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Any Pirates of the Burning Sea fans heading to Gen Con Indy this year will be able to catch up with the folks from Flying Lab Software. They will be there representing their game in the Exhibitor Hall at Booth #1033, but if you really want to get to know the team, then you'll want to go along to their meet-up at the pub!

On August the 14th, wear your PotBS shirt if you have one and head on over to Loughmiller's Pub. From 6pm to 9pm -- and probably later -- you'll find yourself in good (albeit pirate) company, with members of the FLS team and your fellow fans. There will even be some prizes up for grabs, so if you're going to be in the area, register for the meet-up and treat yourself to a night of PotBS fun.

Pirates of the Burning Sea players now have another contest to take a crack at if the video competitions don't strike their fancy. Flying Lab Software has announced the "Great Testbed Screenshot Hunt", which involves players logging on to the Testbed server, performing particular tasks and then screenshotting them.

The ultimate goal of this is to make the testing process a little more fun, but there are tangible rewards as well to spice things up a bit. After you've emailed your batch of eligible screenshots to FLS, you'll be in the draw to win one of 10 game-cards granting 30 days play time, or one of two PotBS t-shirts. Head over to the contest page to see what you need to snap to be in with a chance -- and make sure your character name is visible on each shot!

The Pirates of the Burning Sea video contest that we looked at a few weeks ago has drawn to a close, and a winning video has been selected. The aim of the contest was to create a video that could explain the process of boarding other ships to a new player, with a graphics card on offer for the winner.

Embedded above is the winning entry, from PotBS player Al "AlanB" Bradbury. It does a great job of outlining the boarding rules of thumb, and is an entertaining piece to boot, thanks to the surly pirate teacher and his interrupting parrot companion. New video contests from Flying Lab Software will be coming up in the future, giving players more chances to win prizes and show off their video creations.

Ye sea loving scallywags looking for adventure better look to Pirates of the Burning Sea, it has plenty of adventuring waiting in the latest 1.5.46.0 patch. Fitted just last week a build discrepancy caused sails to rip apart, a server reboot followed causing disgruntled nations on Rackham to take cover but the storm has since calmed. There will be twice a week scheduled server restarts to work out the remaining kinks on both NA and EU servers set to take place on Tuesdays and Fridays at 1:30am PST.

There's a lot of new content in this patch, including a new six man epic mission in Fortaleza Da Luz. The mission is intended for level 50 players and balanced at a high difficulty. Numerous other changes and updates in this milestone update can be viewed at the official Flying Lab support site. Also, both the testbed and live servers are now in synch with the same build and players can now copy a live character over to the test server. Forewarning, any active auction listing will be delisted. Vote on your favorite PotBS video, transfer a character or stick to plundering on a live server, it's time to get back to playing and drinking some rum!

Pirates of the Burning Sea's 1.5 patch deploys tomorrow morning, but effective immediately are two policy changes. In regards to cross teaming which is when a player uses two different accounts to play as a separate nation on the same server. The rule will be enforced and now applies to multiple accounts tied to individual account owners. It's not possible to play two characters of opposing nations on the same account so players would bypass this by using another account. The second policy change is that the selling of durability to Pirates is no longer allowed.

Players with multiple accounts that play as a differing nation on the same server will be given the opportunity to transfer their characters to another server. If players have any further questions regarding the new policy changes please petition in-game. The announcement also warns that repeat offenders are subject to further disciplinary action, most likely the ban stick. Joe Ludwig is responding to some dismayed players over on the official PotBS forums.

The Pirates of the Burning Sea community site has posted a neat guide to making videos of their game, covering a number of different programs, and the finishing touches that can turn a good movie into a great one. It's certainly a nice guide, but you might wonder if there is any particular reason that Flying Lab Software is educating their players so -- and of course, there is.

A new series of contests are on the way for PotBS subscribers, and the objective is to come up with some top-notch tutorial videos. The first contest is based around the art of Boarding Combat, and the winning video should be something that can explain to new players exactly how to succeed at this. The creator of the best video will sail away with a GeCube ATI Radeon HD 3650 graphics card, and entry closes on the 30th of June. You can visit the competition page to get all the specific requirements, and begin your career as a pirate teacher.

Flying Lab Software makers of Pirates of the Burning Sea listen to their players, the developers really do! A player survey went live shortly after the1.4 patch, and after a few weeks of data-mining the feedback FLS is responding in a big way. In this latest dev-log by Joe Ludwig, Producer for PotBS, 55% polled in the survey said they prefer to focus their playing time on PvP, 58% from that group said that most of that time is spent on missions or economic activities. Developer logs show that players are repeating high level missions to afford ships and outfitting for PvP gameplay.

To address this "time-sink" an insurance system will be added in the 1.5 patch. This means players will receive 90% of the minimum production cost and permanent outfitting when losing their ship. The other deterrent to keep players from PvP is the itemization gap. Starting in 1.5 all permanent outfitting is player-craftable, including green items and will also undergo balance changes. With these two barriers alleviated PvP will become more accessible to a broader audience.

Flying Lab Software is hoping to breathe new life into Pirates of the Burning Sea with the upcoming Build 1.5. We've already seen that many towns will be getting a face-lift, but now CEO Russell Williams has outlined some of the strategies which he hopes will have new ships sailing into their waters. A couple of the next initiatives for PotBS from FLS will be to start up a fresh marketing campaign, and to begin offering 14-day free trials.

