Developer Logs
Fare Thee Well, Friends!
12/15/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
Greetings friends!
I write to you today to announce that my last day as the Director of Community Relations for Flying Lab Software will be Friday, December 19th.
Having the chance to contribute to Pirates of the Burning Sea has been …
Feminizing the Female Avatars
11/19/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
In the past couple of milestones, the character team and our graphics programmer have been working to make our female avatars less masculine.
On Items, Tuning, and Flavor
11/18/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
In any RPG, and MMO’s especially, a large source of character progression is through items.
Items can be anything. They can be swords and magic wands, they can be starships and sailing ships. They might provide you some statistical …
Environment Revamp Revealed!
11/17/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
Hello there this is Eric, I am an environment artist here at FLS. I have been working on many exciting things for the past year in an effort to create the most awesomely monumental 17th century pirating experience! …
Vision Thing
11/12/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
One of the problems with working on a game—or on any project, really—for as long as we’ve been working on Pirates is that it often becomes hard to remember the big-picture inspiration that started the whole …
Australian Update and More
11/06/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
Our strategy overseas is to work with enthusiastic partners who are knowledgeable about their market and committed to the game and its community. However, launching and supporting an MMO is a very different beast than a single player game, and …
Event Report: Big John's Bane
10/31/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
On Friday, October 17th we carried out our first story-driven event on the Testbed server. As many of you know, we had run several previous events designed to help us test changes in new builds, but we decided that it …
AvCom Beta Program and Player Education
10/21/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
While DesignCo and ConCo are working furiously to make the new avatar combat system super fun, I’m busy gathering players to help us test it.
AvCom Revamp: Logistical challenges
10/16/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
Aether wanted me to share with you a bit about how the AvCom Revamp looks to me, the Producer. It looks like a bunch of work, is how it looks!
MMOs change all the time. Known fact. Almost the definition of …
Fighting the Good Fight Against Spam
10/15/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
Gold Spam. Everyone hates it, but like the weather it’s pretty darn hard to do much about it.
Avatar Combat Revision
10/14/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
In this devlog, I’ll explain the major revision to the avatar combat system, and touch on some of the bigger changes, including:
Changes to the core initiative mechanic
Revision of the balance mechanic
New skills and new skill chains
A new model for skill …
Update: Port Battle Schedule Adjustments
09/26/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
I talked with Snap today regarding this issue, and he agreed to write up an explanation of how the port battle timer works, and what we are going to do to address the concerns that have been raised by our …
New: Port Battle Timeslots by Server
09/24/2008 | News | | Discuss
Based on feedback from our community, we have adjusted the Port Battle Timeslots for Antigua and Rackham. It is important to note that these values are easily adjusted, and we will be closely monitoring the impact of these changes in …
Ad Hoc Changes Changed
09/18/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
In 1.7 we rolled out a series of changes designed to enhance ad hoc combats in the Open Sea. We’ve been monitoring them since to see how players have adapted to them, and we now feel that we’ve accumulated enough …
Cargo Ergo Sum
09/17/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
This milestone the UI Strike Team got a chance to work on something we’ve wanted to fix for a while. It’s probably something you’ve run in to countless times too: you’ve got a load of cargo to move and you …
Charting a New Course
09/17/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
In this devlog, Chris Pramas talks about where Pirates has been and where it’s going.
Never Use Black
09/15/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
If you’ve ever taken an art class (especially a painting class), you’ve probably heard the phrase “never use black.” It is the mantra of high school art teachers everywhere.
Customer Service
09/15/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
When Pirates of the Burning Sea launched back on January 22nd 2008, and in the various beta programs leading up to that, it fell to Misha to create a Customer Service Department from scratch…
Milestone 8 Character Work
09/12/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
Hello. It’s me, Mat!
Today I’m going to share with you some of the exciting new character work for the upcoming avatar combat revamp!
Welcome to 1.8: A Good Day to Die
09/11/2008 | Developer Log | | Discuss
We’ve pushed 1.8 to Testbed and I wanted give you an overview of some of the changes.
![]()

