PotBS :: “if you don’t like how the game is designed… it’ll be our fault, not SOE’s”

In the last couple of days, there has been quite a bit of information come out regarding PotBS. Flying Lab Software have signed with Sony Online Entertainment as the “platform publisher” for Pirates of the Burning Sea to mixed reviews by the community.

Thankfully, I’m pretty ignorant to MMORPGs and their history and so I don’t have strong personal opinions on any of the publishers for the various MMO games. In LOTRO for example, I think, from my limited reading, that Turbine had a pretty poor reputation with initial releases and with Dungeon and Dragon in particular hanging quite heavily on their reputation. That said, I have nothing but positives based on my experience. Coming from NWN where sooo much was known, it is nice to be in the more ignorant camp and simply enjoying the game. Ok…. ok… that rambled, but the point is simply that when I saw “SOE” I had to Google the letters to figure out what / who it was. Quickly browsing the forum I saw several negatively toned posts and I tried simply not to read them. After all, what is done is done and in reality it won’t matter – either I’ll like the game or I won’t.

That said, I was very pleased to see this blog – Link to Editor Blog – talking about the state of the game by Rusty who is the head of Flying Lab Software. All in all, I think it says all the right things – so much so, I made it the title of this post.

They updated the release date to be sometime in the Fall. I’m very interested in this game from a development perspective as well as from a player perspective. I think it has a very unique opportunity to be something different that fits more into a sub-culture all-time classic rather than a mass target release project. But…. I’m sure they will feel pressures and opportunity if they can expand the focus a bit and cover a few more bases. You can see this already with the boarding combat, the hand-to-hand combat, and most recently the publisher. The good news is that I think each of those moves helps to not only broaden the player base but make the game more enjoyable for me.

So all sails up and head for the Caribbean!! Fall should be great time!!