Pirates of the Burning Sea announces "Power and Prestige" expansion, adds more staff

by Seraphina Brennan Sep 17th 2009 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Historical, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Business models, Expansions, Game mechanics, MMO industry, News items

The guys from Flying Lab Software are busier than ever, as they have announced that they will be creating their very first expansion to Pirates of the Burning Sea and hiring to boot!

Power and Prestige, the first expansion for PotBS, will focus on expanding the game's conquest system, allowing players to take on the role of Port Governor. Governors control how the port is built up, and can work towards building a bustling trade port or perhaps one that is more militaristic. Past that, the details list is being kept hush hush until the early part of 2010. Power and Prestige will be a downloaded expansion, freely offered to all players of the game.

In the mean time, pirate enthusiasts have two things to look forward to. The first is that Flying Lab is hiring, and anyone interested in a job in the game industry should head on over to their careers page to see what they're looking for. The other is International Talk Like A Pirate Day, coming up on September 19th! Pull out your grog, your pirate hat, and set sail for a day of yarrrr!

Tags: flying-lab, flying-lab-software, international-talk-like-a-pirate-day, itlapd, pirates-of-the-burning-sea, potbs, power-and-prestige, soe, sony-online-entertainment

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Draccan said on 4:35PM 9-17-2009

that will make the two people still playing happy

:-p

Nef said on 4:36PM 9-17-2009

Glad to see the game is doing well.

Might have to re-sub in the future, if only to board ships and drink rum (whichever happens in real life or game, we'll just have to find out...).

myr said on 4:52PM 9-17-2009

This game needs a better acronym.

jordangeldart said on 8:57PM 9-17-2009

I know they are a US company but the shortened version of the expansions name is Pap. Pap in the UK can mean crap. So the POTBS pap expansion would be read as the POTBS crap expansion.

I really wanted to love this game and did until nightflips killed the only EU server. we begged for months for something to be done and the devs were very clear in the fact they saw no problems.

One day ALL the major guilds from Spain France and the Pirates left Roberts (the EU server) and moved to a US server.less than 24 hours later the devs called us all to a IRC meeting to discuss how they were going to stop nightflips and ask us to move back. Stopping nightflips saved the EU server from destruction but much of the damage was done as the busiest server became the smallest server.

Sniggab Odorf said on 9:23PM 9-17-2009

What in the heck are 'nightflips'?

jordangeldart said on 11:52PM 9-17-2009

Sorry my fault, I should have explained.

POTBS endgame is based around the 4 nations fighting over ports. Once one faction earns enough ports they win the map and it resets. The winners get some nice rewards.

The problem was that one Nation was bigger than all the other 3 combined. The 3 nations joined together to fight the common enemy. Between them they could just about hold there own. Won some and lost some. There were epic fights.

The problem was that the biggest Nation also had a large number of players who could play overnight. They used this advantage to have port battles at 3-5am night after night. they would then defend during peak times to stop battles happening. The 5 am night fights would have 25 Brits (max allowed) and maybe 4 from the Nation they were attacking. This went on for months. With the other Nations begging for something to be done. In the end there were no primetime fights as the brits defended against them. There were only 5am battles that only the bits attended.

In the end massive numbers from the other Nations quit. Those who were left begged and begged for something to be done. Eventually they gave up and all left the server, less than 24 hours later we were all called to IRC as the devs decided to change everything. If they had done it sooner or even bothered to listen to the arguments then they would never have lost the huge number of players they did.

wow that turned into a wall of text, sorry.