2 Million Pirates Shanghai'd

The Escapist's news feed reports that 2 Million characters have been made in Puzzle Pirates since the launch of the game. From the article: "Three Rings' CEO Daniel James sees 2 million users as confirmation of the micro-currency model. 'We believe that this model represents the future for online entertainment. Our inspiration continues to be the Korean market, where 'free to play, pay for item' is the ubiquitous business model for online games. As the US market matures to meet Korea, we intend to keep leading the way.' In addition, the company recently released the beta version of a new game, Bang! Howdy, a multiplayer online tactical strategy game for the PC, which uses the same payment structure and online distribution model."

Comments

Really?

[9x320]

I played Puzzle Pirates, and it seems to me most of those 2 million accounts are probably old ones that were abandoned after their owners, having tried the game out, got bored after realizing there were less than ten puzzles that get tired quickly. Are those active accounts, they say? I'd be more impressed if they were.

But at least it's free (sort of). Congratulations, you have Runescape and Anarchy Online quality gaming awaiting you.

Korean MMO model works well

[smbarbour]

Since my budget does not include "gaming expenses" in it (games are purchased on a "Yay, we've got some extra money" basis), I only play MMO's that are free to play (such as MapleStory, Fly for Fun, and Space Cowboy Online)

Maybe someday I'll prove that the model works by buying something...

Re:Korean MMO model works well

[shawn443]

I just clicked the MapleStory link out of curiosity. Never in my life have I seen such an IE only message. A+ for creativity on that one. Nonetheless, unless my employer doesn't mind me playing this game, I'm out of luck.

Re:Korean MMO model works well

[Cylix]

You can check out Gunbound as well. They just recently released a US server so things might be faster.

It's like an earlier version of worms, but with vehicles and items.

The catch? Money is a pain to earn, but with enough time you can get pretty much anything you want. It's unfortunately a bit slanted once you have been given some experience and go against the more well equipped players.

That said, players used to be able to earn pretty much their way through out the game without paying a dime, but last time I looked it was a bit tougher. (All depends on how much time you have or just play against your friends like me)

With all that said... you can actually purchase cash to use in the game, but I was never fond of this approach.

Re:Korean MMO model works well

[tetromino]

Hot damn. When I click on Maple Story, I see a pixelated chibi girl whoring herself out to Microsoft. Without IE, I can't even go to an "about" or "screenshots" section and figure out if their game is worth playing. Well, too bad there isn't a single copy of Windows in the building where I am sitting right now. Congratulations, Maple, you've just lost yourself a potential customer.

Re:Korean MMO model works well

[Anonymous Coward]

The client is Windows only and not supported by WineX. Your complete lack of windows hints at a religious reason for it's absence, so I doubt you'd buy it just for this game and thus, no, they haven't lost a potential customer. Of course, you could always do the preferred thing and search for actual players screenshots rather than cherry picked publisher ones, or heck, maybe even look for gameplay videos. Just a thought. HIBT? :).

Re:Korean MMO model works well

[DjMd]

Sine my budget does not include "gaming expenses" in it ... I only play MMO's that are free to play

So you aren't playing Puzzle Pirates why??
You can play Puzzle Pirates for free, join a Doubloon server (or ocean, get it? servers are oceans).
Yes people can buy Doubloons, but you dont have to and infact people can only "BUY" Doubloons, they can't buy pieces of eight, so there is a flucuating exchange rate on Doubloons to Pieces of Eight. (usually 750-800 POE/Doubloon). (actually you can even make POE by playing the Doubloon market.)
I have played Puzzle Pirates for 2-3 months and have earned ~25,000 POE and bought ~20 Doubloons (and spent 75% of that), and I haven't paid one red cent.

Re:Korean MMO model works well

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's just the Maple Global server that is IE-only. For some reason it seems to be the crappiest of them all (MapleSEA [South East Asia], MapleJapan, MapleKorea) - they support Firefox and always have. In other words, try the MapleSea server http://www.maplesea.com/ for a better experience.

You're not approaching it right...

[jesdynf]

It's a social game. You go out, and you go sailing. On a pirate ship. And you shoot at ships. And you take their stuff. And then you go home, and gamble your winnings away in poker or spades, or buy clothes, or furniture, or invest the winnings in your shop.

It has a multi-tiered economy -- and we're not even talking about micropayments, yet. It has the most fiendishly sophisticated chat filter I've ever seen -- it doesn't just convert profanity, it actively attacks acronyms, net slang, and inappropriate use of Caps Lock. You log on to Puzzle Pirates, and the world is instantly literate. Try "a/s/l"ing sometime and see what happens.