Williams mentions that the marketing around the game's launch was good, but short-lived, and that the new campaign will be aiming for longevity. The ads will talk about specific features of the game, mentioning the free trials that will be on offer. We are told that special care has been taken to stop trial accounts from being used as mules or tools for spamming, and that newbies can choose to convert to a paid subscription and continue to play their characters at the end of the 14 days. The trials should kick in around mid to late July, and the marketing will presumably follow.

The Pirates of the Burning Sea official site has announced that, to help with some ongoing issues, all servers will be subject to a regularly scheduled service downtime. This downtime will occur twice a week, and should only be a server restart, meaning you can log back on and resume looting and plundering within about 20 minutes if all goes well.

So far, we know that the downtimes will take place on Tuesdays and Fridays at 8:30AM GMT for North American and European servers -- times for the Australian server will be listed shortly. It has been said that the restarts can be moved around a bit to accommodate Port Battles, which is a very nice touch and shows quite a level of involvement from Flying Lab Software on a server-specific basis. They hope that the regular restart situation will be temporary, but it's good to see that they will try to soften the blow in the meantime.

Flying Lab Software and Prima Guides have put the word out that a revised version of the Prima Pirates of the Burning Sea eGuide is now available. The guide was updated to fit with changes that were made to the game in Build 1.4, and contains handy information like the stats of all ships, strategies and tips, career guides, and a look at the new Buccaneer class.

But things like "information" and "strategies" aren't all that you will get with your purchase -- we know that you expect more, and so does Prima. President of Prima Games, Debra Kempker, said, "Continuing in a new tradition of in-game items, we were able to once again offer exclusive content -- something we hope to keep doing in the future." The in-game item you will receive with the PotBS eGuide is the shoulder-lizard you see at the top of this post, a very stylish accessory for any Caribbean adventurer. The eGuide (and shoulder-lizard) will be available from the Prima Games website for $19.99 and is only available in digital format.

The folks in the Environment team at Flying Lab Software have decided that some of the towns in Pirates of the Burning Sea look a little bit sad and outdated, and so they will be giving them graphical overhauls in an upcoming patch. The team has been kind enough to provide us with an early look at how these towns will be brought back to life in some before-and-after shots, and we have put these pictures in a gallery for you to check out.

According to the patch notes for the Testbed server, many towns have already received their updates and will probably move over to the live servers shortly. We are promised that the magic wand will be pointed at other towns in the Caribbean soon, making your on-land shenanigans a lot prettier to look at.

The next major content patch for Pirates of the Burning Sea, build 1.5, is currently being prepared for release to the live servers, and in the meantime we get to find out about some of the features of this update. One of 1.5's main focuses will be a revision of the ship outfitting items in the game, in an attempt to balance things out a bit.

At the moment, there are a number of particular outfitting pieces which are just plain better than others, and it is almost essential to own them to succeed in PvP. This takes away from the grand design of the outfitting system, which was supposed to offer players a chance to individualize their setup and to have unique and interesting strategies -- it simply doesn't happen if there are too many of these so-called "must-have" pieces out there, so this is going to be addressed. The other major change will be the scaling back some of outfitting pieces that are too good for their level, outperforming equipment that is much higher. These updates to ship outfitting will be found in Build 1.5 for PotBS, and you can expect some changes to player outfitting later on in 1.6.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has plenty to offer in terms of destruction. Sailors can take down ports in group conquest missions or just harass traders around the Spanish Main. However, spending all day chasing after booty is no way to flaunt your PvP skills. After all, you can only sink so many trade convoys before an angry fleet of fire ships is launched at your vessel. Flying Lab is offering a much more enticing form of combat for bloodthirsty sea dogs.

This Saturday, May 24th, on the Pirates of the Burning Sea Testbed server, will be your chance to blow your enemies out of the water and win some free game time, a video card, or even your own in-game parrot! As part of an effort to get the kinks worked out of PotBS patch 1.4, a PvP tournament is being organized to attract some traffic to the server. Details and prizes for the Testbed tournament have been announced and players are reminded to offer their feedback on the new patch. If you have a ship-of-the-line ready to unleash a wall of lead, set sail and see what you are made of.

Those keen to sink their teeth into patch 1.4 for Pirates of the Burning Sea can do so ahead of its release on the live servers, by logging on to the Testbed server. Flying Lab Software is keen to get players to try out some of the new features that this patch brings (like the upcoming class changes) and have set up feedback pages for specific aspects of the game.

If you want to leave feedback about career skills in 1.4, you can visit this page, and feedback on the early game missions can be left here, with different forum posts for each nation. Additionally, there is a page for general 1.4 feedback that doesn't fit in these two categories. Don't be scared if you've never been on Testbed before -- there is a handy forum post that will answer all your questions, and you'll be helping test new content in no time.

Looking to get a job in the MMO industry? Two developers have posted to their community sites in the last few days to say that they are looking for more to join their ranks, and perhaps one of these jobs has your name on it. Flying Lab Software, of Pirates of the Burning Sea fame, have advertised two positions for a Game Programmer and a Senior Graphics Programmer to work at their offices in Seattle. If this is up your alley, visit the jobs section of their website and go from there.

On the other hand, if you want something a little more entry-level, Sony Online Entertainment are in need of some playtesters for EverQuest and/or EverQuest II. The job description asks that you have achieved a high level in the aforementioned games, among other things. It's well known that being a playtester is an excellent foot-in-the-door to get to where you really dream of being in a game developing company, so go chase that dream!