By Kieron Gillen on September 16th, 2010 at 8:11 pm.
News that Pirates Of The Burning Sea has just released its first free expansion – the previously mentioned Whale-bone-ship-featuring Power & Prestige – has been somewhat shadowed by the simultaneous announcement that it’s joining Everquest 2 and Lord of the Rings Online and going free-to-play. When? Fall. That’s soon, isn’t it, Ameri-chums? Relatively soon, anyway. The model seems to be payments for “premium” content and items, or an alternative “Captain’s Club” subs model – though what this means for currents subs hasn’t been confirmed yet. In the mean time, Power & Prestige’s changes to the game, in terms of port management are available to everyone who’s playing and… oh, let’s just show that whale-ship-stuff again.
Woo!
We’ve also got an interview with Flying Lab about this move forthcoming, so expect that soonish.
16/09/2010 at 20:27 dadioflex says:
Coinciding with Pirate week on Gamersgate…
16/09/2010 at 22:41 a says:
Well that name’s a bit unfortunate. But I guess water thief week wouldn’t have worked either.
16/09/2010 at 20:28 Jer says:
Oh those right bastards. I was just lamenting the other day that they were adding port management but I’d probably never see it as I don’t play any MMO enough to justify a subscription. Well played, Flying Lab, well played.
16/09/2010 at 20:30 DrGonzo says:
The music in that trailer is great. It sounds like it’s as close as you can get to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme without getting sued.
16/09/2010 at 20:31 GenBanks says:
I bought that game while it was on steam sale. seemed pretty good while I was playing but I have a short attention span…
17/09/2010 at 12:14 tigershuffle says:
I also have trouble with my attensi……… ooooh look a helicopter
16/09/2010 at 20:45 Tei says:
Is a great game, with very nice naval battles. I say this game is World of Tanks… with boats :-D..and a economy that works (crafter and economycrafters friendly) and some ultranational rivalities.
I will probably install the client :-D
16/09/2010 at 20:50 cjlr says:
Shouldn’t that be fewer pieces of eight?
16/09/2010 at 21:00 SheffieldSteel says:
Fewer is more… grammatically correct.
17/09/2010 at 02:24 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
More grammatically correct, but not as funny. Less references the number eight as well. Fewer would only reference the meaning of the cant phrase (ie doubloons).
So yeah, like some RPS pun headlines it’s actually funnier than you think. Again, some.
Also, numberwang.
17/09/2010 at 19:11 Kieron Gillen says:
And Fewer wouldn’t fit on the line.
The line length is the hidden master of RPS title-linery.
KG
16/09/2010 at 21:00 user@example.com says:
I’m just waiting for them to announce Vanguard. I’m hoping that Sony’ll learn from their pretty bad implementation of f2p in eq2 and do it a bit better, though. Vanguard deserves better.
16/09/2010 at 21:47 Darthey says:
It was a fun game initially, but just too dammed hard to have good PvP. I played for close to 6 months with only…three or four fun PvP matches in that time.
Fights are limited to 6-to-a-side, but six pirates can very easily drop on one national player and gank him, and of course everyone does it all the time, because its easy. So unless you have five good friends its a very hard game to get a game in, and even if you do you’ll spend hours trawling the PvP zones looking for 6 opponents willing to risk an even fight against you.
The game had fundamentally broken mechanics. Too much grinding to buy the good PvP ships which could be thrown away in moments.
16/09/2010 at 22:48 Axess Denyd says:
True, and the avatar combat was terribel….but I haven’t played anything else that was remotely as good as the ship-to-ship combat. Too bad these guys didn’t do ST:OL.
16/09/2010 at 22:38 Torgen says:
I’m funny in that I like crafting in MMOs (the best I can think of off-hand was Auto Assault, which then killed itself by not having an auction house.) I played the beta in PotBS, but the introduction/emphasis on avatar combat soured it a bit for me (it wasn’t very good in the beginning, I recall.)
Now that LOTRO is F2P (and I perversely, began subscribing after the F2P beta,) and I’m in World of Tanks, there’s really no time to try PotBS again.
16/09/2010 at 23:09 Po0py says:
I just don’t know what to make of all this free-to-play stuff. Is it a sign of older business models not being profitable any more and thus, switching to a free system as a last ditch effort to stay afloat? Or is it simply a better way to make money?
16/09/2010 at 23:23 Xercies says:
A little bit of A a little bit of B i suspect.
16/09/2010 at 23:31 Dominic White says:
Better way to make money – Dungeons & Dragons Online went from being a general non-event to the third largest MMO on the scene when it shifted to free-to-play.
By lowering the barriers for entry (£30 + credit card required for authorization on activation is a huuuuge barrier), it lets people try out MMOs without worry and decide on their own terms whether they want to spend money on it.
17/09/2010 at 13:49 Po0py says:
@Dominic White
Yes. When you put it like that I can totally understand. I’ve wanted to try Aion and Fallen Earth in the past but have just not been willing buy the game and then have to pay a subscription after a free month or two. It’s a big initial investment for something you may not even like after you have leveled up to the bits where the game gets interesting.
16/09/2010 at 23:41 Xercies says:
F2P you say, i’ve been looking at this game for awhile but the monthly fee and the reviews kind of made me stop myself from getting it, so now that it is. Yay!
17/09/2010 at 01:13 Caecilius says:
The item shop will be called Treasure Aisle. True story.
17/09/2010 at 01:25 Mr_Day says:
Well, now I will just have to get back into the game. I hope they haven’t deleted my pirate character.
17/09/2010 at 01:31 RedFred says:
I was really excited about this game when it was in development but then lost all interest when it became apparent it would cost and also was pretty awful.
How is it faring now?
17/09/2010 at 01:49 Caecilius says:
@RedFred
Not sure what to tell you really. Populations are good atm, as one would expect with the expansion, and the game is generally agreed to be getting better. Other than that anyone who is playing (and paying for) it will probably tell you that it’s good, while anyone else isn’t really in a position to say. Just get the trial and find out for yourself I guess.
17/09/2010 at 07:16 Bottes UGG says:
C’est cool ! Votre article est cool ! Et de plus, j’aime bien la doublure en laine de bottes ugg. Vous l’aimez aussi ? Venez portez ces bottes pour l’hiver ! Les bottes ugg sont en soldes. Tout est moins chers!
17/09/2010 at 09:00 Choca says:
Choke on shattered glass/Étouffe-toi avec des bouts de verre
17/09/2010 at 09:38 bill says:
MMOs have a weird reverse business model. They get people to pay for a few years of beta testing while they develop all the content, and then they release it for free when it’s finally pretty fleshed out.
It’s usually the other way around for games…
17/09/2010 at 12:08 Zombat says:
I wonder when Sony’s going to bring back the reserves program for Planetside (FTP up to rank 6(which wasn’t all that high in the grand scheme of the game))
If PS got a sudden influx of new cannon fodder (and some full time GMs to boot the hackers) I would resub in a heart beat
18/09/2010 at 01:49 Chris C says:
The music was composed by the same guy who did Master & Commander, which is pretty awesome.
The amount of content people will now get for free is insane. I’ll still be paying my sub for the “Captain’s Club” as they’re calling it so I can still play the game in the same way, yet it’ll be so cool to be able to get F2P guys into the game now.
So excited for this, it needed a bit of a population boost that this will naturally provide and we can all carry on playing the game and having loads of fun. Winner!