After the hugely popular preview and reviews we’ve run on Flying Lab Software’s superb online multiplayer, Pirates of the Burning Sea, we decided to find out a bit more about the code behind the sails. GamersDailyNews sat down over a flagon of grog with Lead World Designer on Pirates, Cory J. Herndon - a man with clear passion for his work, enthusiasm as broad as the open sea and a hearty old sea dog with more than a few enthralling shanties to sing!

GDN: Conceptually, POTBS diverges from the usual fantasy/sci-fi realms of an MMORPG. Was it a difficult project to get off the ground because of its significant differences?

CJH: Not at all. If anything, it was easier in terms of the world and the content, since we had much more untrammelled ground (and sea) with which to work. By the same token, it’s an incredibly easy one-word pitch: PIRATES! Everyone knows what you’re talking about. Then you add in naval officers, merchant freetraders, privateers, and the world almost builds itself. Well, except for all the actual writing and building. That was a lot of work.

GDN: The scope of a full MMORPG is pretty mind boggling. How do you get started on designing a project like this?

CJH: Flying Lab’s previous game, Rails Across America (with which I was not actually involved) was a pretty deep and fun railroad management sim, but it was in a pretty niche market as well. When Pirates first came into being--and understand I’m recollecting the recollections of others in this case--it was envisioned as an online strategic ship combat game, and that was well into development before it was decided to make the game an MMO. That means the full scope, as it were, wasn’t nearly as intimidating as you’d think. Instead of planning a massive MMO from the get-go, we went in stages.

GDN: Was there a lot of historical research required for POTBS, and did that research affect things like storylines, characters and even gameplay?

CJH: Yes, yes, yes, and yes. All of us have done at least some research and reading on the time period, of course, though our focus was often pretty specialized. Developers working on making the ships function realistically needed to focus on the nuts and bolts of the Age of Sail. Content designers and writers do a lot of historical research--you’ll find a lot of non-fiction titles like Cordingly’s Under the Black Flag, Johnson’s General History of Pirates, Zacks’ The Pirate Hunter, and Cawthorne’s History of Pirates (not to be confused with the Johnson book, which was published in the 1700s) lying around ConCo (the content department where all the missions in the game are built, written, and designed). Many of us also read a lot of pirate and nautical fiction. In addition to classics like Sabatini’s Captain Blood, I’ve read and enjoyed the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Maturin series as well as the Hornblower books, but right now I’m devouring Dudley Pope’s work. His Lord Ramage novels are great, swashbuckling Napoleonic fiction, and his Ned Yorke books do the same thing for the Age of Piracy in the Caribbean.

This all informed the way we strove for historical realism in most of the important aspects of the game--but that’s not to say we felt like we had to slavishly follow the actual history. What I mean is, the way your ship sails, the way you fight, the towns and areas you’ll explore and the goods you’ll trade (or steal) are all as historically accurate as possible. But we also tweaked history here and there to make a better story. For one thing, there’s no slavery or traditional sexism in the game, which is obviously not historically accurate. But while it might have been historical to have people playing slavers and barring women from commanding ships, we quickly decided it wasn’t fun. In fact, especially in the first case, it was downright creepy. So it’s a much more egalitarian New World in that respect.

For that matter, most historical pirates were what we’d consider small-time criminals these days. They sailed fast little ships for the most part, they rarely had to fire their cannons (or muskets--a lot of them didn’t even have cannons) since the threat of the black flag was more than enough to cow the average merchant captain, they preferred to board their enemies, they would steal anything they could and then trade it with friendly ports or natives--not just gold and jewels but silk, foodstuffs, even farm animals. But that’s not as exciting as taking a 40-gun pirate frigate into battle with a Royal Navy ship of the line, so we stretched reality there a bit. For that matter, there are more pirates in our game than there probably ever were in the entire history of the Caribbean.

Probably the best example of how we’ve changed history can be seen in Captain William Kidd. In real life, he was more a privateer and pirate hunter than pirate, and his life ended in 1701 at the end of a rope when his wealthy and noble financiers hung him out to dry (so to speak). In our version of the story, Kidd escapes the noose and flees to the Caribbean, where he becomes a pirate folk hero and eventually the leader of the Brethren of the Coast, our "pirate nation." He rules the pirates with a steady hand from Tortuga, determined that no European monarch will push him around anymore but unwilling to take the title of "Pirate King," which he thinks is utter hogwash. That’s not to say others, including a burly fellow with a beard that’s on the blackish side, might not turn up in the future to make things difficult for the fellow the pirates call "Lord William."

We do also include supernatural features, but since some players are all about the historical realism and others aren’t, we made supernatural content something that’s completely optional. You can play through the entire game without ever seeing anything monstrous or ghostly, or you can pursue some of these mysteries if you choose. Personally, I think a lot of players will go ahead and try the supernatural content and get into it, even if they think they’re hardcore history fans. It’s just really cool stuff.

