The only man worth stopping by to say goodbye.

Rarebit had issues with me (as did many) and fair enough, yet truely a great developer who will be missed by all those who ever were touched by his brilliance while he worked and lived this game.

Take care.

Do you steal booty from other pirates?

Well, you asked about changes, yet there are a lot, so I'll simply post the highlights:

There's more ships ~ these are in multiple variants through all the game levels. There has been an increase to the variation to ship outfittings after a major re-balancing of them took place. All items in-game now gradually increase in potency as you level for the ship size you're using.

More content ~ both in terms of the lvl 50 epic group missions and also in-terms of revamped existing missions including xp increases to bring them in line with general Open Sea ship hunting. Daily missions that you could take for different numbers of players in a group were also introduced in the last patch. Luxury clothing was added that you can purchase at your nations capital from the tailor shop in the auction house. There's also titles that you can now give to your character also, which you get from completing certain missions, killing a number of your enemies in pvp to your prowess in the game economy!

More in-depth pvp ~ all nations can enter a single battle, not just 1 nation against another. There's reinforcements, which means a player being ganked can have up to 9 friends join in the battle from reinforce points within the instance. There's also new group mission content to help assist in generating positive or negative contention on a port.

New Town Renders ~ completely new colour pallet for all towns, many of the significant ports (Tortuga for example) are now massive tier towns, with many twists and turns resulting in lots of places to explore

New Tutorials ~ a complete re-vamp of these took place, including UI changes to make it easier to go through the tutorial for the first time. Every Nation now has it's own tutorial type.

Mission Helper ~ Points out key missions for your character that you've missed during your travels

Compatability ~ something that wasn't available at launch, the ability to play this on a system that used certain intel chipsets, fixed that.

This is all on top of countless bug fixes that have taken place since launch. I agree entirely with what Arkiya stated, the game in itself was pushed out too early, the game as it is now is a lot more polished, not just in terms of content but also in terms of the feel of the game in itself. There's very little lag within the game now, thanks to coding changes that took place 2 months back.

So yeah, it's all well and good me writing this stuff but if you'd played it before or even if you haven't, this is becoming a very complete game. So feel free to come give the game a try!

You'll find this information is placed here too Asna because, although the game is under complete control of Flying Labs Software in terms of how the game is designed, it is published by SOE (or how they're known in this context, Platform Publishing).

Oh I almost forgot! If you get in this week, you can take part in the celebrations for International Talk Like a Pirate Day! There's missions in-game vary from teaching some poor excuse of a pirate to go YAAAR! to getting a parrot (who enjoys rum a touch too much) to say "Shiver me timbers!" There's exclusive items available to celebrate including a certain ill-tempered, foul-talkin' parrot!

YAAAAAARR!!!

Yeah, I know you don't like people coming back to this neck of the woods but this is SOE stuff, so it's allowed

Today we are unveiling our new Free Trial program, which allows anyone to give Pirates of the Burning Sea a try for 14 days without paying us a penny! Tell your friends, loved ones, work colleagues, tennis partners and people you meet at the supermarket!

You can access the key request page by clicking here. You'll be asked to enter your email address, and then a special URL will be sent to you that will allow you to claim your key.

Please note that these keys will only work with new Pirates of the Burning Sea accounts; Station Access accounts and existing Pirates of the Burning Sea accounts are not eligible.

Once the trial period is over, you will need to purchase a copy of the game and choose a subscription plan to continue playing. Any characters you create during the trial period will be carried over once you start subscribing.

As with any new system, there's a chance that there might be a couple of bugs that we've yet to track down and exterminate. If you happen to find one, please let us know by filing a support ticket!

/ Rhaegar

FYI, why would SOE waste money on changing something now, when soon everything is going to be changed over onto the station launcher which is totally setup for newbies and current subscribers to the game?

You're right, it's a matter of money but not in the way you're thinking.

I liked vector pvp above all others as it's just one of those things that keeps you on edge. For me, I probably would move to vector if I was given the choice. Sure, you don't have to fight on there but you'd be hard pressed to sit aound somewhere before someone found you to fight, which I think is what makes the game better.

In terms of frequency of fighting, that seems to have moved the thread on a bit of a different line but I've been known to fight the same way regardless of server, which is purely depending on where I am. If it's the middle of a big rumble, I just enter right into the main hardline where the fighting is and jump straight into it again. If it's lower numbers, I'd probably go to another hardline and set myself up before going back into the fight again.

I loved the ending to with " its just like they smash there fingers on the keybored " xDD

Yep, I can imagine the phonecall now...

A phone rings in Jason Ryan's office,

Rarebit: W! T! F!  IS WRONG WITH MY NAMES?!

(i'm trying to imagine him pacing this the same as a certain Mr.Jackson going "Snakes on the motherf*ckin plane!"

Mind you it wasn't just that he had a problem with, it was the name of a player too after that which I think put him off

*cough* as someone's not paying attention *cough* (you know I <3 you really!)

