For you gamers out there:

I run a PvP gamer blog, though I've really been neglecting it lately. I saw an ad on TV for a freebie MMO, and thought I'd check it out, just for material for a good story. To be honest with you all, I went in with a negative outlook right from the start, and was fully expecting to write up a story trashing it.

You've probably seen the same ad on TV... it's that infernal "Pirates of the Caribbean, Online" game. The graphics look dated, the premise weak (Games made for a movie? Disasterous!), and I figured Disney would only put enough effort into it to make a boardroom happy, do little to no testing or QC, and shove it out onto the 'net in the hopes it'd drive up box office revenues.

I was wrong. The voice acting was done rather nicely (Voice actor for Jack Sparrow is in there, don't recall his real name), animations were good, but it isn't flashy at all. I kind of like that, it tells me the focus is elsewhere. Here, it's in the ship-to-ship battles. You can lug around on land with a scimitar or a pistol, but combat on the water really shines.

You start out in the standard noobie-quests-to-teach-you-the-basic-mechanics-of-the-game-without-making-it -look-like-a-tutorial line, and you're given your first ship. A little deal with low cargo room, the wheel in the dead center of the ship, and a mere two cannon, one on each side. During the time you own this ship, you sail about in a constant state of fear. There's much, much bigger fish out in that sea, and they all like taking potshots at you.

Now here's the part I adore. You can gather up a small group of people (depending on ship size, of course), load them up on your ship, and go looking for something to plunder. You spawn on the ship, and everyone can fill out a role. The ship's captain can use the wheel (So can anyone else, but if the captain wants the wheel, he can just take it back. Handy), and the rest of the crew man the cannon. When you attack another ship, you can either shoot her till she sinks, or if she's a flagship, board and loot it clean. The process of this is suprisingly strategic and accurate: You shoot her sails full of holes, get close, take out the masts, beat on it a while, then shoot grappeling hooks and prepare to board. You then swing on a rope over to the enemy ship, and fight the other crew. If you win, you're given some boxes or chests (cargo or treasure), and swing back over to you ship. The enemy ship then sinks.

Here's the part I really, really like: The playfield for both walking around on your ship and sailing the seas are identical. I've boarded enemy ships while other people on other ships fired at it. While you're tooling about in your galleon, you can see your crew running about, you can see the other ship's crews, and if someone else boards another ship, you can watch the fight. A lot of MMOs out there would treat the "Walking about the ship" and "sailing the ship/ship combat" as two seperate zones or instances. Here it all wraps up into one. If you join a small group of ships going after an enemy capital ship, your chat window lets you see the other commands the other captains are calling out to their crews. ("Port, broadside fire!") It's great for the atmosphere.

Just to wrap it up, I've spent so much time on this game lately, that I thought I'd tell you other gamers out there so you don't make the same mistake I did when I heard of it. It really isn't a bad game, and the ship combat sequences are peerless.

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

What is an MMO.

Also, I was hoping I wasn't the only one here who occasionaly plays this. I wouldn't mind a crew of smart folks. Some of my pickups have been a little short of skilled. (I had one guy spend an entire ten minutes trying to kill me with his pistol, so he could steal my ship. Isn't possible, but it wasn't his lack of trying!)

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Massively Multiplayer, Online (game). For example, each server has a few hundred people on it, and there's about twenty to thirty servers.

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Holy @#$( Clop! At the time I wrote this, both of us had 797 posts written. Wierd.

... You're not my doppelganger, are you?

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

The films, and consequentially this game, should have been based on Monkey Island. I might have been interested in them then!

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

What is a doppelganger?

Details left to the imagination!

A body double. Are you about six foot two, two-thirty, twenty-eight years old, and hirisute?

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Had a fun weeking playing around with that game. Figured out how to cripple enemy capital ships and board them. I also learned I'm not as tough as I think I am, and got ripped to pieces on several attacks like that. Now I know that Galleons and Sloops are OK targets, and Frigates are not

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Wow...so this game is actually good? I'm not a huge connisour of MMO's...experience is limited to Guildwars and WoW, with a handfull of free-trail forays (Eve, Everquest, D&D Online to name a few).

But the commercials made this game look absolutely pathetic. I know I'm a bit hypocritical in that I saw graphics don't make the game, but when I see graphics that crude I don't usually even give the game a shot. (On the otherside, many people complain that WoW's graphics are out of date, ugly, and inexcusable...but I love them, and find little or no fault there...but I'm more than a little biased).

