Massively^™

Is ganking really such a bad thing? That's the question Isildur addresses in his latest Pirates of the Burning Sea dev blog, where he outlines how ganking evolved in the game -- and how it got out of control. "Ganking has a long and difficult history within our design and development process, so it's a hard question to answer with a simple 'we hate it' or 'we love it," Isildur said. To really understand why the Flying Lab Software developers are torn on the issue of ganking, Isildur explained their concept of 'ambush gameplay' and the contradictions it brings to game mechanics.

Isildur explains how the creators of Pirates of the Burning Sea envisioned the act of piracy. The scenario he outlines involves a lone pirate (or small group of pirates), who catch an unwary merchant by surprise, defeat him and loot, then escape before reinforcements can arrive. This is the ambush gameplay Isildur and the team at Flying Labs pictured -- rewarding for pirates, disheartening for lone merchants. To put a more visual spin on it -- a player sets sail from port, perhaps hoping for an uneventful trip. But then, a sail appears on the horizon. Is it a friend or enemy? As the unknown ship comes into view, so does its pirate flag, signaling a possible fight to the death. But the introduction of the Open Sea to the game changed all this. In some respects, Pirates of the Burning Sea developed in ways contrary to the original spirit of the game.

Deep within the jungles, there is a fortress abandoned long ago. Surrounded by mystery, something is stirring within the crumbled walls of this once proud structure. It is a player, stuck in a door, and screaming for help! With your assistance, this certainly will not be the case. The new epic mission is ready for testing, and Flying Lab wants you to be there.

Due to the popularity of Pirates of the Burning Sea's first epic mission, a second was sure to follow. Something macabre, supernatural, and dark was on the board when notes for patch 1.5 were released. The mission is now ready for people to jump into and test their skills against something dark and wicked. Players are invited to the Flying Lab studios in Seattle and the only requirement for participating is a level 50 character. Check in for the sessions is between 6:15 and 9:00PM on May 29th, June 2nd, and June 6th. Head on over there and get a one of a kind chance to test the mission at their offices before it goes live.

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.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has seen a few big changes since the game released. The latest addition to the fleet will be new pirate careers in patch 1.4. So what is coming up after buccaneers make their appearance on the high seas? A swabbing of the poop deck to be precise! All that combat and ship destruction leaves plenty of debris around that needs to be picked up. Patch 1.5 is going to do just that.

The details were revealed through an interview with Ten Ton Hammer. According to Flying Lab producer Joe Ludwig, the team is "spending the entire month working on nothing but polish." The coffee is brewing at their offices as the entire team focuses on getting the game to a point where it appears just the way they want it. Some pesky annoyances players often report should be getting a swift kick off the plank as well. Those are, of course, not the only things coming in the next update.

Joe declares that since users do pay a monthly fee, the team is committed to giving them both polish and new content. That content will be appearing as a second epic mission. Joe says it will be something based on the supernatural, but what exactly this means is not made clear. What is clear is that everyone from the lead developers to the interns are going to be cleaning up the world of Pirates of the Burning Sea for the benefit of swashbucklers everywhere.

One might rightfully acuse the term "user generated content" of being a rather dry way to describe what is really a fascinating trend in media: the opportunity for "users" to contribute their own creations and have them incorporated into traditionally heavily produced "content." By nature interactive, the games industry is taking notice of the power of UGC, and in a panel yesterday at ION 08 we had the chance to listen to Flying Lab's Troy Hewitt and Linden Lab's Rob Lanphier talk about how user content has been working in Pirates of the Burning Sea and Second Life. Attorney Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University School of Law was on hand to discuss some of the legal issues surrounding UGC, and the panel was moderated by Scott Warner, owner and leader of the intellectual property and technology group at firm Garvey Schubert Barer.

Scott: Troy, do you want to start us off by talking about how user content has been working in Pirates?

