A Sony Online Entertainment press release announces:

PIRATES OF THE BURNING SEA^TM OPEN BETA SCHEDULED FOR FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7th

European Retail Pre-Order Scheduled to Start December 12th

WHAT: Pirates of the Burning Sea, the MMORPG featuring action and adventure on the high seas, is scheduled to begin its worldwide open beta on Friday, December 7th allowing naval captains, freetraders, privateers, and pirates alike to experience first-hand this highly-anticipated online game.

The retail pre-order for European players is scheduled to start December 12th. Customers who pre-order will receive:
• An invitation to the “Pre-Boarding Party” allowing them access to the live game up to 15 days prior to launch, and the ability to keep their characters, skills and equipment after launch with purchase of game and paid subscription (characters will have a level cap of 20 during this time)
• Captain’s Best Friend – a blue and yellow parrot
• Mighty Blades - Swedish Rapier, Old World Steel or Musketeer’s Matching Blades (depending upon which fighting style is selected)
• Original Game Soundtrack CD – 60 minutes of pirate themed music (comes in pre-order box)

OPEN BETA INSTRUCTIONS: North American players can sign up for access to the beta through File Planet at www.fileplanet.com. File Planet subscribers will get priority access, with beta opening to all other players within a week.
For European players interested in playing, please go to www.piratesoftheburningsea.com for localized links.

WHEN: Pirates of the Burning Sea open beta is scheduled to begin worldwide on
Friday, December 7, 2007 at 5pm PST.
Pirates of the Burning Sea European retail pre-order is scheduled to begin Wednesday, December 12, 2007.

For more information on Pirates of the Burning Sea log onto www.piratesoftheburningsea.com.

Pirates of the Burning Sea has lifted their NDA and announced their plans for open beta

Waiting is never easy, and we’d like to take this time to thank everyone for their patience during this time. Below you will find the latest information on the Pirates of the Burning Sea Open Beta plan, information on the status of the NDA and the status of EU/AU PotBS pre-orders. We’ll update this thread with more information and any potential adjustments to the following plan just as soon as we know more.

Read on for all the details!

PotBS Open Beta:
The first four days of the Pirates of the Burning Sea open beta will be reserved for our invited beta testers and members of the FilePlanet Founders Club. Open Beta is scheduled to begin worldwide on Friday, December 7th, 2007, at which point FilePlanet subscribers can get in. After that it’ll be open for everyone within a week.

You’ll find our Open Beta forum by clicking this link.

On December 7th, North American players that aren’t currently beta testers will have a chance to give Pirates of the Burning Sea a spin. Please visit this link for download information.

Aether just keeps the info comin', so check out his post.

PotBS has invited all the stress test II participants to take part in beta!

We’ve had several reports of people who experienced some confusion as to the way FP keys work. In order to make up for that, we are inviting everyone with a Stress Test II key to join us as beta testers!

In order to be accepted into the Pirates of the Burning Sea beta, keyholders will need to log into their SOE Station accounts, and then apply their Fileplanet Keys by visiting this link.

The full announcement can be found here.

 

Pirates of the Burning Sea announced the end of their stress test!

We announced on Saturday that any stress tester who got to level 5 could stay in the beta after the stress test was over. Almost everyone who played hit that goal, so we just decided to let all the stress testers in the beta anyway. Come on in!

What this means is that if you have a Stress Test II key code from Fileplanet, and you’ve installed the game and entered your key code, you are now in the beta program. You don’t have to do anything to get into beta – it’s automatic.

We understand that some folks may have been unable to download the Pirates of the Burning Sea client from File Planet in time to apply their key, and in recognition of this, we will be working on a way to include those individuals as beta testers as well. We will share more information regarding those accounts as soon as we can.

Visit the 2nd stress test forum or the official news announcement for more info.

 

According to the PotBS Website:

 

The Pirates of the Burning Sea Stress Test Event is scheduled to begin today, Thursday, November 15 until 10:00 a.m. Monday, November 19th.