It has unlimited PvP... but you risk a terrible penalty if you attack a weaker vessel.

And those old, tired puzzles -- you know why they're tired? Because they're friggin' classics of the genre, that's why. Dr. Mario? Puzzle Fighter? A demented two-fisted version of Snood? And when you do them, you aren't playing a puzzle, you are chasing down a merchant frigate or frantically repairing combat damage or meticulously decanting strange and wonderful elixirs.

It's a silly idea, crafted with loving attention to detail and populated by rum-swilling fiends. It might not be for everyone, and no, of course that's not two million active accounts, but it's a milestone none the less.

Oh. Sorry, I almost forgot.

Arrrrrr!

Re:You're not approaching it right...

[kfg]

. . .you risk a terrible penalty if you attack a weaker vessel.

Well, isn't that kinda the whole idea of, like. . .piracy? So you can, ya know. . .take their stuff?

KFG

Re:You're not approaching it right...

[siriuskase]

But attacking weaker players isn't much of a challenge. You won't rise in the game by being a bully, and besides, all newbies are weak and they wouldn't hang around to make those micropayments if they kept being the victims of uneven battles.

To repeat, you can attack ships who are your equals or you can attack stronger ships with stronger crews. If you whoop a weakling who was dumb enough to attack a stronger crew, then you do get to take all there stuff and you aren't a bully.

They forgot to mention...

[BigCheese]

...that both Puzzle Pirates and Bang! Howdy are available for the PC, Mac and Linux. I play it on Linux and it works flawlessly.

Re:They forgot to mention...

[eviltypeguy]

They also forgot to mention that they have been very good to the community by also releasing some of the core components used to make Puzzle Pirates under a Free Software license:

http://www.threerings.net/code/narya/

(GPL)

Characters is different from real people behind

[gmuslera]

In the game you have accounts. Each account can create as much as 3 characters in an ocean, and the game have 6 oceans (3 related to subscribed users, 3 to the ones that uses micropayment/doubloons, but you can have characters in all oceans). You must be subscribed to create a char in the testing ocean, so the amount of people/characteres there is far lower than in the other/production oceans, so for each account/real person behind, you can have 15 characters in the game.

But also, you can create (and discard later or not) any amount of accounts, sometimes enables you to get some economic (in game) advantage, sometimes gives you more possibilities, sometimes it could be used as a way of cheating, and all of this is valid specially in the oceans that use micropayments,

2 millon characters is a big number. But is pretty far from the number of real people that actually plays the game (my estimation is below 50k, maybe less than 20k even)

Re:Characters is different from real people behind

[FirienFirien]

On any single night, there's 1000 people or so online on the server that I'm on. There's 5 oceans/servers (not counting the test server); then factor that up by geography and day of the week timing. As I post, there's 3259 online, and it's the middle of the US night. Mmogchart.com puts them at 35k current subscriptions in March, so your 50k figure is probably about right; but your earlier reasoning is off. Only a tiny tiny fraction of people will have filled up 15 slots; it's largely pointless. What does complicate it is that by creating a satellite account to buy dubloons, you get shanghai points for your crew; you can then transfer the dubloons and ditch the satellite. Bonus shanghai point. That, in the dubloon/micropayment oceans, is what's boosting this figure.

Sure, 2 million characters is a flawed number; and a figure of 50k when compared to games like WoW is pretty small. It's still by far the most social game I've seen - and that with easily the largest ratio of girls to guys. I'd guess it as around 50:50, probably ± 5-10%.

Re:Misleading title

[FirienFirien]

A "Shanghai" is the game name for a new user that subscribes; there's time-unlimited free play, with the only limitation being which puzzles you're allowed to play on which day if you're unsubscribed; a crew gets a 'shanghai point' if they hire someone and convince them to subscribe, and they can then use shanghai points for cosmetic-level things which isn't accessible in other ways. It's a mild incentive for players to recruit more people to the game.

Its not worth the click

[ClassicComposer]

From now on, could we possibly make a new rule: when an article's full text is under ~200 words, just quote the whole damn article and write, "Full Article:" before the quote?

Re:Yet another sensionalist article

[sofakingon]

Koreans don't have to purchase a copy of the game or expansions. They pay about $25US a month to play and usually play at net cafes.

Re:Gold Farming on YPP

[KDR_11k]

I'm not sure how hard it would be to design a decompiler that could, say, play navy puzzles all day long and just harvest gold from duty puzzling

I'm not sure if you know what a decompiler does.

Kart World?

[Daengbo]

Following the Korean model? So, what, Kart Rider is taking over the world? I can't wait ....