Ark's Ark

Ahoy!! It has been a while since I last sailed the Burning Sea, but I popped in today to see how things are coming along. I could certainly use some Caribbean sun after the snowy week we’ve had in the UK.

Of all the Arkenors in all the worlds, POTBS Arkenor is the best dressed.

Yesterday, Pirates of the Burning Sea became Free To Play. The set up is similar to other games which have travelled the same path from being subscription only to a hybrid model. Let us take a look:

As an ex-subscriber I fall in to the Premium account category. Honestly though, after playing for a couple of hours it does not feel any different to when I was a subscriber. I pretty much have access to everything except for some top-end missions, but I still have plenty to do. It is just about the most generous “Premium” account that I have seen so far, so much so that my concern would be that many subscribers might decide they would be better off dropping down to Premium themselves. Having said that, many subscribers are getting their subscriptions from a Station Access sub which covers all SOE games, rather than subbing to PotBS directly.

In a manner similar to EVE’s PLEX, POTBS allows you to buy “Burning Sea Notes”, which can be sold to other players for in-game currency. Each Burning Sea Note is convertible into 300 Burning Sea Points, and it’s $5 for two, or $20 for 9. You can also buy them with Station Cash, which is good for me as I have quite a lot of Station Cash laying about that I got for free from promotions in other SOE games. 100 Station Cash are equivalent to one US dollar.

The store, the “Treasure Aisle”, contains the usual cosmetic gear that we expect these days, along with a selection of consumables. Some of these are easily crafted in game, but some, such as the Bonus Experience or Loot books are only obtainable from the Treasure Aisle. You can survive without such things, unless you’re in a terrible hurry.

Much more interesting to me are the new Commissioned Officers. This is a consumable that will summon an ally to your side, in either ship or ground combat. I think these are only obtainable from the shop, unfortunately, though I guess a free player can still acquire the necessary points by buying Burning Sea Notes with doubloons.

You can also buy ships, and *shudder* permanent outfitting items. I’m not so happy about that, as it could impact the rather excellent crafting economy system PotBS has. Hopefully the price the shop is charging for them with be such that most people will still prefer to buy in-game. I used to do quite good business selling outfitting (equipment for your ship), which is normally lost when a vessel sinks, so the permanent ones might really cause some problems there.

Update: I’ve been told that the outfitting items that can be bought from the Treasure Aisle are not of as high a quality as the best that crafters can make, which goes some way to allay my concerns. It also appears (after I received a Novice Ship Bundle from an early quest) that when the Ship Bundle description talked about Permanent ship fittings, it meant that you could not remove them after fitting them to your ship (just like ordinary ship fittings), rather than that they would not be lost when your ship sinks. If that’s the case then they should probably make that description a little more obvious before anyone else misinterprets it and gets upset when they lose them.

At any rate, if they work how I now think they do, I’m no longer concerned about them messing up the economy.

PotBS Treasure Aisle's Ship Bundle Description

While I’m not fond of point shops, something had to be done if Pirates of the Burning Sea was going to keep its head above water. I am truly hoping that the move to F2P brings Pirates of the Burning Sea the success it deserves.

If you never played PotBS, especially if you enjoy sailing games like Sid Meier’s Pirates, you should give this new incarnation a try. That’s a personal recommendation! With no subscription required, it’s going to be easy to drop in whenever we feel like a bit of nautical adventure, not to mention that I now have another MMO I can afford to cover! The Yuletide events have just begun, so you never know who you might meet!

It's just a man in a Father Christmas costume. Or is it???

Pirates of the Burning Sea has always made incredibly good use of sound and music. You can while away the time quite easily by wandering about listening to the various musicians that are scattered around the world. The Christmas mission I just did, “A Penny to Bury the Wren”, quite literally brought a tear to my eye through its use of music and the way it really hit all the right Dickensian Christmas notes. It was a great little experience (and educational), and did not require me to kill anyone, which is actually quite unusual for Christmas events in MMO.

Pirates of the Burning Sea patch notes for the F2P release, build 2.1.111.0, are after the leap.
Continue reading Pirates of the Burning Sea goes Free To Play