We will notify our fans once FilePlanet keys can be applied. While we don’t anticipate a delay, you will not be able to apply your FilePlanet key until they are acitivated.

Players who are interested in participating need to set sail for FilePlanet to sign up for the weekend play test.

Once registered, players will be taken to a page with both a link to the Pirates installer and a Stress Test key. Again, you will not be able apply this key until they have been activated- we’ll keep you posted.

The crunch is getting to Aether over at PotBS, as he announced that game boxes have indeed made it into stores!

They really just don’t make a word* for how pleased we are to share that we have definitive confirmation of the Pirates of the Burning Sea Pre-Order box’s availability at Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics, EB Games/GameStop and CompUSA locations across North America.

*Unless “joycitementfantastihappelation” is a word, which really should be, if it isn’t.

Poor guy! I hope that the next few weeks don't make him even more crazy!

Pirates of the Burning Sea has announced the winners of the flag creation contest!

Their community interview is also up!

What part of Pirates of the Burning Sea are you most looking forward to?
The release! Seriously the release and the player driven economy. Just those two things. The release, the player driven economy, and the meaningful PvP. All of it but the release first!

Release is just around the corner, so to hone up on all your piratey info visit our PotBS games listing!

Pre-Orders for Pirates of the Burning Sea were re-announced today!

Here's the press release!

WHAT: Pirates of the Burning Sea, the MMORPG featuring high seas action and adventure in a bold world of pirates and plunder, is scheduled to be available for digital and retail pre-order starting Tuesday, November 13th .

PRE ORDER
FEATURES: Players who pre-order the game at retail will receive the following:
• An invitation to the “Pre-Boarding Party” allowing them access to the live game up to 15 days prior to launch, and the ability to keep their characters, skills and equipment after launch with purchase of game and paid subscription (characters will have a level cap of 20 during the pre-boarding party)
• Captain’s Best Friend – a blue and yellow parrot
• Mighty Blades - Swedish Rapier, Old World Steel or Musketeer’s Matching Blades (depending upon which fighting style is selected)
• Original Game Soundtrack CD – 60 minutes of pirate themed music (comes in pre-order box)

Players who pre-order the game digitally through www.station.com or Direct-2-Drive will receive:
• An invitation to the “Pre-Boarding Party” allowing them access to the live game up to 15 days prior to launch, and the ability to keep their characters, skills and equipment after launch with purchase of game and paid subscription (characters will have a level cap of 20 during the pre-boarding party)

WHEN: Pirates of the Burning Sea is scheduled to be available for preorder in North America on Tuesday, November 13, 2007. A European pre-order date has not been set yet.

Don yer hats me mateys, and jump on board!  Last one on buys the rum!

Pirates of the Burning Sea has released a player's Beta Tester Diary!

After installing the beta client of Pirates of the Burning Sea, an MMORPG based on the Age of Sail in the year 1720, the updater downloads a patch if needed and you can launch the beta for the very first time. Adrenaline flowed through my veins, as the Flying Lab Software logo appeared on my screen, and after that I get to the beautiful login screen of PotBS. I type my account name and password and off I go to create a character! I’m choosing a male French Freetrader, because I’ve always been more interested in production and trade in MMO games, and I like to play in the less popular nations. I get to customize everything, from hairtypes and colors to what kind of belt I wear and the color of my shoes. I choose a nice hat and a small beard, pick a name and let’s start the tutorial

Follow this poor, unsuspecting player as he enters the world for the very first time!

The official PotBS site had this unfortunate news:

This is not the news that we wanted to bring you, but there’s been a hold up in the pre-order process. It turns out that the release of the preorder box is being delayed while the retailers and SOE finish processing all of the returns of Gods & Heroes preorder boxes. Obviously, the cancellation of Gods & Heroes after the preorder boxes were already in stores is a very unusual situation and it is taking a bit longer than expected to work out the kinks.

To give the retailers and SOE time to finish processing those returns, the PotBS preorder box is being delayed until the week of November 13th.

In the meantime some soundtrack MP3's can be found in the announcement article.