Pirates of the Burning Sea (PC)

Take one part Sid Meier's Pirates, one part High Seas Trader and one part Eve Online, and you end up with Flying Labs' new MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea.
2/1/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 3

Even if you decide to play with your flag turned off, you aren't safe on the open sea from NPC enemies. If you're a pirate, enemy pirate hunters and national patrols are always on the lookout for those flying the Jolly Roger. Conversely, NPC pirate groups sail the seas looking for easy targets, so you always have to pay attention when hitting the open sea lanes; nothing is more disheartening than being underway with a ship fully loaded with materials destined for a port in Mexico, only to lose it all when attacked by a 30-gun frigate.

The game inside the game is built around the idea of the contested port. Most ports suffer from unrest due to player actions, and sometimes the port may be under full contention by another nation, which can cause all sorts of headaches if you have building operations set up inside a port that no longer holds your allegiance. The battles over territory give everything a purpose beyond just obtaining levels in order to sail a bigger and better ship.

As much fun as sea combat is, it's the economy that drives the game. You could write a thesis on how it all works, and it's impossible to cover everything in a review. The most important thing to understand going in is that everything is player-driven. Shop owners and trainers provide basic supplies, but if you want the good stuff you will either need to get lucky and scavenge it from a derelict ship or buy it at the auction house. The only way players can deck their ship out with high-grade armor planking, for example, is if another player builds it and puts it up for sale.

Right now the economy is a tad out of whack as new players continue to flood the Caribbean and there aren't enough high-level players fulfilling demand. As a result, you can expect to pay 100 gold for a couple of nails. Hopefully this will all calm down as more people enter the marketplace.

There are various ways to play the market. You can simply ignore it and use your booty gained from quests to buy what you need, or you can go into business yourself, setting up warehouses at various ports. Here's the kicker: Each port produces specific raw materials, and rarely will you find one that grants you access to all that you need to build a specific item. If you want to go into high-grade stuff like shipbuilding, it will cost a fortune to get that venture off the ground. You could always go into raw materials instead -- selling iron ingots rather than the nails themselves. There is a wide assortment of materials available and it takes a lot of trial and error to figure out the best way to manage the economy. But it's rewarding once it clicks and you start selling your goods at a 100-percent markup. Everyone needs black powder for cannon shot, right?

The auction house could use a bit of work. The design uses a blind bid system, which is fine, as at least it provides information on what a particular item has been going for in the past, but the search function doesn't work as well as it should, and you can't sort items by level requirement. It works, technically, but you'll spend a lot of time there and a better interface would go a long way.