Pirates of the Burning Sea is converting to Free to Play

I would like to think we can ressurect tog in potbs, With it being free aswel it should open up alot more possibilities. I like the idea of governing a port too, something else to look into if we can bring the guild back

 

I hope so, but who knows, there are so many new FPS and MMORPGs out now that fitting in a casual F2P like PotBS will be an interesting challenge.

I think we need a stable society with our own economy and production lines setup first before we take on the responsibility of running a port. It would be nice, but I think baby steps are needed first.

Getting governance of a port needs partnership with like minded societies of the same nation so we could each pledge our member's loyalties to ensure we each get a port to govern.

 

Well when it goes live F2P, then please update the thread. I wouldn't mind poking around again on the high seas casually some.

 

Hmmm this sounds great
the whole telstra thing put me off first time and now F2P might just entice me
Also did you say Pirates is on the Wii????

I wasted SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much time as a kid on the original and have the original still on my PC
Wii would make it SO much more accessible

 

Check out this review on Gamespot.
Sid Meier's Pirates! Review for Wii - GameSpot

2K Shanghai handled the port from the Xbox version to the Wii.
The Xbox version was a port of the 2004 PC version.

The score is only 6.0 because the controls are a bit flaky.

Sword fighting sensing is a bit sloppy, but if you equip a rapier and some swordfighting buff items, you can pretty much win by all out attacks at the lower difficulty levels of play.

I find it extraordinarily frustrating in the dancing sequence as sometimes the wii remote is not sensed correctly so your avatar stumbles. So wooing governor's daughter is very difficult. Unlike the PC version there is only four directions to wave your Wii remote (compared to seven on the PC) when dancing.

When they ported this game to the Wii they added two extra mini-games and a weak second player role to supplement the main player.

Port Bombardment mini-game.

Great fun and probably the best part of this port and why I will play this version in preference to the 2004 PC version even though the controls are not great.

Press B to single shot one of the four visible cannon. Press A for a four shot salvo. Its a scrolling sideways shooter. Typically a port is defended by 25 fixed guns and two moored ships armed with four guns each. You gain gold damaging the town, but lose gold as they destroy your guns and your hull takes damage.

Lock-Picking mini game - I haven't seen this yet, but probably use your wii remote to dial the safe.

The badly done second player role, supplements the main player, but is not essential.

If you have a very young kid, they may enjoy the reduced role to help Dad beat the game.

The second player has the following different roles:

Ship Sailing - Adjust the sails for greater speed

Sword Fighting - Parrot supplementing attacks in sword duels.

Dancing - Plays an instrument to improve your ability to woo the governer's daughter.

Port Bombardment - Second cannoneer

I put in a huge 24 hour session in as an English captain in the 1620 New Colonists era, starting in Barbados.

Now that I am familiar enough with the game, I plan to restart this game and see how I go, especially doing bombardments earlier in the game.

 

Free to Play Frequently Asked Questions

Published 08/24/2010 04:35 PM | Updated 10/20/2010 01:16 PM

Free to Play Frequently Asked Questions

Will I need a credit card to play the game?

A credit card will not be required to play PotBS with a free-to-play account, and you will be able to log into the game and play without entering any payment information. However, if you decide to buy items from Treasure Aisle you must do so with tokens called Burning Sea Notes , which you can purchase with Station Cash™. You may choose to purchase Station Cash with a credit card or through other available payment methods. Learn more about Station Cash here. If you decide to join the Captain’s Club, you will need to purchase a membership (see below).

I have an active Station Access membership. What will this mean when the game goes free-to-play?

If you are a Station Access subscriber with an account in good standing when the game goes free-to-play, you will automatically become a Captain’s Club member, and you will continue to pay your regular monthly Station Access fee unless or until your monthly time expires or you cancel. When it expires or if you cancel your Station Access subscription, you will become a Premium Player.

I currently pay for a monthly subscription. How will the free-to-play option impact me?

If you are a currently subscriber on a monthly, 3 month, 6 month or 12 month subscription plan* that will continue to be in effect after the game goes free-to-play, your current subscription will continue at the same price until it expires, and you will automatically go from being a PotBS subscriber to becoming a member of the Captain's Club until your current monthly, 3 month, 6 month, or 12 month subscription plan expires. As an active member of the Captain’s Club with an account in good standing, you will have access to certain premium content, features and discounts that are unavailable to non-members.

