Pirates of the Burning Sea - ThoughtsFollow

Anyone else tried the beta for this?

I think - though it really needs more time before it goes live (which is in January sometime) that this could be a great game. ... Or it would be, if sailing ever worked for me.

For some f'ed up reason, I cannot sail - maybe for 30 seconds will it actually work before it lags out and I stay stuck in place. In order to get 'help' for this, I have to sign up for 2 different memberships at sites to sign into the forums to post a notice to speak to a GM - they have no ingame service. And everyone in-game says "lower your settings". My settings are at minimum for this game. ... I play WoW at max settings on my computer. I bought this a couple years ago - dual core, Radeon 9300 (or something) card, 2 gigs of RAM, yada yada. Needless to say, I'm a little miffed that I'm having so many problems.

I haven't explored the economy fully - but it does seem interesting. Buying and selling of raw materials and ships and such is really interesting. I played the most as a Freetrader, but since I couldn't travel much didn't see a lot.

What I don't like is there is no "outside". You can't leave cities and go out into the wilds. I've been on a couple missions where I go into caves or beaches to fight the same-looking enemies, but it seems kind of constricted in that way. However, if I could see the open sea, maybe I'd change my mind. The way I travel is put up my sails, orient my ship in (what I hope is) the right direction, let my ship sit immobile for a couple minutes, lower my sails, and wait for the server to tell me by how far I've missed my mark.

Admittedly, I got to sail for about 10 minutes today, uninterrupted. I sailed a few hundred miles between ports in my starter ship, and it was great. I got into an "instanced battle" with NPC pirates that would have wiped the floor with me, but I kept sailing straight by until it allowed me to leave the "instance" and continue on. If the game always worked like it's supposed to, I wouldn't be here.

Character and environment design is a little bland - maybe I'm just used to the vibrant colors in WoW, but I think it needs a lot of work graphically. Not to say they aren't gorgeous, but there is nothing to interact with at all yet. Kind of disappointing to raid a pirate cove and not be able to open any of the chests littered around that are nothing but scenery. Character faces seem really round, and eyes and noses and mouths seem a bit small in proportion. I do absolutely LOVE the color customization - there are thousands of options to choose from. You can choose anything from your hat to the buckles on your boots and have color and style options for everything.

Anyway - this game has great potential, but after playing it for a day, it's far too buggy and laggy to recommend to anyone. The fact that my sailing is so screwy is a bit weird - other people don't seem to have the same problem, so maybe something got messed up in my download or install or the like. But then again, it works sometimes. I haven't a clue.

I think the beta ends the middle of January, so if you've got time - try it. Just be ready for the normal beta issues. Such as earlier today when I tried to login it said I didn't have a valid account for a few hours. When I came back later it logged me in just fine.

Anyone else tried it and have some opinions?

Open beta was kind of lame. Seemed like a WoW clone. I was immediately turned off during the first fight. Haven't logged in since.

Boring. Melee combat was slow and clunky, the instances were the same thing copy & pasted over and over and even ship combat wasn't very exciting. Towns were very small as well. I gave it a good shot but couldn't find much of anything I liked about it.

Tried it.

Suxorz.

And trust me it will not be one of the "top" MMO's next year.

AoC,WaR,Darkfall, and many many others will stomp this game.