MMO Gamer and Frogster are hunting up recruits for Bounty Bay Online and offering starter package giveaways to all takers. Bounty Bay Online gives gamers a commission to be captain of their own destiny on land and sea.

Bounty Bay has plenty of competition for dominion of the high seas. Pirates of the Caribbean and Pirates of the Burning Sea have both staked out territories in the era of piracy. However Bounty Bay Online allows players to explore the world’s seas from the 14th to the 16th century, before the “Golden Age of Piracy” in the Caribbean.

Follow the break for a Bounty Bay Online Trailer and instructions on claiming a key.

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GamerDNA.com and Child’s Play’s Online Communities contest is underway. Penny Arcade’s non-profit charity is working with GamerDNA.com to raise money for Children’s Hospital around the world. Gamers have already contributed thousands of dollars. Check to see if your gaming community is on the list after the break.
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MMO Portal is offering up the MMO Calendar 2009 to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The third calendar comes with art from some of the most played MMOs out there. As an extra incentive, MMO Portal will be giving away prizes including boxed copies, premium accounts, 30-day passes, 60-day passes and closed beta accounts for the participating MMOs. Each calendar you purchase nets you one entry.

MMO Calendar 2009 proudly includes:

• Age of Conan
• DC Universe Online
• Dofus
• Eve Online
• EverQuest II
• Free Realms
• Guild Wars
• Pirates of the Burning Sea
• RuneScape
• The Agency
• Warhammer Online
• World of Warcraft

To get your copy of the MMO Calendar 2009 and do your part for St. Jude visit the MMO Calendar website. Don’t forget to check with your accountant to see if it’s tax deductible.

Pirates of the Burning Sea will be putting eleven new ships out to sea when build 1.6 goes live. The Archelon,
Cyclone (Test Ship), Dauntless, Mastercraft Couronne, Mastercraft van Hoorn, Monarch, and Treason have previously been announced. Flying Lab has revealed the final four in the new line up; the ‘Cruizer’ Heavy Snow, ‘El Dragon’ Mastercraft Barque, ‘Minerva’ Mastercraft Frigate and the ‘Trinidad’ Frigate in the 1.6 Ship Changes devlog.

Players will notice “power creep” in ship stats for 1.6. Flying Lab is re-balancing the power of regular ships versus the top of the line vessels to make combat more interesting.

While these ships do appear more powerful in general than what youre used to for level 50 ships, they generally arent pushing the absolute achievable strength higher. This means many level 50 ships are getting boosts, while the highest end ships are essentially unchanged. Were doing it this way for a few reasons:

1)I didnt want to nerf the high-end ships.
2)The existence of First Rate SOLs introduces a balance constant due to the number of guns. In our combat system, the options we have for reducing these ships all result in less enjoyable gameplay.
3)It opened up opportunities for places where we could create new ships.

You’ll find stats for the other three new ships as well as a change log for existing craft and ammo on Pirates of the Burning Sea

Flying Lab Software has put a notice out that Pirates of the Burning Sea will be down for a few hours Tuesday July 1. The latest server upgrade to build 1.5 is going live. Players can look forward to a new epic mission, Fortaleza da Luz.

Expect PotBS to be down between 1:30am-4:00am Pacific / 9.30am-11.30am British Summer Time. For more information on the changes planned for 1.5, check out the PotBS Developer Logs.

via Pirates of the Burning Sea

The latest devlog from the Flying Lab crew on Pirates of the Burning Sea is aimed at aspiring artists and art directors.

In “What is Right and What is Easy” BSharp, a teacher at the Art Institute of Seattle, discusses conceptualizing a perfect finished game and executing that image, the tools used in creating art and the vision and inspiration that goes into creating captivating work.

The author firmly believes that aritists not coders should determine the artistic look and feel of a game. Artists tend to ensure games are more flowing and uniform. Programmers do what everyone else is doing, what they know or what they’re interested in leading to an “largely random” artistic vision. Having a concept artist on your team isn’t full proof.

