Dawn in the Caribbean
Pirates of the Burning Seas, a pirate-themed MMO, is open for business, and swashbuckler wannabes are making their awkward way through the tutorial missions on their various Caribbean isles. At the moment, it’s a semi-private party: only players who pre-ordered their copies are allowed on, enjoying a two-week grace period (or head start, if you prefer) as an incentive to pre-order. Technically, the game opened yesterday, but the download times were quite long—overnight for us—so traffic is just beginning to pick up today.
For most players, the race is on to start working that treadmill of completing missions, earning new character abilities, collecting ever-better gear, taking full advantage of their head start over the general mass of players. Right now, they’re sailing small and flimsy ships, and enjoy no tactical edges; their game will improve as they get more stuff, and their power to conquer the environment—or lay the beat-down on rival players—increases.
To a different mindset, however, this is a golden time.
The game’s official opening also marks the effective end of the non-disclosure agreements that surround beta-testing, and it is now possible to get a look at the guts of the game. Already, wikis are sprouting up with game statistics: ship data, skills, crafting and production values. Shortly, we’ll see discussions about how to optimize performance: skill suites and tactics. Months of idle speculation about what the game might be like have been replaced with fairly substantial advice from beta testers about which type of character to create in order to pursue one’s preferred gaming style. Designer notes have progressed from vague statements of design goals (“We wanted to create a game with interesting things to do for both sailors and tavern brawlers.”) to hard data from which we can determine what the design really does address.
This is the figuring-out stage, the time when nobody really knows what’s going on or what ideas are going to work. The designers, who put the thing together, and the beta testers, who tried out the rough drafts, have a clue, but they don’t really know. The game will inevitably change with an influx of players, partly because volume alone will create a very different structure on which the game economy, and from that the game dynamics, will grow; partly because the average quality of player will shift rapidly from die-hard fan and genre fiend to casual gamer and anachronistic yarbo. Combat abilities that nobody noticed before will suddenly prove invincible in combinations that nobody ever considered before, simply because there weren’t enough players to consider them all. Last-minute changes will produced unexpected effects. And, best of all, most of the players around don’t even have a beta tester’s experience.
For those who stand on the frontier of game launch, this is a moment of promise, when clever players can outdo those who have simply logged more hours or, worse, equipped themselves with undeserved gear bought through sleazy “gold farming” companies. This is a time where every player makes his own decisions, instead of reading some online hint book written by someone who did it all first, when players willing to read hint books have no advantage over those with the self-discipline to try it themselves, when it’s possible to figure out a problem before some twerp shouts the answer across an open chat channel.
In time, satisfaction with mastering the game will replace anticipation of mastering it. The camaraderie of fighting besides brothers-in-arms will replace a sense of being master of one’s own destiny. These are rewarding, too, and worth looking forward to. But for now, let me savor the promise of a new game, and imagining I can make my mark before being overwhelmed by twelve-year-olds with nothing better to do.