Troy: Sure. As some of you may know, we just launched PotBS earlier this year. We have a system in the game where players can create flags and sails for their ships. There's a mechanism to distribute your work and they can actually create and sell their designs as well. Players can also create and model their own ships, and other people in game will be able to use those ships. We have 30 ships now in the game made by players, and these were actually done by only 13 people; so it's a small group of dedicated people creating these ships. With the flags and sails, about 20% of our player base is creating them and a much larger percentage actually use them.

The folks at Flying Lab have sent word that two brand new Pirate careers will soon be sailing along in Pirates of the Burning Sea. The Cutthroat and the Buccaneer are to be the nom de plumes of our swabbie friends. The Cutthroat should be familiar - it's the class you've been playing as a pirate all along. On the other hand, the Buccaneer is a brand new bag: a gentleman adventurer with a taste for the high life on the high seas. We've already talked a bit about the class changes coming in patch 1.4, but these new details throw more light on the update's intention.

Buccaneers are intended to be a support class. They offer buffs to allies and debuffs to opponents, all while laying out their own special brand of derring-do. Full details can be seen on the most recent version of the patch notes, but don't believe everything on that list. The patch still isn't set in stone.

The Terra Nova site views virtual worlds and massively multiplayer gaming through the lens of academia. Don't hold that against them, though; the insights of commentators like Richard Bartle, Ren Reynolds, Edward Castronova, and Timothy Burke make for some darned interesting reading. This week Mr. Burke writes about the player-driven economy in Pirates of the Burning Sea. Plagued with problems from even before launch, the developers are working hard to correct some economic inequalities.

Burke examines those economic problems, discussing the issue of perceived player wealth, and the system's input/output issues. "In Pirates of the Burning Sea, the faucet-sink relationship is skewed in an odd way. The faucet is as it is in many virtual worlds: players run missions and sink NPCs to earn money. The sink, however, is player-produced commodities ... The economy is a kind of Potemkin Village: on the surface, it looks like the economy of an economic-sim game like Port Royale with many primary and secondary goods being produced and listed that evoke the setting and mood of the game. But it doesn't function very well, though a few players are fooled by the surface into imagining its depths."

In his post-launch developer wrap-up, Flying Lab CEO and co-founder Russell Williams talks about how Pirates of the Burning Sea went from an idea to a game, and what they learned after it launched. Their great idea: kick-ass ship combat, PvP that affected the world, a robust economy and great stories. In 2002, that was all they had -- an idea and a sense that the player should never have to look around too hard to find the fun. What followed was six long years of progress and setbacks as they put that simple idea into code and watched World of Warcraft completely change the face of MMOs.

Players who played PotBS once it went live played completely differently than the beta players. They had tuned the game based on beta testing, but that led them false as players who might, in beta, have spent a substantial amount of time on the open sea, instead spent it on land or in instanced missions. Without the needs of world PvP-ers driving the economy, the economy itself hit a reef. They have a solution for that about ready to go. Williams feels the game plays well to its strength -- ship-to-ship combat, though he acknowledges that many of missions were created with a template, and look it. Could the avatar play better? Yes, he says: and they plan to reduce the instancing in towns and open up more combat options in upcoming patch 1.4.

Players are eager these days to try the new game, play it for awhile, then move on to something new. It's hard to get a hook into these people, but Flying Lab has seen what people actually like best about the game now that PotBS has launched, and will keep playing to strengths and addressing weaknesses as it settles into its niche.

Stephanie Walker was a gamer who had never expected to have to deal with a disability. She was 23 at the onset of her condition, a college student who also worked a full-time job. She liked to spend the little free time she had unwinding online. Initially resistant to the idea of playing EverQuest, Stephanie quickly discovered that slaying virtual orcs and bandits while joking around in party chat was surprisingly fun. It was a great way to keep in touch with long-distance friends and burn some stress after a long day. She didn't have a lot of time to play, but she was good at it when she did.

While working at her job one day, Stephanie noticed that her right hand and leg had fallen asleep. When she tried to get up to walk the sensation off, she realized that something was seriously wrong -- the entire right side of her body had just stopped working. Stephanie was rushed to the hospital, and the diagnosis was confirmed the following morning: she had multiple sclerosis, and she would have to deal with it for the rest of her life. Overnight, everything changed. She went from being someone who spent 20 hours per day away from home to someone who really never left. Moving around within her house required an enormous effort on her part. Even feeding herself had become a challenge. The little things, like not being able to get online and chat with her friends (something she really enjoyed) just made her situation that much more painful.

