Smooth Sailing!

Content Director Jess Lebow offers a few reef points on recent progress in Pirates of the Burning Sea

by Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle

Fans of Pirates of the Burning Sea, the next-gen tactical sailing and swashbuckling combat MMORPG set to release in June 2007, have reason to be excited. This long-awaited title is definitely coming into its own.

Jess Lebow, Content Director, led us through the game's opening scenes. If you logged into the beta as recently as January, you began the game shipboard. Now that avatar combat is in the game, players are drawn into a sequence of in-character events that quickly move you through the basics of first-person combat as well as taking the wheel of your very own ship.

Avatar and naval combat are skill-based. Leveling is more about access (rank has it's privileges!) than simply becoming more powerful. When you level up, as Lebow puts it, “a 6-pound cannonball still does the same amount of damage; but maybe you can now buy a ship with a couple extra cannons on it.”In short, it'll take skill to get at the big booty. Using a certain type of ammo over and over would presumably teach you the nuances of your cannon and cannonball, and presumably increase your to-hit chance, just like in real age of sail combat. In melee combat, the skill trees are broken down into rapier (balance reduction and power attacks), florentine (dual-wield / damage dealing), and dirty tricks (throwing sand in your foe's face, stomping on feet, spitting in eyes, all things piratey). It's not all about the damage and defense, either. You'll have to push your opponent off kilter with special rapier attacks to land the really big blows.

Screenshots Depicting the Revamped Avatars & Avatar Combat

Also new to the game: the supernatural. Pirates of the Burning Sea has gotten in touch with its spiritual side. Players can sail to Cozumel and check out the legends and follow the clues for some pretty harrowing Mayan content. Or, if a particular player is out for what Lebow calls the quintessential “Hornblower experience,” choose to disbelieve in all the superstitious hokum. It's all in the hands of the individual player, and Lebow promises content (both spooky Davy Jones-type content as well as quasi-historical Jack Aubrey-esque content) all the way to the game's launch cap, level 50.

In addition to in-character combat, Burning Sea now boasts completely revamped, much sexier avatars, complete with clothing appropriate to the game's four allegiances (British, French, Spanish, and pirates). At sea, Pirates of the Burning Sea now boasts a number of UI improvements over previous builds. The wind gauge is now clearly indicated by a large ring around the ship, and firing arcs ghost outward from the larboard and starboard. The larger “heads-up” wind gauge allows players to discern their best points of sailing no matter the camera angle. On a purely cool level, you can see your very own avatar captaining the ship, and Burning Sea still allows you to design your own sail emblems and flags.

New Evidence of the Supernatural in Pirates of the Burning Sea

We'll have a preview video from our time with Jess Lebow and Flying Labs at GDC 2007 shortly so you can see firsthand what we're talking about. Meanwhile, enjoy the screens and head over to the official site to apply for the Pirates of the Burning Sea beta!

Return to the GDC 2007 portal.