So, I’ll be submitting an article about this event to MMORPG.com which means I don’t want to go very deep into detail about it here. But I wanted to say that I did enjoy today’s AvCom Skirmish event on testbed. They had respawns enabled, so it wasn’t a one-and-done type of thing. It’s kind of a simplified reaction, but I was left with the feeling of a WoW battleground (Warsong Gulch, specifically), only without the magic missiles. The fact that it was all sword and gun made it seem more violent, somehow. But with it being an Everyone vs. Everyone free-for-all, it also ended up feeling a little button-mashy.

The GMs and Developers who were on-hand to play crocodiles (like The Great Crocgar who one would assume was played by FLS Rhaegar!) and, in the case of FLS fraxl, a great and fiery pumpkin were once again very involved and very entertaining making a generally fun experience even better just like they did in the Black Sails on the Horizon event. Good job, FLS. /tiphat

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In a devlog titled “Enter the Skirmish,” FLS Snap spilled the beans on the long-anticipated feature of Pirates of the Burning Sea. The response on the forums so far has been as positive as one would expect after a year of waiting and the small detail that it’s not going into the live game until the Milestone patch after next hasn’t been a buzzkill at all. However, I’ve said before that I’m skeptical about how good this is going to be for the game, for a few different reasons. The first and foremost being that I’m afraid the presence of risk-free options for group PvP will have a significant negative impact on existing PvP and RvR activity.

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Funny thing happened to me last night in PotBS. One of my society mates gave a call on Nation chat that he had tagged a 2nd Rate in the red just south of Irish Point (which is on the southern tip of Haiti). All I had nearby was a ‘Defiant’ Sleek 40-gun frigate fitted for speed, accuracy and a little bit of damage. But it didn’t seem like the bulk of the pirate nation was awake, so it was better than nothing. I was in Matthew Town, so it wouldn’t take me long to get to the fight. When I got there, the fight had been reinforced on both sides; the French now had the 2nd Rate, a Mercy, an Intrepid and a Tigre MC, rats had a Cursed Blade, Hercules Pirate refit, Trinidad and my Defiant Sleek.

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You know, people never cease to amaze me. Case in point:

Back in November of 2008 when the Defiant server was opened as a replacement for the soon-to-be-closed Invincible server (which was Aussie-only and accessed through BigPond rather than SOE), FLS re-opened server transfers for the entire player base. The Port Battle schedule for Defiant was set to accommodate players from Australia (after all, it was supposed to be the replacement for the previous Aussie server) and the North American PST time zone.

Given that the Invincible server and the game’s players Down Under has suffered greatly as a result of some things being mishandled by BigPond (apparently the Aussies warned FLS not to deal with Telstra?), and that many players in the Pacific time zone had long been complaining that the available PB schedules on the existing servers didn’t offer them many opportunities for action, the new Defiant server seemed to be the answer to everybody’s PotBS prayers..

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A few of you may already know, but I’ve been featured by the PotBS team in this month’s Community Spotlight column for my humble efforts in promoting and improving the Pirates of the Burning Sea community. Featured are my blog and my recent addition to the MMORPG.com team as a Game Correspondent, and in a brief interview (which you can read here) I gave a shoutout to flashfresh and CrazyKinux for the part they’ve played in inspiring me to do this sort of thing at all.

Thanks, guys!

-Havo

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