Now that the PotBS NDA is officially down (oops…) plenty of opinions are popping up around the blogosphere, most along the lines of ‘fun game, but not the usual addiction you get from a new MMO’, and I completely agree with this. Even free, the game now sits on my desktop and is generally my 3^rd or 4^th choice when deciding what to spend my gaming time with.

I want to like PotBS, I really do. I think the ship combat is excellent, the game runs well, looks good, and overall has a solid feel. So why don’t I? Yes the sword fighting parts are very sub-par, the interface feels arcane and ancient at times, and there are still some bugs. But those are not the factors that are really driving me away.

My first major gripe is that you see the loading screen more than the game itself. The game is so heavily reliant on instancing that you get the feeling you just bounce from one room to the next, never actually getting a feel for the world. Gather a bunch of missions in town, head over to the dock, and fire off one mission after another off the list, until you are done. Then you head back into down to cash them all in, and you repeat until you are done with that town. For some reason, this feels far more unnatural in PotBS than it does in say WoW, or even DDO. At least in DDO, another instance-heavy game, you get the feeling that each instance is in its correct place, a part of the city. In PotBS, it feels like you teleport to magic sections of some random body of water to face a few ships, and then teleport back. I understand that they want to get you to the ‘good part’ as quickly as possible, but in doing so they really alienate you from the world, which brings me to my next point.

Many people complain about travel in EVE, how you have to jump multiple times and how boring that can be. Well I’ll take EVE’s travel over PotBS any day. Not only does Pirates feel slower, it also adds a somewhat ‘cartoon’ feel to the world, with ships the size of small islands zooming back and forth, reminding me of some hyper child playing with his boats in the tub. If the instance-jumping does not kill the immersion for you, the travel will. It just feels so unnatural. In addition, any fight that takes place between ships in this view is represented by ship icons to others, since any combat will place you in an instance once again. It would have been far more interesting, and immersive, if you could sail by ships in actual combat, giving you the option to join in or continue on your way right there, without zoning. In this regard EVE trumps Pirates easily, since during any gate jump you might go by ships fighting it out, right there in front of you, letting you see what kind of ships are involved and their status.

To me Pirates feels like a bunch of mini-games thrown together, each one being decent on its own, but as one packages it all does not mesh well. The ship combat mini-game is fun, but once it’s over you hit the magic button, and get placed in the ‘run around town’ mini-game. You then play a simplistic wack-a-mole mini-game, followed once again by the magic button and back to the town game you go. I think this disjointed style is the reason PotBS does not grab you like other MMOs do. You are constantly pulled out of the game, breaking any rhythm or flow you might have had, and I think this flow aspect is a highly underrated component to general MMO enjoyment. Pirates lacks it, which along with it’s other issues, is likely the reason why it’s icon is 3^rd or 4^th on my list of games to fire up. I’ll give it some more time, but unless something drastically changes, I don’t think Pirates will be a buy come launch.