Only three months after its premiere, the pirate-themed MMORPG Pirates of the Burning Sea is beginning to show cracks in its hull. (Look, it’s either I say stupid things like “Yar!” or “Walk the plank” OR I make ridiculous puns. Something about pirates brings out the dark side in me.) Flying Lab Software is closing down over half of the public servers for the game in an effort to increase server populations.
Pirates of the Burning Sea actually has all of the key ingredients that make pirate games so popular, including a thriving in-game economy. Of course, without a large enough population on each server, all of the work on that economy is rather pointless:
“Through feedback from our players and evaluation of our server populations, it has become clear that key game features require populations of higher density in order to function at optimum levels,” said developer Flying Lab Software.
After this closure, the game will be down to just four servers, and while that could conceivably keep the game afloat, it sounds like a rear guard action as the developer tries to lick its wounds. It’s a shame too because the game looks quite beautiful and compelling. It’s just the sort of world I would like to immerse myself in. That is, if I weren’t too busy running Karazhan in Warcraft.
Sometimes I feel bad that I play the MMO equivalent of American Idol, but then I win a few more purples and my regret fades away.
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