The next SOE podcast is now available for download from the SOE podcast site http://www.station.sony.com/podcasts.vm

Hear from Linda "Brasse" Carlson from thebrasse.com, we also would like to re-release our interview with Laralyn McWilliams from the Free Realms team.  We chat about our ION Conference trip and EQII's Update 45.  Jason Ryan's news gives us all of the info from many of the SOE titles unfortunately this Podcast some of the info is a tad out dated...!  Ashlanne loses her gamer card stick to the forums to find out how you can help her get it back

From a side point, some of the stuff in this is really funny. Jason "Pex" Ryan get mildly pissed about a certain MxO character in the outtakes at the end too which made me laugh so hard!

Oh yes.

For some it's GTA for me it has always been Metal Gear. This looks nothing short of epic

Published: April 25, 2005

Kinda funny though... someone shout up if they know that person or are that person!

Christine Carkner

That rules. Simple as that.

I wasn't sure about it as I thought it was a bit of a daft idea but when you watch the video it's freaking awesome, if for nothing else but to control the R2 around your house and it bleeping when you make it activate something

Before you read on, this isn't any form of advert for the game or anything, this is simply me posting information about changes to an SOE game in the right section, you will see at no point do  ask you to come play the game, I'm simply relaying information

I think it's safe to say that FLS has had a tough time of it recently. They had the server merges to bump up populations on the remaining servers and they also had the utter and total failure of the Spanish launch of the game.

That being said, FLS are still going along their path to creating the game they want. They admit that they have potentially released too early, yet as they'd already had so much time in beta they had pretty much no choice. Anyway, there's a number of massive changes coming up with the game, which those who have been a bit 50/50 about the game might want to hear.

Firstly, there's a lot of stuff coming in patch 1.4, which I'll link to in a moment but there's also a lot of stuff coming for 1.5 which will make the game more appealing to those who like PvE and not PvP; most notably the player port governance.

So onto patch 1.4. The main part of this patch is a massive re-balancing of the player abilities and also and introduction of a new pirate career!

The links below are the breakdown of all of this, so feel free to have a read of each at your leisure

1.4 Skill Changes: Overview

1.4 Skill Changes: Naval Officer

1.4 Skill Changes: The Privateer 

1.4 Skill Changes: The Freetrader

1.4 Skill Changes: The Buccaneer (the new pirate career)

1.4 Skill Changes: The Cutthroat

Ok, so with the stuff for 1.4 out of the way, there's a couple more things you might want to read, which include:

PotBS at MMORPG ~ members of the PotBS staff met up with MMORPG.com to talk about the server merges and things still to come in the game: a good overview of all things Pirates currently.

Changes to the Underdog tools ~ these are tools that are given out to the nations who don't win the map, in various scales depending on their position ie the nation who was last in the map standings gets the better underdog tool to help them.

User Content 2.0 ~ this is a change to the user content system which is now finally finished and ready to impliment. For all details on the new system, click the link!

The cavalier gentleman - he lets the lady fart first

Well... either way we'll see closer to the time. I can't commit to it right now as my funds are tight as hell, so I don't know for sure if I'll be going yet. The pains of uni, yet the joys of summer jobs. I'll be able to say for sure yes/no closer to the date...

and yes, that flight was non-direct

personlll wrote:

It is an ability included in the game for a reason.  I find it sad when people choose not to play with a full deck.

 

I think the point is that the system you suggested wouldn't necessarily reward skill either as it could just be someone picking people off all day then hyper-jumping away so as not to die.

Shouldn't you then be focussing more about stopping him from jumping so as to kill him then, rather than him "outwitting" your pvp skills by jumping away...

Anyway, coming back onto topic, I think it would be a cool idea to run this, as I know how much time many people put into being good at the whole pvp thing. Yes, the CQ system has never been perfect, yet it's what we've got so surely it'd be better to use it to its fullest.

Does anyone have any sites they could reccommend for cheap flights from here in the UK? That's the only really thing that's stopping me now is the price of the flights, need to get them a bit cheaper than what I'm seeing so far... " width="15" height="15" />

To give a random example, American Airlines charge 1085.80 USD for the return and that's with even going for cheaper flights with changes and such... " width="15" height="15" />

everytime i use it, it locks up on me when i try to send someone a message, so i dont bother with it

Define "locks up" as in the entire program, the chat window or the general friends area... (just checking)

I'm talking with MasGravy over PM's about the recent update (more specifically about the download issues but not exclusively), I think this might be the first he's heard of it, so he's probably checking it out.

Issue number

To answer a couple on here (from questions I've asked myself):

As Virrago  says on the other page this is still in the beta right now. To go into that in more detail, there are still a number of features that are still being designed for the launcher which will need to be tested out beforehand. This particular update was to play around with the friends and chat areas of the launcher, although there's been some minor coding changes to the game launch system too, which has caused problems for a few games (huzzah!  ) oh and then there's general UI changes too.

