Stratics presents an interview with the Lead World Designer of Pirates of the Burning Sea, Cory Herndon.

The title "Lead World Designer" might seem a bit misleading compared to what most gamers might believe the definition to be, but Cory Herndon knows exactly what his job duties entail. He was more than eager to share the details of his work as well as give me some juicy tidbits about some items we can expect in the relatively near future for Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Cory is the Lead World Designer for Pirates of the Burning Sea.  He oversees the writing process involved with the game and described the position as a cross between head writer and content idea guy.   Cory oversees a team that focuses on writing the background, storylines and mission quest text as well as the interaction and scripts for speaking NPCs in the game.

Read the entire interview here.

The 1.4 version patch for Pirates of Burning Sea will bring a lot more to the game then group buffs and tiered skills! The pirate career path will now be divided into two, giving players more options and a fuller enjoyment of the game, while adding new skills and play styles!

Cutthroats represent the brutal side of the Brethren of the Coast. They lead short and violent lives and their answers to problems are short and to the (sword) point. They don't make ships; they steal them. Cutthroats take what they want and demolish anyone foolish enough to get in their way. Blackbeard is the classic cutthroat archetype.

Buccaneers are pirates too, but a bit subtler than their burning-bearded brethren. They steal and loot, but also manipulate the black markets. Some would call them gentleman adventurers, though few are true blue bloods. Buccaneers do not have the raw power of cutthroats, but they work well in groups and can help friends and cripple enemies. Buccaneers are more challenging to play than cutthroats, so are recommended for players with Pirates of the Burning Sea experience.

Pirates in game now will cease to exist, they'll become Cutthroats. Buccaneers are considered an advanced career and is not recommended for those unfamiliar with the game!

We'll be talking with the developers to get you a clearer idea of what to expect, and how things will work, so be sure to keep checking back with us! For more details on our coverage of PotBS check out our games list! Read on to find out some of the skill info that was released today on these two careers

Rick Saada of Flying Lab Software, producers of Pirates of the Burning Sea, sat down with the folks at Stratics to talk about PotBS, himself, and life at Flying Lab Software.

Greetings! As we begin, would you like to introduce yourself and describe your role at Flying Lab Software?

Rick Saada: I'm Rick Saada, and I wear a lot of hats at FLS.  I'm one of the founders, so I've been around since the dawn of time.  I'm also the tools developer, so I write the tools our artists and writers use to produce a lot of the content in the game.
I'm also in charge of banana bread, and baklava, and generally keeping the staff fed.

Are you an active gamer? If so, what is your favorite genre - and do you consider yourself a casual or hardcore player?

Rick Saada: I'm fairly active, but not particularly hardcore.  In addition to our game, I've played CoH/CoV, LotRO, AC, and I'm still playing WoW.  I'm an altaholic though, so I've never maxed a character. I used to be more of a single player RPG gamer, and still enjoy Mass Effect and such, but lately MMO's have stolen more of my life than I'd like to admit. I also play RTS's and 4X games, like Sims, Age of Mythology, and stuff with my kids like Viva Pinata.

I'm doing my best to raise my kids to be proper gamers, so my two daughters have their own WoW characters and Sims, and kick my butt at Viva Pinata.  Very cute but surprisingly addictive game.  My 8 year old loves it.  In fact I had to make a pinata from the game for her last birthday.  Somehow Microsoft missed the obvious marketing tie-in. Actually, it's been really fun; they have long distance playdates with their cousins across the country in online games.

Read the entire interview here.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has temporarily suspended User Content submissions in order to prepare for the release of the User Content System 2.0

In order to prepare for the unveiling of our new User Content system, we will be temporarily suspending the submission of new flags and sails.

User Content 2.0 is entering the final stages of testing, and barring any major glitches, should be available to our community in the very near future.

We are really excited to see what you think about the new system, so keep your eyes on the news for updates!

Best,
Aether

Read the announcement here.

We all know that 1.4 is bringing a lot of changes to Pirates of the Burning Sea, but for those interested in more details two more devlogs have been released.

The first is the The Freetrader.

Freetraders are in a unique position right now. Nobody can survive as long as an FT and they can excel in different areas. They have a moderate amount of combat strength, but it can be difficult to tap into that strength. Theres a definite limbo in FT effectiveness. We approached the Freetrader by giving them some new functionality (stealth, a strong attack debuff) and changing how two of their skill chains are used.

