Developer Logs 
1.4 Skill Changes: The Cutthroat
05.07.08 
by Taelorn
If you havent read about the general skill changes, check the start of the first devlog in this series. You can find it here. The general changes to Cutthroat(new pirates) are linked to the new Buccaneer career. …
1.4 Skill Changes: The Buccaneer
05.05.08
by Taelorn
Up to this point, Ive talked about a lot of the changes that are happening to existing careers and all the new stuff theyre getting. Now its time for something thats completely new: the Buccaneer pirate career. Existing pirates will …
1.4 Skill Changes: The Freetrader
05.05.08
by Taelorn
If you havent read about the general skill changes, check the first devlog in this series. You can find it here.
Freetraders are in a unique position right now. Nobody can survive as long as an FT and they …
1.4 Skill Changes: The Privateer
05.01.08
by Taelorn
If you havent read about the general skill changes, check the start of the first devlog in this series. You can find it here.
One of the common complaints about Privateers is that they have skill options they want …
Revisiting Point-a-Pitre
05.01.08
by fraxl
We’ve been waiting a long time to send Point-à-Pitre into the live game. The towns in our game are great, but we see so much more possibility in them. This is why we made Tortuga and Point-à-Pitre. Sometimes though, we …
The PotBS Harassment Policy: v. 1.0
04.30.08
by Aether
Recently, we’ve participated in several discussions asking us to clarify our policies on harassment, or griefing, and how that policy is enforced both on our forums, and in our game world. In a perfect world, we could distill the expectations …
1.4 Skill Changes: The Naval Officer
04.30.08
by Taelorn
Welcome to the second of six devlogs about the 1.4 skill revamp. If you havent already seen the first devlog, you may want to read about some of the general changes here. Keep in mind that the details contained …
1.3 Underdog Tool Adjustments
04.29.08
by Taelorn
This is a quick devlog about the current state of the underdog tools and how they’ve changed with today’s patch. Due to how we control these tools, this is a new part of the 1.3 release. Although it’s short, we’re …
1.4 Skill Changes: Overview
04.28.08
by Taelorn
This is the first in a series of six devlogs (yes, six) about the major upcoming captain skill changes. We are hoping to release one of these per weekday until we’re done. All of the changes discussed in these devlogs …
New Devlog: Group Conquest Missions
04.11.08
by GavinIrby
One of the new pieces of content that we’ve created for 1.3 is repeatable group missions for port conquest. We wanted to give players of all levels the chance to participate in group-oriented content to generate or reduce unrest so …
1.3 UI Preview
04.10.08
by fraxl
New in 1.3: Exchange Shops, Personal Loot Sales and Mission Journal Improvements!
You’ve probably read the devlogs by Kevin and Anna about the new exchange shops. They pretty much covered why adding these shops was so important, so I’ll cut …
PvP Rewards
04.09.08
by isildur
I’ve got a love-hate relationship with the economy in Pirates. On one hand, it’s a system that I designed from the ground up, and of every system in the game it’s the one that most closely matches my original …
The New and Exciting World of Exchange Shops!
04.08.08
by AnnaM
I’m Anna Murchison, one of the Technical Content Designers in the content department at Flying Lab. One of my bigger tasks this milestone was implementing a new interface for those times when you want to trade in one or more …
Exchange Shops: Contents
04.04.08
by isildur
One of the most fundamental building blocks of design is the ability to take items from players and give them different items in exchange. The obvious implementation of this is a traditional shop, where money is taken and stuff …
Welcome to Patch 1.3
04.03.08
by Joe
We’re getting ready to push 1.3 to testbed and I wanted to give a high level overview of the new features that it will offer. Watch for more devlogs in the coming days that go into these features in more …
Pirates Sailing Across the World
03.27.08
by Rusty
Many of you already know about our UK, German and French launches, but you might not know what’s going on across the rest of the world. While we’re wrapping up 1.3 (pencils down tomorrow), and starting work on 1.4, our …
State of the ArtCo
03.26.08
by BSharp
It’s been a while since I’ve written a devlog, and since we have so many new folks in the game Aether thought it would be a good idea for a reintroduction. For those of you who may not know, my …
Sharing Game Data
03.25.08
by brendanw
What started as a system for inspecting game data internally has grown into a mechanism for sharing game data with the community. After much delay, we’re finally introducing the beginnings of our game data export system that will allow you …
What about *my* problem?
03.07.08
by Misha
You’ve no doubt seen the flood of Devlogs about new changes and features coming in 1.2.x, all of which we believe will improve player experience. That’s all well and good for those who can already play. But what are …
Underdog Tools
03.07.08
by isildur
While we’ve made a number of design decisions intended to insulate the PvP mechanics from population imbalances, the truth is that a thousand players on one team are probably going to be able to keep up a sustained PvP effort …