The crew over at Flying Labs are working as hard as they can to get the current server outage taken care of!

We had to bring our North American and European servers down this morning because some urgent issues that surfaced with the latest patch.

We are preparing a new server build to address these problems, however as with all new builds this needs to be fully tested before it is deployed. Because of this we are expecting a further 12 hours of downtime. We estimate that the servers will be back up at approximately 10pm Pacific.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this outage. We are working flat out to resolve this issue so that play can resume, and we are looking into ways to make the outage less painful for our players.

Hopefully we'll all be able to login then, and stop the withdrawl symptoms we're experiencing!

The PotBS servers are still having issues, and this report was posted this morning.

An issue has been discovered with the patch we released this a.m. We have locked the servers and may or may not take them down while we deal with this. Apologies for the inconvenience! We will get them back up and running as soon as we can! More info when we have it…

Update 9a Pacific: Still not much of an update. I’m guessing at least 2 more hours before we have the servers up or a better estimate.

 

The art director for Pirates of the Burning Sea has posted a "State of the Artco" dev log!

When I landed the gig I knew what had to be done, so I got to work right away. The day I started we had five weeks before E3 2005 and, frankly, the game looked like crap. The major pieces were there – sky, ocean, and ships – but everything was just “present” in a sort of mechanical way. I sat down with the devs and requested a couple of small lighting-related features and then started painting – yes, painting, texture maps mostly. (The secret to 3D is that in the end it’s all about textures and lighting. I like to tell my students [I’ve been a teacher at the Art Institute of Seattle for 18 years] that a great texture can save a bad model, but bad texture will ruin even the finest of models – I don’t think they believe me though.)

Beautiful screen shots and a powerful dedication to the art of PotBS is included, and are not to be missed.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has announced their Buddy Key system!

Every player with a paid SOE subscription to Pirates of the Burning Sea is entitled to three 14 day trial keys. These keys can be used right away, or you can save them for a rainy day; they won’t expire unless they have been activated, and they will remain on the website for you to access at any time. Each key can only be used once.

To generate your three keys, you need to be logged in to our website (click here to log in). You will then be able to use this URL to claim your keys:
http://www.burningsea.com/pages/buddyKeys

What an awesome way to share this game with your friends!

Pirates of the Burning Sea unveiled an intro to their buddy key system Friday!

This Monday we will be unveiling the Pirates of the Burning Sea Buddy Key Program, which will allow customers with active accounts to invite three of your favorite people to join you on the Burning Sea for a 14 day trial – free!

The three keys will be generated just for you, and can be used at any time. The trial doesn’t start until the keys are entered, and they don’t expire until they’ve been activated.

Rhaegar will be providing download links and instructions for you to claim your three buddy keys on Monday, so keep your eyes on the headlines!

We haven't heard any of the details yet, but as soon as we do, you'll hear about it!

Pirates of the Burning Sea patched this morning, and apparently some folks are having trouble getting in.

There may be a handful of people that started to download this morning’s patch before SOE had actually completed the updating process. This may have introduced complications that will prevent you from launching Pirates of the Burning Sea.

If you are experiencing issues with launching the game, such as being unable to see a server list upon launch or being unable to launch altogether, performing a full scan via the PotBS LaunchPad has been found to correct these issues.

If that full scan doesn't work you can look for answers in their knowledge base!

Pirates of the Burning Sea has announced some new stuff in the last few days, and here's my chance to catch you up with what's going on!

Firstly a new devlog: Introducing Bey's Retreat

Bey’s Retreat is the unapproachable stronghold to which the Corsairs of the Main escape when the national navies and Brethren pirates chase them down. It is a series of powerful fortresses built into a small island near Caracas, watched over by the most ruthless and dangerous Corsairs in the Caribbean. The Spanish have attacked it. The Brethren of the Coast have laid siege to it. But the defenses of Bey’s Retreat and the massive Corsair fleet that protects it have repelled every incursion.

And a welcome to our Oceania players with their own dedicated server!

If you are in Australia or New Zealand, you are invited to download Pirates of the Burning Sea and participate in a 7-day free trial by visiting this link to the BigPond website.

As an added bonus, our Oceanic customers gain access to a limited edition in-game item, the Captain’s Cockatoo! The Captain’s Cockatoo is available to all new characters created in the first month of the Oceanic server, across all nations! All you have to do is create a character and the Captain’s Cockatoo will be standing on your shoulder to greet you.

Last but certainly not least - New UI improvements!

After reading forum threads like this and this, we decided to bend to your collective will and add chat bubbles to the game. This is a contentious issue, as people seem to either love chat bubbles or hate them with the fire of one thousand suns… so before anyone starts yelling, let me say very clearly: Yes, you can turn them off.

Lots more changes, including De-spamification, new chat art, and floaty names abound!

Pirates of the Burning Sea has announced some changes to their user content!

• “Kitten Wars” style voting—instead of giving each flag a 1-5 rating, you’ll compare two flags or two sails and pick the one you think is the best. You’ll then be shown instantly another pair to rate. Once a submission gets a certain number of “hot” votes, it’s sent to the Devs for final approval. On the other hand, if it gets passed up for other submissions too many times, it will be sent back to you for more work.
• Even distribution of votes—the User Content system will randomise what flags or sails you see and rate, so everything should benefit from equal community scrutiny.
• Rewards for participation—the more flags and sails you rate, the more you’re entitled to have in review at any given time, up to a suitably comfortable limit. It will “cost” votes to submit a design, so for every flag or sail you want to submit, you’ll need to rate other submissions.
• Less waiting—you should know within a few days whether your flag or sail is ready for the game, and if not, receive useful feedback to help it get there.
• Email response when your flag or sail has been reviewed or approved.
• Focused feedback—while FLS Staff will still review and if necessary critique flags and sails above a certain number of “hot” votes, content that almost meets this threshhold will receive critique from both staff and the 2D Steering Committee.

There's a ton more details available to you, so be sure to get creating!

Pirates of the Burning Sea has a new devlog that takes a look at version 1.1 and what's been pushed to the test server.

Since the game launched, you have been able to create six different kinds of Bundle Unrest Supplies: Food, Luxuries, Metal, Textiles, Weapons, and Wood. But you couldn’t do anything with them!

In v1.1, this system is now fully implemented. Every Rebel Agent and Garrision Commander will now offer delivery missions where you can hand in one unit of any of the six bundle items. In return, you generate (Rebel Agent) or remove (Garrison Commander) 100 Unrest points at that port. (Because we have recently accelerated the rate of unrest gain, this will actually be 150 points.)

Check out the changes to Marks of Victory and the entire updated version that will be making its way to live very soon.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has updated their devlog to introduce things that are coming in 1.1!

Since our soft launch on January 7th, we have released several patches to fix critical issues. Crashes, memory leaks, and server stability have all seen significant improvements in the last three weeks. But we’ve only been rolling out the most urgent fixes to you, while testing continued on many, many more improvements and corrections.

While this build is mostly about bug fixes, it does include a handful of features and tuning changes to make the game better. In this series of devlogs I’m going to cover the highlights of what’s in v1.1.

The post includes many of the fixes.  If you're looking for more game news we're happy to present a post launch interview with Jess Lebow as well as our CES coverage of PotBS!