For some reason I did not post my thoughts on the Pirates of the Burning Sea when I was playing to this blog, so forgive me as I post some now.

Playing PotBS was a roller coaster for me. A slow pull up, then a thrilling decent with a quick loopy loop, and then a sudden stop. I am going to use quotes for my posts on another forum for the rest of my description.

When I started I felt this way.

“On a brighter note, the ship combat is fairly compelling. I am enjoying the longer length of the combats compared to say EQ2, WoW, CoH, or pretty much any other mmo that is not Eve. The “slowness” allows me (and my group) to actually try and employ some strategies and it seems to fit the game’s setting.

And finally the possible star of the game; the huge focus on players actions for the economy to run. This is Eve of the high seas.

The player driven/run economy and the pvp that surrounds it have the possibility of being the factor that draws people in for the long haul to play / work together for the greater good of their empire. Which translates into continued monthly fee payments, and hopefully the games success.”

The downside I saw was:

“I declare avatar combat as the game’s weakest area. “

Though as you progressed , learned the system , and tackled more difficult missions avatar combat was not nearly as bad as I thought. But they still were the weakest part of the game.

Then a week later:

“After a week in the open beta, I pickup a pre-order box at Best Buy today. I am not sure how long I will play it but I am impressed enough with the beta that I will give it a try. And if I am going to play I might was pre-order and get a few extra free days of play and a parrot pet! “

Alas soon after that I started to see some flaws:

“I agree about the only being able to pass goods between online players. (it was terrible)

While I think forcing players to transport goods from port to port was a smart decision, forcing me to and Jythri to both be online to for me to drop goods off at a port is almost criminal.

I should be able to produce mats, transport them up the coast to his port, then drop them in his warehouse with out him needing to be online. Heck they could even charge me a fee’ call payment to the dockworkers to unload the goods and run the message to the other character. Then when he logs in he should get a message saying goods have been delivered to his warehouse in X port. Presto the game is now, at least to me, ten times better.

I want to support the devs, since I think they have done a great job, with what they have included so, yes I will buy it and play for the first month. Though without a larger guild to work with building ships / good and conquering ports I am not sure I will stick with it for that long.”

Then a couple of weeks later made a realization:

“I enjoy the game as it stands right now, but I also enjoy other MMOs I already have the retail boxes for (WoW, CoH, LoTRO, and EQ2). After a few days away from the game thinking about things, I feel the game does not offer too much different than those other games; at least to for me a mostly solo player.

What it does offer is a setting that pulls me in (I am a sucker for the open sea and pirates) and slower almost more strategic combat. It also offers a fairly compelling economic and PVP aspect, but those are really designed for players working together in a larger social structure. A structure that based on my game playing habits, and outside factors, I generally do not fit into very well.

I spent a few dollars on the pre-order box, and will probably hop on when they pre-open the servers, but I am thinking that I might not spend the additional money to buy the whole retail box. Instead use the extra forty dollars and get my self almost three months of worth of existing game subscriptions.”

So when the roller coaster ended I stepped off and found new ride, well really an old one I wanted to ride again. I just could not see spending the $45 for a retail box of a new game that really did not offer me much that I could not get in a game I already owned.