Hmm... what else... oh yeah, those of you who get a freeze on the update, it's unfortunately a combination of issues that are being worked on, which is down to how station launcher updates itself when there's a significant download. The main thing I can get one of mine {I have two launchers, one is a nice one that I don't touch and one I screw to buggery with  } to crash on is the download of the dll files. They're not overly massive files in themselves and if I was downloading them from a direct source it would take a matter of seconds, however the launcher update download is a bit daft. It does do it eventually if you leave it for like forever, however right now it usually (more or less) goes through alright if you close it down and get it to start up again.

I am awaiting a workaround on the download btw, I've asked one of the tech team and the main dev who work on this if I could get direct download links as they will be sitting on a server somewhere, yet it's probably a secure access and normally only through the launcher for downloads for public, so it might be a while on that.

In terms of issues that many people generally still have with the chat system, that's still going through massive development, as is the whole launcher in general. They know that there's a big ol' list of issues that need to be sorted, which is basically why there's been no definate timescale to the end of the launcher beta period.

Hope that clarifies a few points on it.

Did you get the launcher to search for the game on your PC? It should be fine for that. If all else fails on that, you can just select to search for the game files yourself through the launcher and you'll be able to just select where your game is installed. I've never heard of it having this problem, heck I've ran through it enough times trying it out and I did it again recently to mess around with it.

*edit*

To reply a bit more, the files that are used in the trial are EXACTLY the same. Provided you tell the launcher where your game files are, it'll run just fine. All the trial in the station launcher does is to automatically apply a trial key to whatever account you're logged in with. The only exception is if you're trying to apply a trial key to an existing account and then nothing will happen as you have to be a new SOE customer or an SOE customer who's never used MxO before.

*edit - edit*

Default install locations for game files:

C:\Program Files\Monolith Productions\The Matrix Online (if installed with original game discs)

C:\Program Files\Sony\The Matrix Online

Siepher wrote:

Rarebit wrote:

MatrixRefugee wrote:

Kind of makes sense... Halborn's a bigger guy who doesn't talk much, and when he does, he's rather arrogant (much like Andy Wachowski). Carlyne's smaller, much more chatty and much more pleasant (like Larry Wachowski). If this is a self-insert, it's a very cleverly disguised one and I hope the devs keep up the cleverness!

Hm, I wouldn't say that matches the impression I got of the two of them when I met them very briefly back at Monolith.

Bragger. >.>

That's "braggart." =p

That's smartass

1. It takes 20 seconds... max

2. once I found the first address, it's not exactly rocket science to even guess the rest, I mean come on now

old school... oh yeah

Oh fine:

Page 1:

http://thematrixonline.station.sony...ntinel/index.vm

Page 2:

http://thematrixonline.station.sony...tinel/index2.vm

Cyph:

http://thematrixonline.station.sony...el/cypherite.vm

EPN:

http://thematrixonline.station.sony...sentinel/epn.vm

Zion:

http://thematrixonline.station.sony...entinel/zion.vm

Mech:

http://thematrixonline.station.sony...inel/machine.vm

Merv:

http://thematrixonline.station.sony.../merovingian.vm

See, it's not hard

Yea this event makes total sense...

Halborn can tell that the Morph SIM is a SIM not a real person, but he cant tell that a real person is not the Architect? Yea... total sense...

I know, good fun isn't it?

I'm sure there was a good reason behind this... I hope

Anyway, I looked really good in this, see if you can spot me

AC-119 gunship... winner

The_Bruceter wrote:

I'v heard that our subscription money is going to SoE and not actually MxO, so that means even if we did get more subs, we're just gonna be fundin the likes of SWG or EQ etc  

MxO has some amazin potential, just wish SoE could see it like that though. We're gonna lose a bit of subs to AoC so somethin is gonna need to be done to keep them here...

SoE pull u'r fingers out your asses and advertise for the game...

All subs for all SoE games go to SoE which then gets divvied up where they see fit to distribute it.

it shoudl totally be this " width="15" height="15" />

6 people 18 months to come out with the origional and awesome Tomb Raider so not alls bad

...I think I read that on Wikipedia so its probably false " width="15" height="15" />

Brewko and Moonlite definitely don't count. Neither does Virrago if we're talking about Devs.

TheUnknownShadow wrote:

odj wrote:

TheUnknownShadow wrote:

The group of people who are involved with LESIG are the nicest group you'll ever meet. Ever.

Considering there are 40 liaisons... that's statistically unlikely.

Oh alright smartass " width="15" height="15">

To satisfy that logic, most of them are the nicest people " width="15" height="15"> You've got to remember that they're only players themselves and they do it because they like the game and want to help, does that count towards something?

Not all of them are nice ingame. Depends who you get.

TheUnknownShadow wrote:

The group of people who are involved with LESIG are the nicest group you'll ever meet. Ever.

Considering there are 40 liaisons... that's statistically unlikely.

Oh alright smartass

To satisfy that logic, most of them are the nicest people You've got to remember that they're only players themselves and they do it because they like the game and want to help, does that count towards something?