It didn’t take FLS long to release their first patch for Pirates of the Burning Sea. Usually a patch near launch will fix something small in a mmo like a bug here or a visual effect there. I was pleasantly surprised to see in this morning’s patch that the entire newbie series of quests has had some reworking. Part of the biggest problem that I’ve always pointed out in PotBS has been the missions. They’re easy, dull, and repetitive. The reworking of the quests this morning removed what feels like half the quests from the first port and raised the level/exp/difficulty of the quests in the 2nd and third ports. For Pirates the Port Order goes Marsh Harbour, Morgan’s Bluff, then Harbour Island.
The reworking was designed to prevent players from feeling as though they have outleveled the content. The problem did exist, and hopefully this will fix it. Also, since all the starting ports are practically identical in quests (they reword them slightly to match the lore of the nation) FLS decided to mix things up just a little and remove a couple quests from some ports leaving them only available in others. Currently no feedback yet on whether or not this fixes any replay value issues the game was having.
Add these changes to the decent list of bug fixes (including the memory leaks, sound issues, and more performance fixes) with a few gameplay tweaks and the result is a great patch.