... Okay I haven't quite reached that point yet. Pirates of the Burning Sea has been unplayable since early yesterday evening. When I logged out yesterday afternoon for a break…

The Stratics House of Commons dev chat with the PotBS team was tonight. I decided to attend this chat for the same reason I went to the last; I’m really trying to get a grasp of the direction PotBS is going to take over the next few months. I’m in limbo right now. On one hand the game is enjoyable and I like it. On the other hand I don’t outright love the game and feel unsure if it’s worth the long term investment with WAR and AoC coming at us in just a few months. Anyway, on to the chat.

I decided not to cut and paste the entire chat since tonight’s was even more repetitive with questions like “How much will it cost” and “will there be expansion?”… *sigh*. I picked the questions that I felt had the most merit. On what scale did I judge them? My own, and happy to admit it. My own question was answered tonight but I feel slightly perturbed that it was danced around completely. *UPDATE: Rusty answered my question in the comments. Thanks Rusty!* My Question and their Answer:

*Keen* In the pre-launch party we have seen the majority of the servers showing “light”. Do you anticipate even growth across the servers? If some servers remain low pop will you merge servers or take other actions to ensure active gameplay?

[FLS]Rusty: Server growth – Yes, you generally get a significant bump from the release of the retail box. MMO companies have a well established formula for taking your initial numbers (such as pre-orders) and extrapolating your launch population from that. Our server deployment was based on those multiples, and so far, we’re right on track.

Come on. I KNOW that and anyone out there with an inkling of experience over the past decade in MMOs will know that. My fault for giving them the ‘out’ with the first half of the question, but why couldn’t I get an answer to the server merges? Probably because, to many, it’s a loaded question. Merges can be good but within the first weeks or month of launch it can be PR suicide. Rusty, if you’re out there, can you take a moment and alleviate my concerns? If most of the servers remain low pop will you merge them (or take some other action) to allow everyone the enjoyment of a busy and alive Caribbean?

All hope wasn’t lost after my question was dodged. Another valiant soul answered the call to ask a very similar question not unlike the one I asked the other night:

*daderp* Are there plans to offer incentives for joining low population sides on specific servers? As it stands some sides are outnumbered upwards of 5 to 1 and there is no incentive to join such sides.

[FLS]isildur: Yes. There are both systematic incentives coming, related to making underdog nations less vulnerable to PvP conquest, and individual incentives to make playing a character in an underdog nation more interesting. I don’t believe it’s possible to actually make your server populations truly balanced; the real task is to make sure the game is fun for people in any nation, regardless of population.

Okay, that’s a little better. I see they have thought about their meeting and were prepared for the question this time. I wrote a blog post about this recently and it seems that they see server balance the same way I do.

The remaining questions offer up either new information or clarification. Read more for the rest. (more…)