The Pirates of the Burning Sea developers have been quite busy lately. They've posted blogs on fighting gold spam and the revisions to avatar combat, and announced the Big John's Bane event will be held on the Testbed tomorrow, Oct. 17, at 4 p.m. PST.

Check the links above for the full announcements, or keep reading below for the blog regarding avatar combat. It's incredibly in-depth and shows exactly how the devs go about fine-tuning elements of the game.

To summarize all of the announcements: they are focusing on blocking spammers and getting them out of the game quickly; avatar combat is being reworked from the ground up to open fights with "cool special moves" and use fewer skills in longer chains; and the players who are part of the fleet that sinks Big John will recieve a special title in the live game.

Build 1.8: A Good Day to Die was published on the Invincible server at 3 p.m. PDT today and includes a month's worth of features and bug fixes.

The differences between 1.7.37.0 and 1.8.28.1 are numerous, but the major changes include the ability to move items between cargo holds all at once, the port battle schedule revision, new daily missions, and Intel 945/965 integrated chipset support. Also, fleets cannot attack each other if the difference between the strentgh of the groups is too great. This change is being implemented to decrease time-griefing.

The full release notes can be found here or below.

Port battle timeslots have been a hot topic for the developers of Pirates of the Burning Sea. The scheduling system for these battles has undergone major changes as the designers receive community feedback.

Currently the time span between port flips and port battles is 22 hours, give or take a few hours for the random factor. However, Aether has posted on the official Pirates of the Burning Sea Web site that they have decided to extend the time span between port flips and battles to 46 hours to give players time to build contention and organize for pending battles. This change will be introduced on Oct. 7, along with the removal of randomly scheduling port battles.

Flying Lab Software has announced that it is offering a free 14-day trial program so swashbucklers can try out Pirates of the Burning Sea for free to decide if a pirate's life is really for them.

“Our 14-day free trial program is an effort to give everyone a taste of Pirates of the Burning Sea game-play,” said Russell Williams, CEO of Flying Lab Software, in a press release. “People are really going to enjoy their experience with us, and I’m excited to welcome these new members into our community!”

For more information, visit the trial keys page and decide whether you're loyal to England, France, Spain, or your fellow pirates.

According to the Pirates of the Burning Sea Web site , the Port Battle Timeslots for the Antigua and Rackham servers have been adjusted. This change comes after the developers collected feedback from players and evaluated their own data. They would still like more fan feedback, which can be given here .

Here's the battle schedule for each server:

Antigua: 7 a.m. - 9 p.m. PST (3 p.m. - 5 a.m. GMT)
Blackbeard: 9 a.m. - 9 p.m. PST (5 p.m. - 5 a.m. GMT)
Rackham: 7 a.m. - 9 p.m. PST (3 p.m. - 5 a.m. GMT)
Roberts: 3 a.m. - 3 p.m. PST (11 a.m. - 11 p.m. GMT)

Being that it's International Talk Like A Pirate Day it seemed only fitting to talk with the fine folks at Flying Labs about Pirates of the Burning Sea, which is also the official game of this now, pseudo-widely celebrated holiday. In the interview I sat down with none other than the Lead Designer Kevin 'Isildur' Maginn, to see what he had to say about a few of the newer additions to the game.

Allakhazam : Hello Kevin, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to chat with us! 

Allakhazam : Tell us a little about yourself! How long have you been with Flying Labs and what kind of work did you do before Pirates of the Burning Sea?

Kevin : I originally joined Flying Lab to develop the Pirates website. We all wore a lot of hats back then, because we had so few people. I've been designing games since I was ten years old, so it was a fairly natural progression for me to join the design team.

From the PotBS team :

"Pirates of the Burning Sea is the official video game of International Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 19^th ). Yarr, it be true. To commemorate this auspicious day, Flying Lab Software has created special missions and secret booty just for the occasion. Until September 26^th 2008, players can log in to Pirates of the Burning Sea and party with the grog-swillin', booty-plundering founders of the day, Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket. These rum-swiggin' salts will be taking their rightful place in the Burning Sea as they hand out missions and teach everyone a thing or two about getting booty.

Join the crew to party and talk piratical talk!

Quick Pirate Reference Guide:

To prepare you for the day, here is a quick reference guide of pirate terms and sayings.

Pirate Saying: Translation:

Arrrr! Interject as much as possible!

Ahoy! Hello!

Booty Treasure

PotBS Gen Con The Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS) crew has been working tirelessly to bring improvements and new features to the game since its launch in January of this year. Last week at Gen Con I got a chance to see what was in store for the immediate future with patch 1.7 which is in testing now and further into the future as 1.8 and 1.9 take form.

The most immediate change Donna 'Danicia' Prior (decked out in pirate gear and garb), the forum mod and chat goddess from the Flying Labs team pointed out to me during my game walkthrough was the new options for character creation. Everything from new facial choices, choosing your eye color from a rather broad selection, to new hats and jewelry has been added. Players who've already created characters can of course change their avatars to take advantage of these new options through the tailor shop feature in game.

Camera changes have been added to bring a unique visual appeal to the game. Now you can view under water events and landmarks as you fly through the Caribbean Sea, including underwater volcanoes, whales, and rocks. This brings a much larger sense of immersion to the game, and certainly makes it more fun to look around as you travel. Of course, the biggest immersion increase is the chance to watch your captain's avatar shout orders to your crew and then watch your crew hop to it and carry them out. Whether it be loading the cannons, firing them, or loafing off as you decide what to do, your crew is responding, and you can watch.

We all know that off peak battles can ruin your day, and be hard to accept after weeks of hard work.  PotBS Lead Designer Kevin 'Isildur' Maginn has written a devlog that takes a look at how new scheduling will effect nightflips.

Let's talk about the way that port battles are scheduled. The current system is that when a port reaches the required amount of unrest, the battle for control of that port is scheduled for 24 hours later. The intent of this system is that the battle takes place during the play hours of the people who force the port into contention. When it was designed, the idea was that ports would enter the contention phase ‘organically', as a result of nearby PvP activity.

That isn't, however, the way ports enter contention in the live game; they are intentionally forced by motivated attackers. This leads to the unfortunate side effect of allowing sufficiently motivated players to cause battles to be scheduled in off-peak hours, when few defenders will be able to respond to the threat. This is borderline griefing; it's not really against the rules, but it's certainly not a positive game experience for the targets.

If you want to give the PotBS team your feedback, head to this thread !

Flying Lab Software has announced a new producer for Pirates of the Burning Sea. Congratulations, Michelle Williams, and good luck!

Flying Lab Software's Michelle 'Misha' Williams announced her new role as Producer of Pirates of the Burning Sea this eve. Our heartiest of congratulations accompany her in this, her latest endeavor! A brief intro to the unanticipated (yet quite welcomed) news follows.

Read the rest of the post here .