we have another one of those previous p2p going to f2p games :
Pirates of the burning sea
http://www.burningsea.com/page/homeNow I love the 17th and 18th century, and as such I collect every video game that takes place in this era. But this market is not very thickly sown, as there only are a handful of games of during this time period. So I'm sowhat pleased that this will become f2p.
The game takes place in the early 18th century and you can play as one of four faction members : Spanish, British French or Pirates.The Dutch are also ingame but are non-playable.
Now I have been a Beta tester for this game, back in mid 2007 for this game. I found it rather mediocre : this game has a very steep learning curve, and the missions are sowhat repetitive (sink this ship, kill that guy ...) and what I most disliked was the economy of this game.
Everything in this game is player made and player owned. Players buy plantations on a isle, that produces goods. this has to be shipped to another isle to get finished, for instance, by a player that owned a factory. Now the way this is done is by "auction" so players bid on your goods, I found this rather anoying, I would have preferred a shopkeeper that gives you a price on linear scale of offer and demand rather then having to wait till players bid on your wares (as you can't unload till they're sold). But I read there are now shopkeepers in the game, so let's hope this is something of the past.
They seemed to have problems getting their servers populated, and now they're switching the p2p to a f2p model. I never play a game that requires me to play a monthly subscription in order to play, so I quit once this game had gone live.
Now, I will certainly check this game out again, even if it just was to make a bunch of 18th century characters again.
you can download it here
http://chris-cunningham.co.uk/?page_id=61the game will become free to play this monday