After your current subscription plan expires, you will automatically become a Premium Player and will be able to play without paying a monthly subscription fee, but will lose access to Captain’s Club premium content, features, and discounts (which may be available for purchase from Treasure Aisle, the in-game store), unless and until you log into your Station Account to change your preferences to become a Captain’s Club member at a cost of $14.99 per month (plus applicable taxes).You can change your preferences before your current subscription plan expires, or you can wait until after your current subscription plan expires.

*3, 6 and 12 month subscription plans are currently no longer available for purchase.

SOE readies Super Fan Days promotion, Station Cash discounts

by Jef Reahard Nov 2nd 2010 at 8:00PM
Filed under: Fantasy, EverQuest, EverQuest II, News items, Free-to-play, Free Realms, Promotions, Clone Wars Adventures

​

Sony Online Entertainment is having a sale and you're invited. Whether you're currently playing Free Realms, Clone Wars Adventures, EverQuest, EverQuest II, EverQuest II Extended, or PoxNora, you'll find a number of daily deals on selected items each time you log into the games between November 3rd and November 9th. Each title will also have a special one-day sale on a particular item to celebrate the Super Fan Days promotion.

In addition to the item deals, SOE is offering 50% off of selected Station Cash purchases. You can pick up 2000, 2500, 5000, or 10000 Station Cash for half off the normal fee. Check the official game websites, linked above, for the latest info on the daily deals and other promotions. You can also read the official announcement on the SOE forums.
Tags: Clone-Wars-Adventures, eq, EQ2, EQII, everquest, EverQuest-2, everquest-ii, free-realms, pox-nora, sale, soe, Sony-Online-Entertainment, station-cash

 

I remember beta testing PoTBS and liking it so much that i bought it through the "Station"...... but i never actually played it after launch as real life intervened.

I wonder if my never activated copy will be a "Premium Account"

 

I remember hearing about potbs a while back . Have always been interested in playing this mmo . When it goes F2p 'll try it out and may join tog if we become a pirate faction Arrrr mateys arrrrrr

 

You should login to your station account and see for yourself. Given you paid something for the game, I am pretty sure that you are eligible to get he Premium Account.

You should chase down SOE support to make sure your Station account makes note of your prior ownership/subscription and will grant you the full range of docks, production and character slots.

 

Tog is currently active on Antigua as a Pirate faction.

TOG member, Abaddon's Fury is organising that Society which are mainly US and some Eu players.

As noted, Antigua is mainly US prime time play zone and traditionally the home for Australian based players.

My plan is to get players to create toons on both Roberts (Eu Time Zone) and Antigua (US Time zone) so that regardless of when you log in, you will have a choice of playing on either server during their primetime.

All my toons are on Roberts as the French. So Antigua to me is as much a learning curve as I have never played the Pirate faction.

Pirates can never take and keep ports so are never eligible to receive MoVs for being in the nation which won control of the majority of towns and ports for the round.

You can have multiple characters on multiple servers. The one big constraint is that the economy slots are per account rather than per character, so Juggling your free structure slot to help contribute towards TOGs success in the game through supplying materials and other ship building materials.

 

the fact that production slots are per account is brilliant though, it really helps promote trading and more working as a team for building ships

 

I might have to ressurect my account, Mathias Baptiste the French captain must sail the Burning Seas once more

 

I think they limited the production slots to sell more accounts. I had 3 active accounts when I played.

 

This constraint has always been there to ensure the economy isn't unbalanced by too many econ slots being used to crank out raw materials and drive down the price of goods so that traders can't make a living.

On the other hand, the larger ships need a ridiculous amount of wood and other raw materials (ie. Wooden ships and Iron men), so getting that much wood really needs a big effort by a lot of people to get these supply lines going to the society ship builder.

Remember, the game is currently active so anyone can sign up and pay for one month's game play at USD 14.99 per month to ensure that you get your full allocation of econ, dockyare, char slots.

If you have never played before but would like too, I suggest you sign up to Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) and create a Station Account and pay for one month. That way you will have it fully patched and installed now before the big rush. Its a 7.5GB download (Originally it was only about 4.5GB)

If you played on Telstra's servers (Invincible) but did not transfer your accounts to Sony SOE servers in early 2009, then it would be quicker to just create a new station account and pay for a month and start playing.

