of eye patches to be disappointing as well as any body altering feature.
As many will flock to the life of a pirate, it made sense for the developer to make it an all-around, balanced character class. Pirates have fast ships with excellent maneuverability, a hefty amount of firepower and the ability to commandeer any ship that they come across. While the stolen ships won't be able to last more than one defeat, it saves you from spending doubloons on ship deeds for the most part. It's also easier to go all out during any battle if you don't care what happens to the ship.
Obviously the draw of the MMO is playing as a rip-roaring scallywag of the high seas, but there are other options if you prefer to embrace law and order. You can join the Spanish, French, or British and gain access to the other three classes in the game; Freetrader, Privateer, of Naval Officer. Your level of allegiance to the crown defines what type of player you wish to be. Join the navy to focus on defending the weak and gaining access to the largest warships. As a privateer, you have access to faster maneuvering ships and can board other ships. As a freetrader, you have more concerned with economics and usually desire to evade / outrun opponents.I started a British Freetrader on the Bonny server and came to a few conclusions about a few systems in the game. The economic structure has a gargantuan learning curve and the game doesn't offer much in the form of delivery missions. The economy is designed to be completely player controlled. That means that you won't be able to purchase high level items from shops, but rather the auction houses. Auction houses are limited by region and usually contain 4 or 5 ports per list. Trying to wrap your head around supply & demand on a grand scale is incredibly consuming and takes a considerable amount of time to understand the nuances of the system.
As a freetrader, your class is fairly useless until you pass level 25. While freetraders gain access to searching the auction houses of distant ports early in the character's life, every other class has the ability to craft the same items as your freetrader does. Only at the midrange level does the game offer expanded freetrader options. Freetraders gain the ability to construct a premium level of goods that are unavailable to other classes. Due to the previously mentioned lack of delivery missions, it's actually better to build a freetrader as a war class for the first half of the game and respect the character once it hits the middle. Freetraders also gain access to the ships with the largest storage hulls in the game. If you put in the time, building up a freetrader will easily finance all your other characters on the same server.
I also dabbled in the Naval class for a while, but found it too much of a group based ordeal. While you can solo, it's not a viable option for the long term as the turning rate of the giant warships is so slow. That being said, going to battle with a couple privateers at your side is infinitely better. While the privateers keep the enemy ships turning a multitude of directions, your stat boosts keep your buddies alive and your guns rip apart the enemy. Next to playing as a pirate, the Privateer class is the most well rounded of the bunch. Privateers are probably the easiest class in the game to play in the early stages due to their increased monetary output and ability to claim ships for the crown. Different from pirates, privateers can't sail the claimed ships. Instead they can turn the ships into their local government for pennants or commendations. Those items are then traded in for stuff like guns, supplies or even brand new ships. Due to their excellence at quickly taking down ships, privateers due suffer a -50% experience hit on taking / destroying enemy ships.
Ship combat is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the game. Despite the remedial course in fighting opponents in the opening mission, there are many more lessons to learn such as wind direction, speed, resistance, altering shots on the fly and the insane amount of toggles to hit before entering battle. Enemy ships can be targeted in three ways; the hull, the sails and the crew. By altering the type of shot in the cannon, you can damage a specific part of the ship. There is also a faster way to overtake a ship called grappling. Grappling essentially latches onto an enemy ship and gives the player the ability to board the enemy craft. The game then becomes a sword battle in which reinforcements can be called upon. For a pirate or privateer, it's usually the fastest way to end a mission or capture a vessel.
Sword fighting is one of the most confusing game mechanics. Your character can choose from three different fighting styles: fencing, florentine and dirty or offensive, defensive and disruptive; respectively. Dirty quickly became my favorite style as it was easier to toss a firecracker in the air for distraction and elbow my enemy in the face as couple times rather than simply hack away. While swordfighting, the most important level to watch is balance. The sooner they lose balance, the faster it will be to slice them to pieces. Unfortunately, swordfighting becomes a complete mess in large scale battles. It's incredibly tough to manage any of the fighting skills and actually simpler to keep hacking away in blind hope. On land, each port has a harbor master to customize your ship. The player has the ability to add boosts to the ship in the form of increased speed, defense or even crew enhancements. Ships can be swapped out and renamed at the harbor master as well. In town, there is usually a local magistrate that hands out missions, trainers for your class, a local pub and the shop. The shop contains a small section of goods, a custom ship flag / sail representative and the previously mentioned auction house.
