Troy Hewitt on Pirates of the Burning Sea

Troy Hewitt on Pirates of the Burning Sea

Feature

Flying Labs' upcoming pirate MMORPG is perhaps the most anticipated online title of the year. We chat with Troy Hewitt to learn all the ins and outs there are to learn.

Hooked Gamers: The game resets itself when one Nation has reached the pre-determined goal(s). How does this affect the player personally? Are his possessions/ships reset too? What happens to his level?

Troy: We don’t reset the game. When one nation conquers enough ports, we reset the ownership of most, but not all, ports back to their original owner – in history, European treaties often changed or restored ownership of property in the New World.

Troy Hewitt on Pirates of the Burning Sea
The biggest change comes from the economic repercussions (goods availability, trade routes, factories) due to ports changing hands. So if you do a lot with the economy, it can have a big effect. If you’re more of a run-and-gun combat player, it’s not as big of a difference. Although it’s nice to have those special ports on your side so that your merchants can make you better shot!

Hooked Gamers: To follow up on the last question. Many online games are set up so that someone will win the game. This often takes the form of chapters; ages and they often use other names as well. After the winners are declared the game resets. Will the game run in chapters like other online games do or will it just evolve into a big online pirate community such as games of the “Sims” variety do?

Troy: The best analogy I can think of is a sports season. At the end, a victor is declared, but you expect to see the same teams and faces for the next go round.

We will have something more analogous to chapters, which are the big intra-nation mission arcs, where one continuous story progresses that affects all the nations in the world. That content is released in a chapter form, so that the hardcore crowd can’t race through it and ruin the ending for the more casual players.

But we aren’t talking about resetting characters or starting servers over from scratch. This is a persistent world and your character’s career will keep going.

Hooked Gamers: When people come together on the Internet to play against or with each other there is inevitably going to be interaction and communications. Can you give us an idea how this interaction will take place. Will it be via the standard online text chat or could it take some other form?

Troy: Currently, it’s standard on-line chat, although we’re putting in some more tools for contact management, so you can better organize and manage your friends.

Hooked Gamers: After so many questions, is there anything about the game you're just dying to share with our readers?

Troy: God yes! But I can’t talk about it yet. Suffice it to say there’s going to be a lot of interesting talk and news after PAX. Stay tuned you definitely won’t be disappointed!

Hooked Gamers: Thank you Troy for taking the time to sit down with me and for answering my many questions about your fantastic looking new game. As many of you may have guessed I am but a novice Ships captain attempting to ply his trade on the waters of the Burning Sea. I still haven’t decided whether I will turn to piracy or succumb to the honest life of a merchant ship captain bartering and attempting to sell his goods at a multitude of different ports. Let me say this, I can’t wait for this one to hit the market because I am a pirate at heart and I will definitely be sailing these seas on a regular basis. Ahoy matey, raise the main sail and make ye way fur the Burning Sea. Arr...