So... is there the Pirate faction, though? Can they take/hold ports? How does all that work anyhow?
Pirates have a faction, they always have had a faction. o_O Mostly though they can join with other factions, then ruthlessly betray them for shits and giggles. The pirate faction is really not as popular as it used to be, because basically you're a pirate, you dont worry about taking ports, you just worry about stealing other peoples ships and goods and making obscene profit from it and generally terrorizing the open sea. This can be extremely fun when you enter the red and sea two factions fighting, and you use your stealth abilities to come in and attack both sides and loot them for all they are worth then speed off into hiding again.
So... is there the Pirate faction, though? Can they take/hold ports? How does all that work anyhow?
Pirates have a faction, they always have had a faction. o_O Mostly though they can join with other factions, then ruthlessly betray them for shits and giggles. The pirate faction is really not as popular as it used to be, because basically you're a pirate, you dont worry about taking ports, you just worry about stealing other peoples ships and goods and making obscene profit from it and generally terrorizing the open sea. This can be extremely fun when you enter the red and sea two factions fighting, and you use your stealth abilities to come in and attack both sides and loot them for all they are worth then speed off into hiding again.
As long as pirates can steal ships that's the faction I want to play.
So... is there the Pirate faction, though? Can they take/hold ports? How does all that work anyhow?
Pirates have a faction, they always have had a faction. o_O Mostly though they can join with other factions, then ruthlessly betray them for shits and giggles. The pirate faction is really not as popular as it used to be, because basically you're a pirate, you dont worry about taking ports, you just worry about stealing other peoples ships and goods and making obscene profit from it and generally terrorizing the open sea. This can be extremely fun when you enter the red and sea two factions fighting, and you use your stealth abilities to come in and attack both sides and loot them for all they are worth then speed off into hiding again.
As long as pirates can steal ships that's the faction I want to play.
The only bad part is Pirated ships only have 1 durability so when they get sunk they never come back. Buuut you didn't pay for it so whoopdie doo really lol.
I just came back to this game by coincidence, too. Seems more or less the way I remembered it - it's a lot of fun - the biggest issue is probably the smallish playerbase... not sure why it didn't get more popular. unique concept, everybody loves pirates, etc.
anyway, good time to start playing again - the underpopulated factions get some really sweet bonuses. My frog is getting double xp!
I started playing this, on Antigua. Currently reinstalling due to an odd error.
Anyways, this game is pretty damn fun, the tall ship combat is intense and the avatar combat is easy. Loving the fact that I don't have to run for 20 minutes to get to an area to kill a bunch of npcs.
So, hoping others are still playing, once again I'm on Antigua as Kera Dill, I started a society called Walken Punch. No one else is in it currently, but anyone is free to join.
I think the reason that the player base has shrunk is because the endgame consists of running missions to grind cash for big ships and farming NPCs in order to flip ports.
Of course, since they upped ship prices, people tend to be very wary of taking their first rates into a losing battle. So many port battles end up being a contest of who can bring more big ships. The loser just concedes the port.
And invariably, the British are the most populous faction and therefore can grind more cash. Thats why you get xp bonii for the other nations.
It's a fun game, but tends to get boring and easy after a while. With the double exp, you can hit the max level in a few days of playing. I mean, you can solo 1-3 level 50 npc ships in a level 28 boat. You get more exp depending on how much higher level their boat is than yours. And, land combat is stupidly easy vs npcs and you can rush lots of missions in a small amount of time for vast exp rewards.
All valid points. Forgot to include, I'm playing for France so I get the bonuses.
All of that is really true of any MMO though, they get boring and repetitive. The easiness of the whole game is part of the reason I like it. In an hour I can actually make progress, so I don't have to be hard core about playing, a fact my girlfriend probably appreciates.
1) End game - Currently, the end game is PvP. We have some Epic missions (which WoW calls Raiding) as well, but the emphasis is on PvP. The next end game is more PvE, and is called Player Governed Ports, which we've been talking about for a long time but had to postpone while we worked on more tactical issues. Well, the first big long term work item Skirmish has just been released, and while we have a lot more we're looking to do with it, we're starting work now on PGP.
2) Player population - there are a lot of reasons for this, but the summary is that we never really built up mass awareness through the launch marketing. We show the game at conventions and people say "That looks really cool, when does it ship?" At this point, the game's doing really well in retention and player satisfaction, so it's time to change that. Up til now, we've mostly done ad hoc marketing efforts (this web site, that magazine) but we've never done a concerted approach, mostly because we didn't know how. Now we're working with a partner that has a great track record doing exactly this, and we're throwing in the moolah in a big way to make it happen. The game's ready, now it's time to show it off to the people.
Oh, and thanks for noticing the improvements we've made! We have a big team focused on Pirates, and they've done a great job over the last year. Also, we're hiring up yet again, so check out our web page for the jobs listings.
This game is addicting, I started about 3 days ago and I am already a level 26 Naval Officer in the Spanish Navy on Rakham thanks to some serious power levelling.
