Beta tester diary 
10/30/2007 | Devlog | | Discuss
One of our new Beta Testers wrote up his initial experience with the game. Without further ado, I share with you his Beta Tester Diary – Chapter 1.
Chapter 1: The first steps into the Caribbean
After installing the beta client of Pirates of the Burning Sea, an MMORPG based on the Age of Sail in the year 1720, the updater downloads a patch if needed and you can launch the beta for the very first time. Adrenaline flowed through my veins, as the Flying Lab Software logo appeared on my screen, and after that I get to the beautiful login screen of PotBS. I type my account name and password and off I go to create a character! I’m choosing a male French Freetrader, because I’ve always been more interested in production and trade in MMO games, and I like to play in the less popular nations. I get to customize everything, from hairtypes and colors to what kind of belt I wear and the color of my shoes. I choose a nice hat and a small beard, pick a name and let’s start the tutorial
Somewhere in the Caribbean, I suddenly wake up from my bed because of the loud bangs! “What in the world is happening?”, I am asking myself, and suddenly I recognize the sound… Cannonballs smashing into our ship! I rush outwards and in the corner of my eye, I can see a fellow crewman screaming and falling backwards because of a direct hit next to him. Simon Berri, one of the other officers on the ship, says to me: it’s the Bilge Rat pirates who are attacking us, just when the good captain was sailing towards a friendly ship to aid it. He says I need to get my arms and kill the pirates that have boarded us. So I move towards the door, and click on it to go to the deck.
There I find out that the captain has fallen, and we need to kill all the Bilge Rats on the ship. I rush towards the first one, and start swinging my sword. I miss the first swing, which was aimed against his head, but the second one pierces him in his belly, and after that my third swing finished him off. I got away with blocking him just once! “Ha! I’m good!”, I thought. But suddenly the second and third pirates come screaming and running towards me! One swings at me and hits my arm, the blood swept against the deck floor, but I manage to keep my balance and recover pretty quickly, and with two good swings, one of them falls screaming towards the deck. Then I walk towards the last remaining pirate, and start beating his sword away to gain more initiative. This skill is very handy, because he is unable to hit me properly and I get more and more initiative in this fight. Then at the right moment, I click on the “finishing move” and I thrust my dagger forward while I beat his sword away so he is not able to parry my sudden move. He goes down, screaming and grasping his belly which bleeds like a pig.
After killing all the Bilge Rats, I have to talk to Simon Berri again and tells me that now that the captain is dead, I am highest in command and therefore I tell him: “I believe you can address me as Captain now?” Now I’m taking the wheel and start steering towards one of the Bilge Rat ships. The sails are raised, and my crew is fully prepared for combat. I steer towards him and turn my broadside towards his stern. That captain was foolish enough to give me this chance, so I unleash all of my cannons and his stern gets shredded to parts! Wood breaks, glass shatters and his crew starts screaming. Somehow he manages to turn his broadside towards mine, firing back at me, but his shots are all missing me, and plunge into the water next to my ship. Then my crew finished reloading, I shout: “Fire all cannons!” and the Bilge Rat’s ship is shuddering all over. He shoots back again, and hits one of my cannons as it explodes, but the remaining cannons are being reloaded and fired again. KABOOM! A huge explosion sends out shrapnel, wood, pieces of glass and everything else which was aboard that ship in the air. This Bilge Rat is no more!
“Set sail towards that poor captain over there!”, the crew immediately raised the sails and we rushed towards captain Basile Beauregards ship that our former captain wanted to aid. Bilge Rats had boarded his ship, so when we came aboard, five of them stormed to me and the crewmen I brought along! I blocked the first two swings, but a third hit me in my arm and blood stained my shirt. I was furious, and smashed my small sword against the face of one of my foes, and thrust my dagger into the throat of another one. My crewmen had killed two other, and now we were facing the last one all together. He never stood a chance and fell swiftly. I walked towards the Captain’s cabin, where I saw Basile Beauregard laying on the ground, severely wounded, with one of his crewmen named Renard Duchesne attending him. He said to me: “The Bilge Rats, they… they came for the map, I tried to keep it from them, ... but I’ve failed…”. I replied: “Don’t say that captain, we’ll get you patched up!”. Duchesne started cursing all Bilge Rats that existed, and Beauregard started gurgling, and spoke to me: “Take this cursed map from me! And tell.. tell…” and then he was silent.
I went back to my ship, and I felt both anger and sadness in my heart. I checked the map he gave me, but I couldn’t make anything out of it. “Two black sails sir! One on port and one behind us!”, one of my crewmen yelled at me, and I suddenly came back from my thoughts. “Raise the sails! No one will take us today! Fire all cannons when ready, and sink those bastards!”
And so I ended that day fighting off the last of the Bilge Rats that attacked us, and after killing those, I exited the Libertine Coast instance and ended up in a very nice town called Charlesfort.
There the first NPC I met was Jean Brun, who had a floating “?” over his head, which means I have to be with him for my mission. In this case he said to me: “New in town, eh? I hope those Bilge Rats weren’t that much of a problem?” My reply text was: “I showed them what I’m made of” and it says in the conversation display that I would get 150 experience points and 20 bandages for my First Aid skill! Nice!
He also had a new mission for me, a follow up on the tutorial, which was “Meet the Freetrader Trainer”. This was a mission with lots of follow ups through Charlesfort, and I got 44 XP for every NPC I was sent to. I learned my way around town quickly this way and got some nice XP! In the end, I was already level 3 and learned new skills from the trainers. It all felt really good, and after this long day of working, fighting and running around, I decided to go to the Charlesfort Tavern, have a rum and log out for now.
10/30/2007 | Devlog | | Discuss
