Pirates of the Burning Sea... A MMORPG set in the Caribbean islands of the 18th Century which is being developed by Flying Lab. I've been waiting for a game like this since the first time I got to know the concept of MMORPGs. Imagine yourself being a captain of a ship in the hightime of piracy in the Carribeans. You have a choice, you can be a Captain rising in power, from a single ship to owner of a vast trade company, with its own fleet and dozens of other players as your captains. Or you could become a Naval Captain and make it to Admiral of the fleet of the British, French of Spanish Empire. Or maybe you want to become a Privateer, or even a Politician and end up as the Governor of the British West Indies. Who'll tell. You can accomplish everything in this game if you set your mind to it.

There are 3 nations you can choose out of. You'll have to join the British, French or Spanish Empire. And of course, you can be a pirate aswel (har har). There were more nations active in this timeperiod, but since the servers are kept small (4000 players / server) they want to ensure that there aren't so many divisions that any given side only has a few players logged on at any time. Flying Lab is going to include every ship of every nation that sailed the Carribean waters in that time. They've signed a contract with Akella (who also did shipmodeling for Pirates of the Carribean and many other nice modelingjobs) so fabulous ships are guaranteed.

You can however customise EVERYTHING on your ship, from your sails to the models and texturing (!) of your cannons and figureheads. You'll even be able to model a cannon, texture it with fancy gold and sell it to other players in-game, which is quite an innovating idea. You can even scan a fabric, make a texture out of it, and apply it to your characters pants or t-shirt, so you can run around in your home-made clothing. The possibilities are endless.

Flying Lab is really putting a lot of work in this game. They're philosophy about releasing this game is also very nicely thought of. They plan on releasing the game one piece at a time by using Valve's Steam-engine. The first part (R1) will be released somewhere in fall this year. The release will contain a complete game. Don't think because they're releasing in various phases that they only release a half-finished game. They just keep on adding features to the game. You'll need a broadband connection in order to play this game. This is deliberately done because they feel that many games have been made focusing too much on performance. It shows in the screenshots aswel, the graphics are absolutely stunning

In R1 (first release) you can do anything ship-based, which means sailing, entering/attacking other ships, trade, fight wars, etc. And you can also dock your ship into various ports around the Carribean Islands. You can do a lot so to speak. But the devs at Flying Lab thought:"That's not enough!". So they are going to add features such as animals (dolphins swimming along your ship as you sail around), magic (not the fireball shooting kind, more of a ritual process you go through to gain certain benefits), you'll be able to walk on islands, explore islands, build on islands, own every building in-game, colonise and attack colonies of an opposing country and claim it your own. And of course, huge naval battles between Britain and France. And they are planning so much more.

Add to this realistic weather-effects (storms, hurricanes, floods, ...) and stunning graphics and revolutionary technology such as the Bionatics technology (trees in-game grow as they would grow in real life, meaning a tree will grow from a seed to a large tree in various steps that you can follow, so you'll be able to see the tree growing yourself).

Since Pirates of the Burning Sea will be distributed by Valve's Steam-engine, you won't be able to buy a retail-version of it in stores. But they have chosen for this deliberately, because Flying Lab is publishing this game theirselves. And the Steam-engine is perfect for their phase-downloads.

Well, I could go on about this game for hours to come. But I think you got the picture. This game promises to be a very innovating in the MMORPG-genre. I can hardly wait untill it releases.

Now I'm going to put on my eye-patch and drink some rum, waiting this game to be released. Yohoho and a bottle of rum... Or make that a barrel.