Honestly, I could write about this particular topic for hours, so I’ll just leave it at that so there’s room for the rest of my answers.

GDN: Did you enlist the help of any non-industry experts (such as historians, screenwriters, shipbuilders, etc), and if so, how much of an impact did they have on the finished game?

CJH: As far as historical research and writing, that was all done in-house (at least, since I’ve been here). Many of our ship models, however, are the work of some of our most hardcore and long-time beta players. If you check out the ship guide that comes with the boxed copy of the game you’ll see the forum name of the person who designed each ship. They did amazing work--take a look at the Oliphant-class Indiaman to see just one great example of their talent.

GDN: Being set in an ostensibly more finite world than, for instance, a fantasy realm or outer space, how will the world of POTBS grow and evolve as players get more experienced and more come onboard?

CJH: In terms of square footage, I think we’ve got a pretty huge world already in the Open Sea, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have plans to expand the geography. We’ve been discussing where else in the world we might be able to expand--the Mediterranean, perhaps, or the East coast of North America. All of that is in the very early planning stages, though, so nothing there is final.

Fortunately we’ve also got a lot of room to expand within the Caribbean and the game itself. We want to add more supernatural content that ties into the existing supernatural story, but also works as a standalone mission. We’re also looking at adding a new career choice, intend to introduce some new factions and big-time pirate NPCs, and we’re going to be introducing new mission content on a regular basis. Group content is something we’re really interested in doing a lot more of, and the Bey’s Retreat epic mission is a good example of how we can expand within the world along those lines. It’s a huge group mission that will take players anywhere from two to four hours to complete, it’s repeatable, has memorable enemies and some mighty tricky strategic ship and avatar combat.

Really, our imaginations are the only limit. And we have some big imaginations here at the Lab.

GDN: What would you say POTBS could offer to the casual gamer, or someone new to online multiplayers? Was this an audience you hoped, and made an effort to capture, during development?

CJH: While it’s pretty much impossible for me to look at the game as a casual or new player anymore, I can look at my experience when I first came aboard and Jess Lebow sat me down at a computer and said, "Just play the game for a few days." I expected to find it pretty intimidating, even though I’ve played several MMOs and spent years playing Sid Meier’s Pirates! But I found it very easy to pick up how to control your ship and avatar--you use your W, A, S, and D keys like you would in any shooter for movement--and the first ten levels really help teach you how to function in the world. For more complicated features like the player-driven economy, PvP combat, and capturing enemy ships, we have tutorial missions that will take you through all the steps (that’s in addition to the basic tutorials that start you off and show you how to sail your ship, swing your sword, and fire your cannons). I do think the game has a lot for the casual player as well as the hardcore MMO gamer or the nautical fiction enthusiast, though if you were to just pick up someone’s level 50 naval officer and join a port contention battle, you’d probably find it intimidating no matter what your background.

GDN: Theme and concept aside, what are the essential elements you wanted to include in POTBS that would differentiate it from other MMORPGs?

CJH: The player driven economy, the port contention system, and sailing-ship combat are probably the three features that most distinguish PotBS from other MMOs. Every item in the economy is made, sold, built, and bought by the players--that goes for everything from a simple warehouse to store your goods to teak logs that go into the construction of a mighty 104-gun ship of the line. Our lead designer, Kevin Maginn, and the rest of the design team really knocked the economy out of the park, in my opinion. I’ve never been much into "crafting" in other games, but I soon found myself hooked on trading and manufacturing, of all things.

Port contention and PvP are also really impressive. While you can always just flag yourself for PvP and run the risks that entails, players are the ones who, through their action or inaction, allow unrest to rise in a particular port until the citizens go into open revolt. When that happens, a PvP zone springs up around the port, and pirates can hunt any players trying to pass through. Eventually, a 25-on-25 battle royale is triggered, pitting the current owner of the port against the nation (and remember, "Brethren of the Coast" counts as a nation in this sense) that’s done the most to destabilize it. The winner ends up in control of the port. If that’s the Brethren, they’ll pillage it for a few days and then the port reverts to the nation that originally owned it. If another European nation--France, Britain, or Spain--takes over, other nations will have to destabilize the port, trigger a PvP zone, and the whole thing starts over again.

And about that ship combat--I think it’s absolutely beautiful to look at and a ripping good time to play. There’s really nothing else like it, not even in the Sid Meier game (which I love). I wish I could take some credit for that, but ship combat was pretty much built when I came aboard--since then, it’s all been about balancing and polishing. Once you play through your first ship battle and send a rippling broadside into the hulls, masts, and rigging of your enemies, you’re hooked.

GDN: Thanks very much, Cory. Yarrr!

CJH: Yarr!

Do yourself a favour and heck out the game at the official Pirates of the Burning Sea website, me hearties, or we’ll strap a canon to yer bootlaces and send you off to Davey Jones!