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Flying Lab Software has been demonstrating Pirates of the Burning Sea at the last couple of Gen Cons in Indianapolis, and I've been right there each time expressing my interest in the game. They finished up the beta test in January. While I didn't get an invite, my brother did.Matt, my brother, said that he really liked the combat model used and thought it was a good game overall, but he never really got his head around the crafting system it used. He didn't buy the game after the beta. Since I didn't get beta test it, I decided to buy it after it was released officially.
I've spent a few hours the last few evenings playing it. The interface has much in common with every other MMO I've ever played. If you've played City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, or a similar title, you'll pick the Pirates interface up pretty easily. If not, it's still fairly similar to first-person shooters.
Because Matt had already analyzed the combat model in the game, I focused more on trying to understand how the in-game economy works. It's actually quite well done based on what I've seen so far, and what I've seen in other MMOs. That deserves some explanation.
I was one of many people who played Electronic Arts' "Earth and Beyond" MMO when it was still active. That game had an almost insanely detailed crafting system. Each character archetype could manufacture certain kinds of items (reactors, components, weapons, or shields). One class could mine asteroids for raw materials. One class could turn raw materials into components. Different classes could take those components and assemble them into a finished item. To be able to create a component or finished item, you needed to have the necessary recipe. You could buy some recipes, but the more useful ones you got by looting an item of the type you were interested in, and analyzing it at an engineering terminal (which destroyed the item and didn't result in a recipe 100% of the time). Lots of rare in-game items were destroyed and hopelessly lost analyzing them for recipes, but there was a great reward waiting for you if you could figure out the recipe.
It was clear that EA put a lot of thought into that crafting system. It was unfortunate that they'd put far less thought into the system players would use to sell those items to one another. It consisted solely of a chat channel. You had to advertise your item on the trade channel, hope someone online was interested in it at your price, that you could get to where they were (or vice-versa), and that they had the money. When you figure that this game was supposedly set in a distant future where space travel is routine, you'd think they might have come up with something as rudimentary as an "eBay style" auction house. They never implemented one and the game died a fairly early death.
The best crafting system and marketing model I've seen yet is the one in World of Warcraft. Players can locate raw materials, create finished products, and offer them for sale at a central auction house for each faction in the game. The unfortunate thing with WoW, in my experience, is that it's rare you can sell a crafted item for more than the cost of the raw materials.
But I digress. The crafting system in Pirates of the Burning Sea is almost as detailed as the one in Earth and Beyond. It starts with a warehouse, which is simply a place for your "structures" to store their finished products. Once you have a warehouse at a port, you can place additional structures there, such as Fishing Lodges, Lumber Mills, Gravel Pits, and the like. To place a structure, you need a deed (which you purchase or loot) and the relevant raw materials to build that structure. Once constructed, that structure will manufacture items for you even when you aren't logged into the game and playing. The items made by your structures can be sold as-is, or they can in some cases be combined with the output from other factories and turned into a more complex item. For example, the wood from a lumber mill can be combined with iron from an iron mine to create a barrel, which can be used to store things. I haven't confirmed this, but it's said that a single player can't produce all the inputs necessary to create a ship.
In addition to the crafting system, Pirates of the Burning Sea contains an auction house that functions in a rational way, given the time period being simulated. While the auctioneer in one port can take your money for an item at another port, you have to visit that port to pick up your purchase.
I agree with Matt that the ship combat system is a good one, and it can be fun to chip away at the enemy ship before sliding in close to board it.
Boarding battles are rather chaotic, with lots of NPCs running around almost randomly attacking one another. It took me a while to decide if there was any real strategy to them, and there is, though not (to me) as much as for ship-to-ship combat.
I'll share more of my experiences as my 30-day introductory period continues.