If you ported your characters to the SOE servers but your toons are not on either Roberts (Eu) or Antigua (US), server transfers have been stopped for a while now. You can make a request to SOE and see if they will port you over.

If your chars are already on Roberts or Antigua, then you can just sit tight until Free 2 play goes live very soon.

The cost is only A$14.99 for one month of game play to unlock a full character account. So nothing stopping you making an alternate account now to see how it has changed and get a feel of the new game mechanics as it is now version 2.0.

They have significantly changed the skill trees and the Avcom (AVatar COMbat) was completely redone. They have also ironed out most of the bugs that plagued the game on launch after two years of development and countless game hours by paying players.

So I encourage you to have a couple of PotBS accounts while you wait for free to play as eventually you will find it useful to have those extra econ slots available if you do start to play on both Roberts and Antigua.

Even if you only play on one or another, you can help provide supplies to the TOG society production chain, by occasionally logging on to that account and selling your materials to our ship builder.

When I was with Les Condamnes, we sold all our materials at cost price as we got back ship deeds at cost price. Obviously this is for personal use rather than trading on the Auction houses. Our ship builders also make money supplying ship deeds to other nations through the auction house.

Its especially useful for when you start a new toon and need to get a nice low level boat (eg. Mastercraft Bermuda Sloop).

The civilian ship deeds only offer you one point of durability (if you lose that point your ship is sunk and you respawn at the nearest port in a fallback boat based on your character level).

When you start with nothing, a civilian boat is a quick and cheap way to get a slightly better boat to level up on. They are cheap and disposable and can pack a wallop. A mediator cutter can get you to about level 20 just doing missions before you need to think about getting a better boat.

Having a healthy society with good econ supply lines means that outfittings, ship deeds and consumables (ie. Ammunition, etc) is plentiful and cheap. So doing everything at cost means its most efficient for the suppliers and the ship builders.

I also encourage you to, if you are a national to have one of each class (eg. Naval, Privateer, Freetrader), as it will enrich your experience and allow you to access those specialties exclusive boats.

A maxed level 50 Naval officer means you can drive the now highest level 3rd Rate boats like the Wendon.

A maxed level 50 Freetrader means that the tax penalty for having econ in enemy controlled port is eliminated

A maxed level 50 Privateer makes a great open sea tackler and is the equivalent of the Pirate Bucaneer character for the Pirate Faction.

The actual estimated launch Date for Free to Play is Fall 2010. So if it drifts into December 2010 and is not yet active, I will be making a new sony account so that I can start playing and see what has changed.

In summary, sub up for one month on a new account to try out the changes to the game and have the client installed and ready for patching to free to play before the rush. Multiple accounts will help you and your society deliver you cheaper ships and supplies which will reduce your need to grind for doubloons to pay for it all.

Some of the most fun times I had in Pirates of the Burning sea back in the day was grouping with five other TOG in low level boats and hammering the early storyline missions.

 

Yeah I remember the golden days of sailing with TOG. I even got in a few port battles, once with the lead group. I will have to give my accounts a look over. I don't remember which server I was on. We merged with LBL or something like that playing Spainards. I think I did some pirating on Blackbeard.

 

You should chase up SOE by raising a support ticket (see end of this post) now to see if you can port your characters off blackbeard to say Antigua (US) as I expect to go pirating on that server so if you are looking for company.

I plan to go with a one month trial in December if the game is still not free to play.

Login via this
https://auth.platformpublishing.com/login?theme=potbs&service=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.burningsea.com%2Fpages%2Fpage.php%3FpageKey%3Dlogin

Using your Sony SOE Station login details. Then select "My Account" from the left menu bar and then choose "My Characters" link
http://www.burningsea.com/stats/my.php

It will list for each server, the character name and level of your characters, Nation affiliation, Career.

