Pirates Of The Burning Sea: A Sinking Ship

Posted by Wolfen in MMO General

I saw over at Tobold’s, which links to the official site, that Pirates of the Burning Sea will be merging servers so that the total available will drop from eleven to four.  That is sad news indeed, but I can’t say it wasn’t expected.

I hate to see any MMO struggle, but Pirates of the Burning Sea just doesn’t offer enough to keep players interested in the long term.  For one thing, avatar combat is absolutely horrible and woefully inadequate.  The end-game is also lacking in that you basically have only two options: port contention or PVP.

I played Pirates for only a very short time.  While I loved the graphics, the gameplay did not pull me into the game in any way.  I know of several other players who ended up in the same boat (pun intended).

So now Sony has several MMO’s that are struggling.  Pirates, Vanguard, Planetside, and The Matrix are all hurting for subscribers.  It makes me wonder just how many subscribers it takes to make these games worth the expense of keeping them running.  Maybe it is much lower than we all think.

On the upside, Vanguard seems to be getting a second wind.  More and more people are trying it out again.  I will chronicle in upcoming posts about some things I have experienced with it lately, including a move to a different server.  More to come on that later.

–Wolfen