flying-lab-software posts

Seattle-based Flying Lab Software has been running its pirate-themed MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea for a year now but the developer is looking to expand its reach into other areas. Our sister site GameDaily reports that Flying Lab will soon officially announce their plans for a casual MMO title.

The game will be developed by a new division of the company called, naturally, Flying Lab Casual, and has already gotten its first gig creating a game in a "family friendly universe" in collaboration with well known trading card company Upper Deck. Pirates of the Burning Sea isn't being forgotten; the developer also plans to revamp the title's sword-fighting system. Players can also expect "new skirmish and player-governed ports" to be put into the game.

Before the launches of Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, developer Flying Lab Software and distributor Sony Online launched Pirates of the Burning Sea in January. The pirate themed MMO got a lot of attention beforehand and even showed up on NPD's top 10 list for its debut week but since then the game hasn't gotten as much attention from the MMO community as the other two major MMO launches this year.

Flying Lab is hoping to bring in new players by launching a 14 day free trial version of the title where you can pick from one of four different "nations", explore the game's version of the 18th century Caribbean and not only engage in sea battles but fight in sword battles as well. Any characters made during the free trial can be carried over if you choose to purchase the full game and get a monthly subscription.

Flying Lab Software's recent MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea may not have pulled in the sales of, say, Age of Conan, but the development team seems to be in a comfortable place at the moment. However its been a few months since the titles's January release and now Flying Lab is getting ready to go into its second major marketing launch for the title.

Basically the company plans to get the word out on Burning Sea via not just new web banner ads but also a free 14 day trial version of the game. The trials, which are expected to go live in mid to late July, will allow players to upgrade to a full version when their trials are completed. A new 1.5 patch for the game is also due out soon which will add a new Epic Mission to the game along with other additions, changes and bug fixes.

After years of development and a number of release date delays, Flying Lab Software finally launched their highly anticipated MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea. The game took the current pirate popularity trend and infused it with both high powered ships battles combined with the more typical avatar combat, raids and other MMO conventions. The reviews of the game have pointed out its flaws but have mostly been positive.

However, about three months since the game's launch Flying Lab is making some major adjustments to Burning Sea's server allocation. On Tuesday the developer announced on the game's official web site that it was moving player characters out of seven servers and shutting those servers down " . . . until such time as there is a need for more servers". Those characters were moved to the game's four remaining servers. On the surface this might seem to be a bad sign; usually when a MMO consolidates its server population it means that the the game has not gotten as many subscribers as they would have liked.

While Flying Lab, like most MMO developers, have not yet commented on how many current subscribers they have for Pirates of the Burning Sea, they seemed optimistic that this new move would be a good one for the game and its players. The statement says that since the launch of the game, the dev team has discovered that " . . .key game features require populations of higher density in order to function at optimum levels." The statement added that Flying Lab has been able to improve their technology to allow more players per server than they originally planned.

All in all, this move is not necessarily a bad sign of things to come for the game; merely a way for the development team to streamline the title to move it forward in the future. Of course we will keep an eye out on the game's progress in the coming months.