The MMO's to challenge Warcraft

Pirates of the Burning Sea

What’s the concept? Set in the Carribean in the glorious year of 1720, you are the Captain of your own ship. Imagine being able to play within a fictional world similar to Pirates of the Carribean - the game is shaping up to emulate something like that.

The ocean is full of English, French, Spanish and Pirate ships, controlled by other real players or NPC characters which you will either plunder or avoid like a land-lubbing coward. Arr.

The game will boast 1000+ missions such as attacking ports and other ships, it will have a fully player driven economy with financial achievements directly reflecting the size of the boat and various items you can buy.

The game has been in development for four years and will probably challenge Virtual Skipper 4 for the title of best looking game set on the high seas. What an achievement!


Interesting features? Anyone who has seen the Russell Crowe movie Master and Commander will know how important strategy is in naval warfare. Pirates of the Burning Sea has recognised that and worked hard on making naval battles as strategically challenging as possible. Their scheme has left them with a system that works something like this: Upon two ships entering a battle you will move into an 'instanced' zone, separate from the rest of the playing world. You're able to see where you have damaged your opponent, leading you to try to and manoeuvre your ship to target your opponent's weakest areas.

Port battles look like they may be justifiably called 'epic'. Unrest within the port area can be brought about in a number of ways, through missions or high amounts of economic activity. Eventually an all out war will take place around the port, with all four PvP factions fighting one another, eventually when one faction is left they are declared the owners of the port. To the victor go the spoils and thus, if your faction wins the port you will receive benefits in trading and buying items.

The most intriguing feature of the game is the ability to introduce your own items into the game, furthermore Flying Labs (the game's developers) are offering a content creation kit to all users. This will allow people to make their own textures and ships, the developers expect half of the ships in the game will be made by home users, a little like Second Life.

When is it coming out? June 2007. At the recent PAX show, game producer John Scott Tynes revealed than an internal version has been developed, that means that a beta is probably just round the corner.

Will it be better than WoW? The game looks absolutely amazing, possibly the most exciting game on the horizon for MMORPG. Despite this, the game will almost certainly struggle. How many people really want to be a pirate in a massively multiplayer environment? The game sounds like it could be more fun as a single player experience and that the actual multiplayer aspect of interactivity and building a guild just isn't there.

On top of this, although user made content sounds cool on the surface, how many people will actually bother to make their own ship? When Joe Bloggs sits down to play an MMORPG for the first time the last thing he wants is the daunting prospect of feeling left out, when everyone around him has their own, pimped out custom pirate battleships. Certainly Pirates of the Burning Sea is a game to watch out for in 2007 though.

Check out Pirates of the Burning Sea's official website here.