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My Level 11 Pirate Review of POTBS
phennexion
Member Posts: 63
I'm going to start this by saying: I've played every mmo on the left had side of this list, except WW2 Online and Fury, and Face of Mankind.
SO yeah im an MMO Vet, most memorably a SWG Pre CU Vet, sniff sniff... memories of my 2 grawls tanking on dantooine... my 1st jedi on corbantis and like 100 people following me around... those were the days.... 
anyway~! With the image of old SWG in mind, this game has reminded me alot of why I liked MMORPGs.
First off, the 1st thing that struck me about PoTBS Is the sheer complexity that's in it. It's so awesome to have that new game feel last for more then 15 minutes until you run and start your inevitiable grind to whatever the MMO's max level is, only to stop a few levels in, cause you went from dogs, to spiders, to beasts, to bigger beasts.. In PoTBS, it felt all new, the missions are... GREAT! THey feel like actual missions, not kill X gather X grindness. I gotta go board a pirate's ship and kill their dogs, or take out a enemy captain, or hijack a british fleet's merchants n loot em!
The character customization is good, alot of diff styles and colors!
Crafting is real expensive so far i found, i don't know too much about it, but i tried to make a few diff things, n said fuck it, it's cheaper to just buy what you want... ie... Built a small shipyard and wanted to build my bermuda, well shit by like half way thru making the first thing (anchors) for the bermuda i was already spent 5000$ on deeds, materials, and whatnot. So screw that, maybe i'll try crafting when im in a society( guild)... n' I bought the ship for liek $1000 on auction. lol.
Graphics are good enough, some problems in some towns, but other then that they do the trick, also all the little detail they put into the ships is really astounding too . like you can see your own little avatar while your driving in ship combat.... ship combat is pretty fun too, you can just board the enemy ship and kill their captain instead of having to do the whole battle, which is cool in my opinon, less grind.
Normal PC vs NPC combat is pretty lame, it feels like WoW or EQ all over again, but i guess they do add a bit of flavor to it with the initiavte/balance systems in it so you gotta time your fights and stuff... it sucks you can't run from fights tho, gettin pwnt sucks. If you lose your captured ship it's gone, and everything on it, realistic i guess, but still sucks cause you gotta go grindout missions with your crappy ship till you get the coin to buy a good one again... which is ok too, cause it makes hand made ships worth more cause if you die with one , it just goes back to your dock instead of losing it.
Overall, i think this is a pretty good mmo so far, it's got it's downsides, but it's also in beta, and i read the PoTBS dev interview today, and it looks like they're working towards fixing those issues. I got good hopes for this MMO... I rate it so far... 8/10 !
Comments
Aye,aye...nice review and i agree with you...it is in beta but i am having a great time.
I suggest you that if missions seem to easy to increase the mission challenge to level 3 (level 2 is a bit easy) which is awesome. Also being level 23 I can say that higher enemy ship start using skills which is freaky.. (I'll fear the day a 300 man ship is trying to board me).
Also use your slots to get some incomes other than missions should help you. If you am for making ship it's sure it might be a huge money sink...
Well I can comment on the crafting side of things a little for those of you curious about it. Crafting in this game is complex and takes quite a few people to make anything of note. It takes about 8 people to make 15 ships in one full day just as an example. But the best part about it is that no one person can dominate the economy everyone is limited in what they can craft on a daily basis because over your whole account regardless of the fact that you have 1 character or 10 you only get to put down 10 lots total so you have to choose what you want to make or what your society needs you to make. Its a great crafting system and does have its rewards, namely that crafted items are better than the items you buy or capture for the most part.
I found the game to be a focused PvE & Economy building game; thats the core. Seems like they have mediocre arena PvP with weak elements that actually contribute tangibly to game-play or really noticably influence the gaming experience for a victorious nation. So it's not a player influential game from my vatage-point, but if your for redundent cookie-cutter missions of ship vs ship or swashbuckling missions that have relatively no map differentiation or story differentiation, then you've found a home with this game.
There is no exploring, the map is very small and linear and so are the roles; your navy a trader or a pirate. You will be wash, rinsing and repeating like quests from level 1 through 50 and if you like a redundant and familiar gaming experience from the moment you set foot in the game, then no worries with PotBS.
This players experience is accurate (though Korean games are my most hated):
This game may be in Open Beta today, but there will not, not, not be any slightly remote or noticable changes to the current state of the game 5 weeks from today when it launches. So making any inference to it bing in beta is a false and misleading inference imho.
WHAT!? i guess you dont really craft.. it take me a lot more times to get my things together. Guess your based in the same city and selling Raw material.. tell me which one so ill set an uprising
I need to agree on one point,
Combat (not ship one) are pretty lame. It's slower than EQ2 or WoW, even slower than Lotro one. And it not really fun (my point of view)
I will need to play a bit more to tell about ship combat or to say a second thought about overall of the game.
Graphic are damn nice, city are full of npc, making the game feel like a real world (remind me of eq2 street with talkign npc)