“…there is a lot of visionless work out there for which coders can’t be blamed, however. It happens that many artists don’t have vision as well. For instance, something you’re seeing a lot in next gen games these days is the same brown and gray gritty appearance in their environments – in the words of Zero Punctuation, it’s like most games are being viewed “through a used coffee filter: what isn’t brown is gray and what isn’t gray is too dark to make out.” While this look may be appropriate for the first game that came out with it, I believe we see it in so many games because, frankly, vision is hard and people tend to copy other people’s ideas, techniques, and practices (their vision) without doing the hard work of re-interpreting and personalizing it. In other words, they take the easy way.”

The article is a great technical piece for gamers and artists that are interested in getting into video game design as a career. Read about BSharp’s “radically different and revolutionary” way of thinking about art and how to apply it to game design on Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Flying Lab Software has sent out a notice that patch 1.4 for Pirates of the Burning Sea has been delayed. Along with apologies, the company sends word that the patch will be deployed Thursday May 29. players can expect to find servers down from 1:30am and 3:30am Pacific Time.

For more information on what’s in store for you after patch 1.4 goes live check the dev log series on skill changes on PotBS.

via Pirates of the Burning Sea

Flying Lab Software has released a patch introduction devlog for version 1.5 of Pirates of the Burning Sea. While previous updates have concentrated on adding features to the game, this patch will contain a myriad of small fixes and tweaks. The one exception is the introduction of the second epic encounter for PotBS.

You can expect to see devlogs in the coming weeks on graphic upgrades to Morgan’s Bluff and Charlesfort, tweaks to the UI and new character options especially for females from the character art department.

I’ve been amazed at the new features introduced in the recent builds. They’ve included some radical overhauls and upgrades. Maybe this update will give developers the chance to fix the existing content, and players the opportunity to catch their breath and adjust to all the changes made.

via Pirates of the Burning Sea

The latest devlogs from Pirates of the Burning Seas cover skill changes taking effect in the 1.4 build for the Freetrader and the new Buccaneer class.

As with other classes, the Freetrader will see a big change in skills as tiered skills have been replaced a single skill equivalent. Desperation Fire 1, Repel Grapples 1, Dockyard Contract, Identify Weakness 1 and Before the Wind 1 have all been removed and there are changes to many more including Evasion, Reinforcement and Battle Preparations. Most of the changes made seem to be for the better with a minimum of nerfing.  You can see descriptions of the new skills and the revised skill tree on The Freetrader devlog.

The Buccaneer is a new pirate career debuting in build 1.4. Existing pirates will now be Cutthroats. The Buccaneer is designed to fill the pirate roll in PvP and end game content. It’s an advanced career that promises to be “hard, but fun” to play. Buccaneers can’t capture ships, but they can use captured ship deeds and they receive Scavenge for free as their version of Claim Prize at level 5. You can find the complete skill tree and skill chains available in The Buccaneer devlog.

Now that Flying Lab has the Pirates of the Burning Sea build 1.3 out it’s publishing a new series of devlogs on build 1.4 changes. The first two focus on general changes and tweaks and specific changes to the Naval Officer.

Skill changes for all careers should provide more character options for players. They should also alleviate the feeling of waste that some players have reported over investing skill points in undesirable chains because of core skills. Of course there is also the question of maintaining the careful power balance between careers.

Tiered skills have been replaced a single skill equivalent to the higher version of the old tiered skill. The respec system has been fixed to make for an easier transition. Group buffs have been added and tweaked. Build 1.4 will also introduce intensity multipliers to skills.

The Naval Officer has some major skill changes coming. Requisition Berth, Defender 1, Desperate Shot 1, For God & Country 1, Perfect Discipline, Fortress 1, Thundering Broadside 1, Speed Increase 1, Reload Discipline 1 and Military Intelligence 1 are all being eliminated and will be replaced by new skills. many of these new skills are covered in the devlog as is the new skill tree.

For more on General skill changes check out the first devlog. The Naval Officer is covered in the second devlog.