User generated content. Second Life is built on it. Other games are slowly taking up the banner as well and introducing the ideas of the players into their fold. Are we doing ourselves a favor, or are we starting to completely shoot ourselves in the foot?

MMOCrunch brought up the point that users are looking for a more customizable experience in their games and virtual worlds. They point to applications like Facebook and Unreal Tournament as examples of user generated content bringing in a huge audience and networking people like never before. Their article also goes on to look at why current MMOs don't go to the customizable lengths of these other applications. Problems stem from challenges in programming to the core inability for user generated content to be brought into a world where your actions drive a centralized plot line.

The closure of many Pirates of the Burning Sea servers last week is regrettable, but not terribly surprising. In the Next Generation article exploring that event, CEO Russell Williams explains that the interdependence of their ambitious MMO's systems made them difficult to test. Veteran MMO developer Raph Koster picks up that thread and carries it forward in a blog post to his personal site.

Using his experience on past titles (especially Star Wars Galaxies) Koster describes the enormous complexity of getting different systems in MMOs to work. The challenge is that while interdependent elements are complicated to test, they're also some of the most important pieces of any online game. Interwoven systems encourage player community and allow for overlapping groups to form. Independent (or 'silo'd') systems are also easy to cut, something he notes from the days of SWG's development. "This, for the SWG followers, is why stuff like vehicles, cities, and mounts, were more easily pushed off than dancing. Design interdependence. Vehicles improved the game, but they weren't required for it to function."

It's a really interesting look behind the scenes at Star Wars Galaxies, and a peak behind the curtain of a current MMO's troubles. Something to think about as new Massive titles hit the marketplace this year.

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!

Flying Lab CEO Russell Williams has explained the reasoning behind the recent shutdown of 7 of the 11 servers that host Pirates of the Burning Sea. In an e-mail to news publication Next-Gen, Williams gives a number of factors that went into the decision to close down over half of their servers and consolidate the in-game population.

Among the numerous reasons are the fact that they made some faulty assumptions concerning player balance and play style, based on the way their beta testers stressed the game more people showed up for the beta than stuck around after the official launch. Williams goes on to say " ... we have systems that require a minimum number of players to function correctly, such as our economy, and they break other systems if they're not working correctly (such as PvP). If we didn't have these kinds of interdependent systems, we wouldn't even be considering server merges."

For the full list of reasons for the shutdown, read the entire article. What do you think, Learned Audience? Was this the right decision to make, based on the evidence?

Pirates of the Burning Sea is built around taking and defending ports from pirates and hostile nations. Until now, building the unrest was a fairly deadly and expensive occupation -- since in PotBS, win or lose, you expend a lot of valuable resources in cannon shot, hull patches and sail repair kits for a victory, and much more than that if defeated. Flying Lab developer GavinIrby explains the new group conquest missions coming in patch 1.3. These are repeatable missions meant for three or more players where they can either aid in an attack against an NPC enemy fort, or defend a fort from NPC enemies.

Attack missions will feature gunboats sent out from the fort to take on the players. Gunboats are small ships with a single, fixed cannon mounted on their bow. They are easy to sink, but will stalk the players without ever giving them an easy broadside. The defense missions add in cannons aimed at the beach; a player there can help the NPC defenders by firing the cannon to reduce the number of enemy swarming toward them. More options to help your nation take or defend ports is a good thing, and should go a fair amount toward making the PvP rewarding.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has announced that they're shutting down seven of their servers and opening transfers for characters on the closing servers as of Tuesday, April 15th.

Out of the 11 total servers PotBS was running with, it's now down to just four. The upshot of this news is that servers will be far more dense with players -- which is the main reason Flying Lab gives concerning the shutdowns. Another reason given us is that recent updates have allowed for more characters per server.