This genre is dead ..
 

Title says it all.

I have been waiting for a great new pirate game since I played Pirates! on the C64, and that was twenty years ago.

I wouldn't say it's dead at all, we've had a lot more pirate games than naval sims released recently (although not all good) probably due to Johnny Depp & Crew.

My money is on "East India Company" as the cream of the crop, I think it's out next year.

True - I just saw Akella's latest MMORPG on the shelves a couple days ago. I refuse to pay monthly for an online subscription, so it can stay on the shelf! :D THeir last SP game came infected with StarForce, so I let that one be too.

Maybe they'll get the hint.

-S

That must be Flying Labs "Pirates of the Burning Sea" (with models by Akella) it looks great but as you say the monthly price is a problem. I wouldn't mind paying say $4-5 each month but not $14.99 that's just too much. However the game will benefit from contant patches and addons becoming better and better over time.Plus the truly dynamic nature of online play is quite a bit more challenging than any AI situation.

I suspect that the price may drop quite quickly as it's a fairly niche title, the "Pirates of the Caribbean movie effect" on kids is beginning to wear off and gamers may not be willing to gamble on buying into it at the $14.99 monthly fee

14.99 is standard for MMORPGs, and honestly, it's not unreasonable given the time you'd likely spend playing it if you enjoyed the game. Three movie rentals a month cost more than 15 bucks.

And take it from a CoH fan...if you're playing an MMORPG you enjoy, your other game purchases grow far rarer.

- East India Company is not out and I'm not sure it every will
- Akellas offerings are simply bad
- Pirates of the Burning Sea is a MMO
- Sid Meier basically retired from designing games around 2000

the age of sail was an exciting historic period and there are ppl who want serious movies / computer sims about it, not only Johnny Depp garbage. What makes me sad is to imagine what would be possible .. Age of Sail 2 was a game that came close. With an open ended campaign, mods and continued support ... it could have been great.

I have to disagree - thats robbery when the support of the game costs next to nothing comparatively (The reason the box cost you $50 in the first place - their is future support costs built into that price - If there is no support costs built in, that box should cost you $19.95 upon first release). Every wonder why MMORPG's are so popular with game makers? If you can get someone addicted then you have a virtual honey pot of FREE income! Don't EVER forget you already paid for this service when you paid friggen $50 for the software! 1 year free with $15 per additional year would be a more appropriate price tag to support the product.

I get so annoyed when people say $15 is a good price for a monthly subscription. Thats the biggest crock of crap I have ever heard!

-S

Pirates of the Burning Sea was a game that looked really interesting in the beginning (was watching it around 2004 when they started to release screenshots). This would really have a been great franchise if they had also released a SP game - but SP was considered "unprofitable". Not my problem if they fail.

Well I dont entirely agree with that Subman. I'll break down the costs a bit.

The box cost goes to pay several things, first off the retail suppliers get their slice, next comes the publisher/investor(s) who takes a large chunk, the rest goes off to pay the devs for their time and work. After all of that there is pretty much nothing left. Patches are also NOT factored into the price, idealy they dont want to patch the game at all if they can avoid it (though some companies are nice and will further enhance the game out of their own pocket).

So the price basicly pays for the software.

And as for games using the Guild Wars model that dont have a subscription cost, well those games dont have server farms. They have a couple of lobby servers (in guild wars the lobby is the cities), and players though they may not know it, do their own hosting when they step outside them (and this is why the number of people that can come with you is limited to 2-16 people). The lobby servers are payed out of the success of the game.

Now the monthly fee pays for alot of things too, first off the publisher gets a slice of the profits, and the devs get payed to further enhance the game (in theory anyhow), the rest goes into creating, and maintaining the server farm and associated bandwidth which creates the game servers (and belive me this isnt cheap, there is a reason why a typical mmo needs on average at least 30000 subscribers to survive).

A server farm also is not just a couple of pc's straped together, as your average pc can support maybe around 250 players at a time at most (with a high end system, and ignoring bandwidth), were talking several high end servers connected together, where multiple servers can be assigned just to handle a single game zone, and together they support a game world of several thousand players and up. These servers come with high speed raid arays, and multiple backup drives(particularly the server(s) that store characters, it would be an utter disaster for the company if they lost even part of the character database). Also the server farm need backup servers which can step in as needed if one of the other servers crashes, or has a hardware failure. All of this needs to be wired to the internet with massive amounts of bandwidth, to send the game world data to each of the players in more or less real time. That is also just one server farm, your average mmo will have several clusters server farms, usualy scattered across the globe (some in the eu, some in east coast NA, some in westcoast NA, Pacific rim servers, etc), and can have anywhere from 5 to well over 40 of these server farms going. Plus it also costs money to pay the techs who maintain these server clusters.

Now mind you the publisher if the mmo is very successfull makes a pile of money (wow is a good example), especialy if they dont spend much on upgrading the game (again wow). I do think that 15 a month is a bit high and 10-12$ would be a bit more fair for the service

I do about $15 a month for City of heroes. I consider it a fair price because they are ALWAYS adding content and enhancements. We usually get a big add on upgrade with a new storyline and lots more content maybe twice to three times a year with smaller add ons every few months. That game has grown so much from what it was two years ago when I started playing.

Yeah! It's like buying a car... and not getting free gas! ;)

Lighthouse Interactive(the Dutch publisher of Ship Sim) have taken the game on and it is still definitely on the cards

Yes, agreed a lot more quality control is necessary there, they could be great.

I dunno, AI will always be somewhat predictable, humans do the wierdest things

Pirates wasn't too bad, but nowhere like the original, and it was a masterpiece compared to the absolute abomination that was "Railroads! "

Yes, I agree I'd far rather see a game based on Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin without all the voodoo/monster stuff. Empire Total War should be interesting for the Napoleonics amongst us.

No, it's like buying a car and then having to pay a third of the price of the car every month to give it gas!:yep:

Wow,what an old topic,but since you've been looking for 20 years here goes...

Try East India Company,the game was released last week..no voodoos,no magic...

Just trade and trade and become rich,battle,fight pirates,play pirate,make alliences,break alliences..ahhh what a game.

Tried some battles today with mixed fleets,its good fun.

You are telling me this when EA is worth how much? Off boxed software no less.

-S