Hoist the sails! Pirates of the Burning Sea is live

by Christopher Grant { Jan 22nd 2008 at 10:45PM }

After a brief hiccup earlier this morning, pirate-themed MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea hoisted its sails and left port for the wide open sea where, SOE hopes, it will be greeted by thousands upon thousands of patiently waiting pirates who've got treasure aplenty to spend in their virtual Caribbean. If you're a lowly stowaway aboard this latest MMO, you'd be wise to stop off at the port of Massively wherein you'll find plenty of features to orient yourself. If you're an old hand, been playing since this morning, let us know what you think in those there comments.

Gallery: Pirates of the Burning Sea

Tags: Pirates, Pirates-of-the-Burning-Sea, PiratesoftheBurningSea, SOE, YARRR

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

NACHO @ Jan 22nd 2008 10:51PM

FIRST!!!

jk, but i rly wana no how this game turns out. it looked interesting, albeit not $50 + $15 a month interesting. anyone that has it, thoughts?

graphics card: radeon hd 2600 xt (sry, i got it today im excited)

colin @ Jan 22nd 2008 10:51PM

i'm just looking at the screens, but are all mmo's this low in graphical quality?

Hashbrown_Hunter @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:28PM

Usually MMOs decide to sacrifice graphic quality for less lag so, in my opinion, it doesn't really matter.

Nate @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:03AM

Graphics have nothing to do with lag. They're not piping polygons and textures over the wire. They pipe compressed data, like "bob is wearing shirt #7 using texture #12 and carrying item #124", then your computer interprets all that, loading textures and models locally. Graphical quality has nothing to do with lag, you could have 10 billion polygons and 1 gig textures and have no lag over a 28.8 modem if your local machine could handle it. At least in games like WoW, lag is almost purely server based, where so many people are interacting with the same physical server machine that the machine bogs down from sending messages about what everyone is doing to everyone else.

sheppy2.0 @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:36AM

It's like this. If a game strives for graphical realism on something like their, their customization options become limited, development time increases dramatically, etc. And for what? No matter how realistic your game is, one is coming out in six months to beat it. So MMOs trend towards simplified art styles to accomidate new content easily and to have a look which doesn't lose appeal in a few months.

Tamago @ Jan 23rd 2008 1:30AM

There is network lag and then there is graphics lag. Companies have to factor in the number of players that can exist in a particular enviroment at anyone one time.

ThornedVenom @ Jan 23rd 2008 2:38AM

Everyone has said that lower graphics is unrelated to lower lag, but the reason for lower graphics is to broaden the marketed demographic: lower specs mean more potential players.

And MMOs need lots of players to work.

Misquito @ Jan 22nd 2008 10:54PM

Is the NDA up so i can talk about how boring this game was to me?

samfish @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:25PM

Well, yippie...

Dauragon88 @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:31PM

Yar har, fiddle de dee

Being a pirate is alright to be!

Do what you want, cause a pirate is free

You are a pirate!

StrangeBum @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:54PM

It's a piece of cake to bake a tasty cake.

But never use a messy recipe, or the cake will end up crazy!

Oh pirates...umm..yarr!?

Anticrawl @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:31PM

Whheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

Oh wait, 15 dollar monthly fee? Nevermind then, I'll just sit her patiently twiddling my thumbs while I wait for Guild Wars 2.

Anticrawl @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:31PM

Here* that is, not her.

thethirdmoose @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:27AM

I sat her... assuming "her" refers to your mother

CB @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:33PM

There's something about that picture...

Anticrawl @ Jan 22nd 2008 11:57PM

What? Like how outragiously clean they are? Seriously people back then didn't bathe and the few that did only did so once every other week or so. They were afraid of removing precious oils our bodies made that they believed were vital to good health and survival in a sense.

sheppy2.0 @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:33AM

And since we're on about historical accuracy, where was all the shit in assassin's creed?

Anticrawl @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:46AM

@Sheppy 2.0

Gonna refrain from commenting on that heh, to easy.

No really I did have a lot of fun with Assassin's Creed, glad I waited to get it for 30 bucks from CompUSA.

