On a larger scale we are used to measure the success of a MMORPG by the number of subscribers it attracts. On an individual scale the number of months that a particular game keeps us entertained is a more pertinent measure. Anything longer than three months I consider good enough, and anything over one year is huge success (only EQ and WoW ever did that for me). Pirates of the Burning Sea is in the "over 3 months of entertainment" category, but not in the "over 1 year" one. Which wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't already playing PotBS since August. I'm in the pre-order period where I would be expected to race to the level cap, but fact is that I can't even bother to log on every day. The game hasn't really launched yet, but is already dangerously close to the end of its useful life for me.
The logical thing to do for me would be to not buy PotBS. But that would send the wrong message. Pirates of the Burning Sea isn't a bad game, it is just lacking PvE content, and I'm not much interested in the PvP content. Yesterday's last-minute-before-release patch *removed* quests from the various starting areas, to make it less obvious that the devs initially had created only one set of quests and then copied and pasted it into all four starting areas. Now most of these quests will be only available to one or two of the four nations, so if you try another nation you're not playing the same quests again. Clever trick, but the devs had a point in that there were more than enough quests available for low level players, and culling them differently for the various nations made more sense than deleting the same quest for all of them. For all its flaws and third world UI, I enjoyed my time in PotBS, and wouldn't want to discourage other companies from making niche games like that.
So I'll buy the game next Monday, and recheck my interest level at the end of the free month. That's the least I owe them for playing the game half a year. My hope is that the economy develops new dynamics due to having more players than the closed beta. My fear is that lots of players means lots of ports under contention, making it harder and harder to avoid PvP. I do believe that negative sum PvP is probably the worst endgame option you can think off, but PotBS has exactly that: and endgame in which everybody will continuously lose ships, consumables, and outfittings and get nothing but bragging rights in return.
But then I'm playing the only class in the game that isn't PvP enabled: the freetrader. Imagine in World of Warcraft one class, lets say hunters, would be much, much weaker in raids, but much, much better in farming gold. Now imagine that guilds would say to their hunters: "we won't take you with us to raids, as you would weaken us. But you can stay in the guild and farm gold for us, handing it over to the raiders so they can pay their repair bills". If you can wrap your head around that crazy situation, you'll be ready to play a freetrader. Freetraders are considerably weaker in combat than the other three classes, so they have a harder time leveling and won't be welcome in guild PvP "raids". But they are better in the economic game, and some advanced ships can only be built by them. So hardcore guilds will want to have a couple of freetraders in their ranks, but wouldn't want really to play with them, but just expect them to provide the guild with advanced ships at below market rates. I don't think this setup is on the right way for a harmonious guild life.
I don't think many people will play Pirates of the Burning Sea for more than half a year. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't play this game at all. If you haven't played PotBS before, it certainly has a couple of months of entertainment value in it. And it is significantly different from past games like WoW, or the games expected for 2008 like AoC and WAR, to be considered a break from the regular fantasy MMO monotony. I'm all for highly polished mass market MMORPGs, but I wouldn't want them to be the only thing on offer.
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