Whatever happened to this game? The internets suggest it's still around and free to play. I was insanely hyped over this, and it was such a huge let down. It seems like the sort of game that could have actually gotten good late in life, and just never recovered from a bad launch despite being ultimately good (see: Age of Conan).
Has anyone played this in the last... I dunno, year or so?
I was going to say -- when I saw this thread bumped I was thinking "This is still around?". I remember beta testing it with a few friends before it came out. I think the major issue is just that the gameplay concept was never going to work for a full $15/mo subscription MMO. And when they launched, there just wasn't all that much you could do in the game -- the sea-battles were fine, but all of the ground-related stuff was extremely lacking.
I expected an MMO version of Uncharted Waters for SNES. Didn't really live up to that.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
I was just thinking the same thing, Darkewolfe. I might give downloading it a go latter part of this month.
I played it again a bit last year with some friends, it's still around and has a dedicated, if small population of players. The f2p is good and not too restrictive. It's a fun game all in all just pretty niche.
In case people were not away, PotBS is leaving the SOE family of games. If you have characters you would like to keep, you can have them transferred to the new ownership by logging into the game and getting a code to link the account to the new ownership.
I personally played on Antigua on the French side, and was a key part of the first French map victory there. That was a lot of fun, because we were so outnumbered. Brits had 200+ players, Spain had 150+, we had <50.
Posts
Pirates have a faction, they always have had a faction. o_O Mostly though they can join with other factions, then ruthlessly betray them for shits and giggles. The pirate faction is really not as popular as it used to be, because basically you're a pirate, you dont worry about taking ports, you just worry about stealing other peoples ships and goods and making obscene profit from it and generally terrorizing the open sea. This can be extremely fun when you enter the red and sea two factions fighting, and you use your stealth abilities to come in and attack both sides and loot them for all they are worth then speed off into hiding again.
As long as pirates can steal ships that's the faction I want to play.
The only bad part is Pirated ships only have 1 durability so when they get sunk they never come back. Buuut you didn't pay for it so whoopdie doo really lol.
anyway, good time to start playing again - the underpopulated factions get some really sweet bonuses. My frog is getting double xp!
I started playing this, on Antigua. Currently reinstalling due to an odd error.
Anyways, this game is pretty damn fun, the tall ship combat is intense and the avatar combat is easy. Loving the fact that I don't have to run for 20 minutes to get to an area to kill a bunch of npcs.
So, hoping others are still playing, once again I'm on Antigua as Kera Dill, I started a society called Walken Punch. No one else is in it currently, but anyone is free to join.
Of course, since they upped ship prices, people tend to be very wary of taking their first rates into a losing battle. So many port battles end up being a contest of who can bring more big ships. The loser just concedes the port.
And invariably, the British are the most populous faction and therefore can grind more cash. Thats why you get xp bonii for the other nations.
It's a fun game, but tends to get boring and easy after a while. With the double exp, you can hit the max level in a few days of playing. I mean, you can solo 1-3 level 50 npc ships in a level 28 boat. You get more exp depending on how much higher level their boat is than yours. And, land combat is stupidly easy vs npcs and you can rush lots of missions in a small amount of time for vast exp rewards.
Just not a lot to do once you hit 50.
All of that is really true of any MMO though, they get boring and repetitive. The easiness of the whole game is part of the reason I like it. In an hour I can actually make progress, so I don't have to be hard core about playing, a fact my girlfriend probably appreciates.
1) End game - Currently, the end game is PvP. We have some Epic missions (which WoW calls Raiding) as well, but the emphasis is on PvP. The next end game is more PvE, and is called Player Governed Ports, which we've been talking about for a long time but had to postpone while we worked on more tactical issues. Well, the first big long term work item Skirmish has just been released, and while we have a lot more we're looking to do with it, we're starting work now on PGP.
2) Player population - there are a lot of reasons for this, but the summary is that we never really built up mass awareness through the launch marketing. We show the game at conventions and people say "That looks really cool, when does it ship?" At this point, the game's doing really well in retention and player satisfaction, so it's time to change that. Up til now, we've mostly done ad hoc marketing efforts (this web site, that magazine) but we've never done a concerted approach, mostly because we didn't know how. Now we're working with a partner that has a great track record doing exactly this, and we're throwing in the moolah in a big way to make it happen. The game's ready, now it's time to show it off to the people.
Oh, and thanks for noticing the improvements we've made! We have a big team focused on Pirates, and they've done a great job over the last year. Also, we're hiring up yet again, so check out our web page for the jobs listings.
Whatever happened to this game? The internets suggest it's still around and free to play. I was insanely hyped over this, and it was such a huge let down. It seems like the sort of game that could have actually gotten good late in life, and just never recovered from a bad launch despite being ultimately good (see: Age of Conan).
Has anyone played this in the last... I dunno, year or so?
I expected an MMO version of Uncharted Waters for SNES. Didn't really live up to that.
Info on the process
I personally played on Antigua on the French side, and was a key part of the first French map victory there. That was a lot of fun, because we were so outnumbered. Brits had 200+ players, Spain had 150+, we had <50.