Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

Nine Years On…

Apr 15 2008

Sinking On the Burning Sea

Posted by: Mike in EverQuest 2, Gaming, Life on the Ocean Wave, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Rayda Skaldensen, Dwarf Paladin, Vanguard : Saga of Heroes, World of Warcraft

A few months ago I used my Station Pass (which was originally subscribed to for Vanguard and EverQuest 2) to jump onto the pre-boarding for Pirates of the Burning Sea. I have to admit that at the time I had an absolute blast with my British Naval Officer, Rayda Skaldensen (obviously taking a break from being a Dwarf for a while) who quickly rose to level twelve in time for release, just in time to procure himself a very admirable battle ship and one of the first you can acquire with front and rear mounted cannons for a full three-sixty-degree arc of death!

Rayda Skaldensen - British Naval Officer

The game appealed to me on many levels with it’s Eve-esque ship building and player run economy to it’s ability to customise every single aspect of your character. In fact, customising is never an absolute as ‘barber shops’ are scattered throughout the game to allow you to alter anything you’d like which is very interesting considering Pirates is also one of the first MMOs to make it truly possible to recognise a player on sight thanks to said customisation as well as the superb graphics. Finally, I loved that this was beyond your standard point and click fighters, a knowledge of tactics and a (admittedly very basic) knowledge of seamanship would actually win a fight for you.

I’m raving as I normally do yet the one thing to be remembered next is that in the end, when the amazing PvP had been through it’s first run and my nation were losing to Spaniards, when the instancing got a bit tiring, in the end I uninstalled it. I hadn’t played in quite a while, World of Warcraft was back in favour and Sian and I had begun our perpetual rise to Utter Domination of Azeroth (and the Outlands)™ so an uninstall was inevitable I’m afraid.

Why the sudden post about it then? Well it’s still sad to see that Flying Lab Software are to close seven of it’s eleven servers. The press release details a bit of bumph about improvements to the game meaning they can host more players on each server but the fact is that every MMO player and company in the world knows that trimming servers withing a few months of release means you’ve lost.

It’s not all bad, unlike many MMOs which have faded into oblivion Pirates has the benefit of being on the Sony Station Pass which is a ventilator for dying MMOs. The Matrix Online was a total mess yet that still runs today thanks to Station Pass and everyone knows the now infamous tale of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, which nonetheless is still running over a year later thanks to Station Pass.