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Ubisoft to Publish Puzzle Pirates
Ubisoft announced this morning that they have come to an agreement with 3 Rings Design to publish Puzzle Pirates in retail stores. This exciting news couldn't come for a better game, winner of the IGF 2004 Technical Excellence and Audience Awards for Online games. From the Puzzle Pirates site: "Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is an online game in which you play a Pirate character in an ocean world. Hundreds of your fellow player Pirates swarm these Isles and Sea-lanes. For Pirates who love acronyms, Puzzle Pirates is an massively multi-player online roleplaying game, or mmoarrrrpg." Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is available for Demo on PC/Mac/Linux.
Seriously... what a horrible idea. It was great as an online subscription game. Free game, $10 a month to play (much cheaper if you buy quarterly or yearly). But to charge people another $20? I don't think they'll recover the cost to produce/box/ship the game. They should simply sell it as a CD in a CD case for like $5 as they do with some demo discs for those with slow broadband connections.
Plus the PC game market is falling prey to the console market with its teenage-type games, and the only people look for is graphics.
I've seen far too many 'really good' games die off because they thought they'd play well sitting next to the latest fad game (ie - grand theft auto).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
This is because its written in Java. A fine choice for this kind of game I want to add.
Its great to see people using the right tools for the job.
Agreed. Honestly, it's the best community I've ever seen in an MMORPG (mostly because it seems to be a bit of an older one, attracting both men and women in their mid-20s). It has an entirely player run economy, very active devs and player support staff (OceanMasters are always on and always available to help), and it generates a sense of teamwork I haven't seen in any other game (effectively, you puzzle together to keep a ship afloat and running well).
Give it a try, you can download the client and play it for a week free.
- Spoom
Captain of the Monkey Hunters
Prince of Angels and Demons
Evil-Eyed Peglegged Monkey Pirate
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
From the Installation FAQ:
Puzzle Pirates has been developed in Java. This has given Three Rings a lot of advantages, in particular being able to run on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying this makes it awesome, or that Java rules, or that it couldn't be done another way, or that cross-platform Java doesn't have its problems, etc. etc. etc. I'm just shedding some light on how it was "published at the same time for PC, Mac and Linux," by quoting directly from the FAQ.
I loved Puzzle pirates, and have been kicking myself for a year for not taking them up on the lifetime membership that was offered to beta testers. I'd love to play it, but just can't justify the monthly fee.
:-D Still very playable though, it's just not as polished as when running under the Sun x86 Jvm, I guess be forwarned if you are running out to the store to buy it.
I'm really happy for the guys at Three Rings.
If it's not mentioned somewhere else, the Mac performance is weird (graphic trails, messed up transparency), but it's not Three Rings' fault, the JVM in Panther (so far) doesn't completely support the image object they use. I forget the name. I talked to the java-dev mailing list about it and a forth coming JVM will fix it. I don't know anything about when
(Caveat, never tried running it under Linux)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I've been playing this game for about a year now. I run a small crew of skilled pirates.
One of the things that keeps me coming back is the way this game has so many levels. When you first start playing the game, it is all about mastering different puzzles. After a while, you realize that their are ships to run. And you move to the level where you are not only doing a puzzle, but managing a ship and other pirates. You then spend your next chunk of time learning to do this well. It is often an exercise is multitasking combined with a bit of being social. After a while, you realize there are things to do and places to go with your ship. You start exploring the ocean and investigating how the economy works. This leads you in to investigating running a shop. At this point you start playing the economy game -- running a shop, managing labor and raw materials, and selling goods. Puzzle Pirates has a real, working, complex economy. Evenutally, you'll realize that your crew is in a flag and that your flag is involved in politics. And these politics can be fascinating.
And that's the level I'm at. And I suspect there is something more out there, but I'm still looking. At this point, I sometimes log in and just play the economy game - no puzzling involved. At other times I log in and puzzle for a couple hours. And sometimes I just log in to chat with all the interesting people I've met in game.