DigTheDoug @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:48AM

Bewbs.

Misquito @ Jan 23rd 2008 1:21AM

At least Assassin's creed didn't make New Orleans a french founded settlement. *still annoyed by that*

RankHypocrisy @ Jan 23rd 2008 10:20AM

Don't be annoyed. New Orleans was a French-founded settlement --

La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded in 1718 by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of France at the time; his title came from the French city of Orléans.

It was later ceded to the Spanish, then back to the French, then sold to the Americans. History FTW!

Ratfoot @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:20AM

For some reason I want to play this while listening to Gangsta Sea Chanteys.

severian00 @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:36AM

Am I the only one that thinks that title sounds like a porn movie? Just whe exactly is the sea burning and will a shot of penicilan take care of that problem?

generic @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:57AM

Funny you mention...

There is a porno called "Pirates", and the captain looks pretty much the same.

I am very weirded out.

Bran @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:43AM

Why do they all look so mean? Can't they be happy pirates?

Anticrawl @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:50AM

The woman on the left doesn't look so mean, more of a confident sexy "I'm going to whip you" look heh.

The guy on the right however is doing his best to look and act like Robert DeNiro.

Guy in the middle reminds me of a more hairy version of the poster fighter for Virtua Fighter 5.

Mighty Shockwave @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:49AM

I'll give it a week until somebody hacks a ninja class into this game.

monkey3 @ Jan 23rd 2008 1:25AM

by the time i had received the invite for the beta of this, they had stopped doing the beta... dunno whether to blame sony, file planet, or yahoo. maybe i should just blame myself.

Huey2k2 @ Jan 23rd 2008 1:35AM

I am going to assume this will be a mediocre system hog just like every other SOE MMO.

ThornedVenom @ Jan 23rd 2008 2:39AM

I doubt that this MMO would hit mainstream, but I thought that I'd heard about interesting ship-attacking mechanics.

klitorisaurus @ Jan 23rd 2008 2:57AM

Peeteer Saaaaarrrsgaaaaaard!

Titjana @ Jan 23rd 2008 4:06AM

Really amazing about this
http://www.best-v-i-p.6x.to

Pralaya @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:58AM

there is another point about MMO graphic:
basically they don't know how many people (avatars) could interact
in the same area or istance (of course there is a server limit for
each portion).
now consider for our hardware how could be stressfull loading 100
avatars in high-def-textures, high-number-polys, plus environment,
plus physic, plus monsters, plus npcs, plus special effects, plus
framework-database interactions, plus otherthings...
and maybe you may coinsider that keeping a simplified graphic could
help, just for avoid a 0 framerate even on high-end hardware in some
circustance.

Poisoned Al @ Jan 23rd 2008 7:06AM

Pirates are awesome, but not $15 a month awesome. If you get to fight ninjas I might consider it, but until then they can keep it.

LiK @ Jan 23rd 2008 8:13AM

pirate cleavage ftw! yummy.

NeverSage @ Jan 23rd 2008 12:59PM

I cant believe how many MMOs are out there now. I remember when it was just Ultima Online. God, I loved that game.

Poisoned Al is correct. They need some ninja fighting in here!

Also, this picture reminds me of how awesome breasts are.

Ed @ Jan 23rd 2008 5:33PM

Well, if you really need a Pirate MMO fix, why not just install the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean. I don't know how it fairs against this particular game, but it is free. (They have a "Premium" pay level that lets you have higher levels, more weapons and better ships)

Ed @ Jan 23rd 2008 5:39PM

Oh, btw:

http://apps.pirates.go.com/pirates/v3/welcome

Just in case anyone is curious.

Michael @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:20PM

I had the chance to see this game in person at CES (went to the Sony Online Entertainment suite in the MGM Grand) and the graphics weren't quite where I was hoping they would be. The gameplay does sound interesting and the MMO aspects seem to be well implemented. If you want a free copy, feel free to enter the contest I have on my blog:
http://btr.michaelkwan.com/2008/01/17/contest-who-wants-a-free-video-game/