(NB: The only active servers are Roberts (Eu Prime time) and Antigua (US Prime time)

My Characters

Antigua

Character Name Level Nation Career
Ace Aubrey 2 France Navy

Roberts
Character Name Level Nation Career
Ace Bonny 26 France Privateer
Ace Greenberg 50 France Freetrader
Ace Rimsey 50 France Navy

==================================
http://www.burningsea.com/pages/transfer/index.php
Character Transfer Service

9/16/2010 - Transfers from closed servers are currently unavailable. We are currently working on a fix for that, and we will update this page when we know more. We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.

What servers can I transfer to?
If you have transfer credits available you may transfer to Roberts or Antigua.

What happens when I transfer a character?
When you initiate a transfer, most of your character's data will be transferred to the new server. Information that will be transferred includes character level, inventory (including economic items, mission rewards, and server victory rewards), money, ships, mission progress, skills and outfitting. They will keep the same structures in the same ports. Any items a transferred character has listed in the Auction House will appear in the same port as an expired listing and will need to be re-listed.

There are a few pieces of character information that will not move with a character. Both the Friend and Ignore lists will be empty after the copy. The character will not be in a society on their new server. Personal unrest or contention points the character has earned will be cleared as well. It is important that these specific data points not carry over, in order to make certain that they not disrupt the destination server's data.

Important: On the server the character is being transferred from, the character will be deleted and their auction listings will expire.

This whole process generally takes a minute or two. You can begin playing your character on your new server as soon as the process reports it has completed.

What happens to my society?
In addition to resetting your friends list, transferring your character to a new server will reset your Society list as well. In order to assist Society Leaders with the task of keeping track of Society members, we have created the /dumpsocietyinfo command. Society Leaders using this command will create a file containing a list of your Society members titled societyinfo.csv, which can be found in the Pirates of the Burning Sea directory in your My Documents folder.

How long will I have to transfer my characters?
You will be able to transfer from deprecated servers for as long as you like. You will have four weeks to use your transfer credits if your characters reside on Roberts or Antigua.

Where can I find the latest Pirates of the Burning Sea installer?
If you have a Station Account and an active Pirates of the Burning Sea account, or you are a trial customer, you will find the latest Pirates of the Burning Sea installer by visiting this link. You will find additional instructions on that page, but if you should run into any complications, or if you need additional assistance, please file a support ticket by visiting Sony Station support with detailed information. (The installer is a product of Sony Online Entertainment. If you find you need more help than they're providing, feel free to log a ticket with us and we'll try to expedite a solution for you.)

What if I run into trouble?
Our customer service staff are standing by to assist, and you can contact them by visiting www.burningsea.com/support and filing a detailed support ticket.

Important! You must log out of all servers and quit the game before transferring your character. On your character:

• All auction listings will be expired
• Email sent to the character while you were logged out is deleted
• Accumulated landmark unrest reset to zero
• The character is removed from its current society

You have no characters eligible to transfer.
[NB: This message is for me as I have already ported all my characters to the new active servers]

 

ahhh... thanks for that link, it was Kidd for Pirating and Rackam for Spain.

 

Both are inactive servers.

You should raise a support ticket with SOE and get them to manually port the characters over (Automatic transfers is still broken) in anticipation of the F2P launch later this month.

Looks like most Australians like to choose Antigua for their Pirate toons.

Make sure you don't transfer them to the same servers as you can only able to play one faction per server (eg. If you move your Pirate to Antigua, you won't be able to play Spain on Antigua).

 

great news peeps, we have a new potbs section on the forums near the bottom where we can discuss stuff

 

I had asked Bayland to set this up for me.

I am in the process of creating posts for new and returning players on how to go about playing Pirates of the Burning sea.

I am about to close off this thread and start a new posting announcing the day of expected launch date in November 2010 and point any TOG visitors and members to our private forum.

Couple of topics I plan to touch on.

1. Economy
2. Ship Selection
3. Levelling Guide (new and sub level 50 chars)
4. Checking status of your existing chars
5. Choosing a server

Some surveys I planned to start are

1. Name for new Division - I don't want it to be french like last time as it limits our ability to switch nations and factions
2. Nominations for society leaders and agents to handle invites
3. Econ structure list
4. Volunteers to produce ships, consumeables and outfittings
5. Preferred play time to organise grinding and levelling groups for new characters and for sub level 50 chars.
6. Dividing up the players by Server and faction. So we are represented 24/7 in all nations.

Post here if you have any other topics or surveys you want me to setup before we go live in the next few weeks.