In the process, we removed the following skills from Freetraders: Desperation Fire 1, Repel Grapples 1, Dockyard Contract, Identify Weakness 1 and Before the Wind 1. Here are some of the new Freetrader skills to replace the old ones:

The second one is The Buccaneer.

Up to this point, Ive talked about a lot of the changes that are happening to existing careers and all the new stuff theyre getting. Now its time for something thats completely new: the Buccaneer pirate career. Existing pirates will become Cutthroats, since the generic pirate is no longer applicable.

Our current career landscape is one that destined for imbalance. The game has changed a lot since pirates were created, and they need to fill a role in the Conquest endgame. A single, solo-emphasized career works great when pirate mechanics arent part of the overall war, but it doesnt lend itself to group PvP. Ive got a soft spot for solo PvP, but that doesnt mean we can ignore the group PvP necessity and the associated balance implications.

As more devlogs are released, we'll catch you up with them!

Join the Pirates of the Burning Sea House of Commons chat tonight for a chance to chat with Flying Lab, the developers of PotBS.

For Tuesday, April 22nd's PotBS Hoc DevChat (5pm Pacific/8pm
Eastern/1am British Summer Time), we will be joined by Russell "Rusty"
Williams (CEO),  Kevin "Isildur" Maginn (Lead Designer), Drew "DrewC"
Clowery (Game Designer), David "Taelorn" Hunt (Game Designer), Troy
"Aether" Hewitt (Director, Community Relations), and Tom "Rhaegar"
Atkinson-Edwards (Community Specialist), from Flying Lab Software -
the fine folk who bring you Pirates of the Burning Sea.  Full details
on the chat can be found here.

Flying Labs is hiring!  Maybe you'll fit the bill.

Flying Lab Software has just posted two new job openings here at our Seattle offices.

We are currently seeking applicants for a Senior Graphics Programmer and a Game Programmer to work with our outstanding Pirates of the Burning Sea team.

Detailed position descriptions and information on how you can apply can be found by visiting the jobs section of our website.

The positions are Game Programmer and Senior Graphics Programmer, neither of which I'm qualified for.  When they start hiring a sarcastic news person, let me know!

Pirates of the Burning Sea experienced a brief downtime this morning to enable server transfers for characters.

When Pirates of the Burning Sea launched on January 22nd, we introduced our customers to 11 new game servers. Through feedback from our players and evaluation of our server populations, it has become clear that key game features require populations of higher density in order to function at optimum levels. When you take into account both the disparity in player time zones and the delayed launch of our title in some countries, we were spreading our overall population too thin. Also, in more recent builds, we were able to improve our server technology to allow for an even larger population than we were originally equipped to handle.

Providing our customers with the best game play experience is our first priority. Condensing our populations will lead to a richer, more vibrant game play experience for all involved, and our customers whole-heartedly agree. The character transfer option will not be available to our Australian customers on the Invincible server.

Read the whole story here.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has announced they'll cut their server list from 11 down to 4.

On Tuesday, April 15th, from 1:30a Pacific Time, there will be a brief, rolling outage in order to enable server transfers for your characters. [note: this outage is now complete]

When Pirates of the Burning Sea launched on January 22nd, we introduced our customers to 11 new game servers. Through feedback from our players and evaluation of our server populations, it has become clear that key game features require populations of higher density in order to function at optimum levels. When you take into account both the disparity in player time zones and the delayed launch of our title in some countries, we were spreading our overall population too thin. Also, in more recent builds, we were able to improve our server technology to allow for an even larger population than we were originally equipped to handle.

Providing our customers with the best game play experience is our first priority. Condensing our populations will lead to a richer, more vibrant game play experience for all involved, and our customers whole-heartedly agree. The character transfer option will not be available to our Australian customers on the Invincible server.

From a player perspective, this is good.  Now maybe the auction house and economy will shape up!

Pirates of the Burning Sea has put up a new dev log featuring new UI improvements that will be coming in update 1.3.

In addition to making the brand-new exchange shops, we also added the ability to sell personal loot items in all Swashbuckling Supply shops. Now, if you have personal loot you don’t want to sell on the auction house, you can sell it to the Swashbuckling Trainer for a few doubloons rather than just destroying it.

The other big task the UI team had for this milestone was to improve the mission journal. From your feedback, we knew that the list of missions wasn’t giving players enough information to decide which missions to do and when. There were also a few sorting and color bugs that needed to be squished.

There's lots more coming, so check it out.