The auction house is highly interesting and typically where you will make the most money in the game. For any given item, there is a price average paid in that specific port. When you list an item, only you will be able to see the rock bottom price you will accept. It's up to other players to place a bid for the item, but without browsing specific auctions. Players will immediately know if they won an item and it can be retrieved at the port listed. The intriguing part of the process is that the lowest priced item sells first. For instance, a ship deed has been selling for 1000 doubloons on average. Player 1 lists that deed for 950 thinking it will sell immediately. Player 2 lists the same deed for 700. Player 3 comes along and wants to buy said deed. If they don't want to quibble over price and bid 1000 doubloons, Player 1's deed will sell first and make 300 more than they planned. It's really up to Player 3 to start bidding low for an item and work their way up in price. Oddly enough, most players I talked to just shoot for the average and move on.
There are aspects of the game that I continually dislike. The U.I. is a completely cluttered mess. At 1600 by 1200 resolution on a 20 inch screen, the text is incredibly tiny and the toggles are almost unreadable. The cheat sheets for sailing / sword-fighting are pointless to squint at as well. The launch for the game hasn't been smooth either. Often times, I found myself staring at a login screen for 5 minutes or even having to restart my computer entirely. There are plenty of bugs to be found as well. My character completely disappeared several times. I was just a walking shadow with a sword sticking out. Some of the ports in the game, while not marked on the map, haven't been finished and the dialogue options are lacking. Also, the game occasionally hangs indefinitely at a loading screen causing a complete shutdown to play again. Finally, I found player population to be a bit low in the first week, specifically anyone playing as a French or Spanish nationality. That will balance with time, but it's frustrating to see a million pirates and British players floating around.
Graphics
I'm really impressed on the level of optimization that the developer took to allow this title to run on a midrange system. On a machine with a 7600GT, 1 gig of RAM and a dual core AMD 3700+, I can pull off 1600 by 1200 resolution and an enormous amount of graphical detail at an excellent framerate. Additionally, the load times are surprisingly minimal when shifting from port to sea or vice versa. While certain ports could use more life, the cities are fairly lively. When you visit Tortuga for the first time as a pirate, take a moment to look around at how the city is constructed out of wrecked ships and underground caverns. I also love how you can watch ships sail in and out of ports while on land.
The character detail isn't fantastic, but it's on par with what to expect in a MMO. The ships are extremely detailed though. Each ship has a specific look and the amount of customization options is really superb. The player has the ability to upload their own sail / flag designs to use in the game. This makes society (clan) based play a real joy. While everyone is probably sailing a different vessel, you can all fly the same flag. Since you spend 70% of the game out at sea, the water effects are particularly nice.
Audio
When you stroll through a port, you will hear all kinds of shouts and catcalls from the surrounding sailors / pirates. It's really quite enjoyable to stroll through the local towns and hear music played on the street, swords clanging during practice and the sea rolling off in the distance. Sailing around is peaceful as well with only the brush of waves tickling the eardrums. The musical score is phenomenal as well. While it typically remains understated to the rest of the action, the light bouncy melodies offer up an authentic pirate experience.
Conclusion
Pirates of the Burning Sea is an excellent MMO on nearly all counts, but suffers from a shockingly huge learning curve. Expect many hours dedicated to learning how to effectively sail a ship as well as a lengthy amount of time studying the economy. Also, try to bear with the strange hand to hand combat system until it gets streamlined. At the moment, it's a garbled mess that's tough to understand. Is PotBS worth the initial $50 investment and $15 a month fee? That really depends how much you want to play as a pirate, I suppose. For those who love strategic battles, enjoy crafting and are searching for a unique MMO to play, Pirates might just be up your alley.