PotBS Day 1

Ahh finally. The game has officially begun! Yesterday was the first official “full retail release” for Pirates of the Burning Sea. It has been a really tough wait the past few weeks. When the pre-boarding (early start) began I was excited but that enthusiasm was met with very unappealing gameplay. The game began to lack purpose and I had thoughts of possibly skipping over the game completely. It wasn’t until yesterday that I had my faith restored in the game by two simple words…. Red Circles.

The lifeblood of PotBS. The very soul of this game. Red Circles are the basis of all my enjoyment. Am I crazy? Rusty, CEO of FLS, had this to say on the Official Message boards when I commented that the game had been very different without my beloved Red Circles:

“Yeah. A lot of elements rotate around it, even if you don’t participate in PvP and you definitely notice it when it’s not there. I’m glad we’re able to turn on contention again.” – Rusty, CEO FLS, in response to my post here.

Red Circles are the central focus of almost every element of gameplay in PotBS. Yesterday they proved their worth.

I began yesterday by logging in to the game and forming a group with my society. We decided that we wanted to contest Principe and Irish Point so we sailed down towards Tortuga. A few other societies such as the Macabre and Emerald had also planned to cause havoc down near Tortuga. It wasn’t long before several ports began showing contention all over the Caribbean. The French’s first target was Nassau, the Spanish went after Belize and Turtling Bay, and the English went for Spanish Town. It was clear that our choice of ports would disrupt the ship building of the Spanish by taking Principe’s zinc. Irish point was more of a “why not” deal. Things started out very quickly as the Spanish turned in all their small arms and nearly bumped Belize to 5,000 within the first 2 hours. We Pirates turned Principe into the first Pirate PvP location on the map and the Spanish soon followed with both their ports. Nassau (which happens to be right on top of the first 3 pirate points) was put into contention thus making all of our newbies vulnerable to attack…. those darn French.

My group decided that we would forgo doing any quests and would simply grind convoys near enemy ports. I went from level 21-28 yesterday but spent a good deal of time playing – probably more than I would have liked to on a normal day. Overall though it was a great deal of fun sinking ships with friends and watching our time spent actually mean something. It wasn’t frivolous grinding anymore. It wasn’t meaningless pvp leading to meaningless losses. It felt important and it was. We had set into motion the future of our server. It felt good.

Below are some screenshots of the first few hours on day 1. By the end of the day a great deal of full on port contention was everywhere.