I might give Pirates a shot...super busy as we've gone to a focused end-game raid guild, so I'm pretty booked with my spare time...but it'd be nice to have something to play on those odd hours when I'm free and bored of the same old grind.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

It is, suprisingly so. It doesn't have the depth of Wow in terms of the combat system (and in melee combat, the controls leave much to be desired) but I love the ship-to-ship combat. Teamwork is essential. With a full crew, you can take down much tougher enemies. As a captain and piloting a ship, you can do "broadsides" attacks, which do deal a lot of damage, but much more is done if you have each gun on that side manned by a competant player. There's nine different ships in the game (three sloops, light, medium, and war), three galleons of the same kinds, and three frigates. The sloops are hard to hit and are good for quick combat, the galleons hold the most cargo, and the frigates have the most guns.

NPC come in two additional flavors. Regular, which you can only sink and get some cargo, and flagships which you can board and raid. The raids are excellent. You can demast a ship, nail it with grappling hooks, then swing over and fight the crew. If you succeed, you get more loot, and of much better quality.

The skill system is interesting as well. Sailing skill point you earn by using broadsides attacks. The skills you can spend points on include more speed, turning, "sprinting" (Full sails), better treasure finding, more powerful broadsides... ect. Cannoning skill nets you different ammos and faster reloads and firing. Then there's five personal combat skills. Sword, throwing knife, grenade, voodoo doll, and voodoo staff. Each has passive bonuses that benefit other skills as well.

It's not as detailed or in depth as Wow, Fazor, but I love the ship battles. I play this game for that reason.

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

If you do hop in tonight, Fazor, lemmie know. I'll swing by and pick you up with my Galleon, and we'll make enough money to get you fitted with a good proper starting ship.

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Oh, another thing I thought was a great touch: If you use your friends list in the game, you can not only see when they are on, but if they're on a ship as well. You can also teleport to your friends at any time. I keep a rather robust list for this reason. If I need money or want to work up my gunnery skill, I'll look for a ship icon on my buddy list. They can even be on a completely different server. You'll automatically switch servers without logging out, and it'll put you on their ship. Nobody minds people teleporting to their ships for the most part, because of how the loot system works. The more crew you have on your ship, the more money you make. The loot you get from raiding isn't divided up, each person gets a certain amount that scales up with how many people are on that ship, with the captain getting an additional bonus for each person there. It's a great system.

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Well, I can't try it tonight--Monday is my "spend time in the real world" night. But I'm not currently scheduled for raids this week, so between Tuesday and Thursday I'll probably give it a go. Can use tonight to download.

By the way, what's the link to you blog? Would be interested in giving it a look

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Link to blog:
http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Whackjob
(Whackjob is usually my PvPer/PKer handle)

I warn you ahead of time. I'm not a good blogger, and my posts are directed towards other PvPers/PKers, so my intonations are decidedly militant

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Oy! Gonna be at work past midnight EST tomorrow, Fazor. I may not get to take you out and about with the Galleon, depending on your time zone.

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Currently conducting pre-deployment training, shortly followed by mobilization to Iraq. Note that PMs may take a long time to be responded to.

Alright, so I finally checked out Pirates. There's alot of problems that I expected to see in a game like this (and from the commercials). For one, the animation is minimal (The sand crabs I was using to level up my skills didn't even have a walk or attack animation...the just slid across the ground). For as un-complex as the graphics and areas are, the engine doesn't run all that well. The Lag was horrendous (and I played on valentines day, a day when traffic was probably lower than average). The combat system is minimalist but it works (and I love how they handled shooting pistols).

That being said...I agree that there is a certian, hard to put your finger-on charm. It was exciting to sink my first ship...though it sucked suddenly finding myself in the middle of a bunch of Navy AND Ghost-Pirate ships that way outclassed me...tho managed to survive.

I knew they'd have puchasable content...but I'm pretty perturbed that the free version only allows you to have the lowest level ship.

The UI isnt the prettiest or the best...but for a "bargan bin" title like this, I've seen much MUCH worse.

All in all, better than I expected--but that's easy, considering I expected it to be on the "worst games of all time" list.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!!! If I get sucked into this I won't level my Tauren warrior on my PVP server! Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

You're so EVIL!