Interesting Pirate101 Posts From the Weekend

Daily I review a ton of information about Pirate101. It basically consumes me, and I feel that digestion of all the news and thoughts is just part of my job. I see a lot of good things that from time to time I wish I could share with everyone in kind of a holistic look at our fine community. Unfortunately, time is my biggest enemy these days, and finding the time to blog and reblog is prohibitive from a lot of things!

So basically, there are a lot of sung and unsung heroes that are working hard to make this community unique and fantastic, and I appreciate them. I thought I'd just give a quick shoutout of a few awesome Pirate101 posts from over the weekend that I read (or listened to in the case of our fine podcasts).

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1- Player Requests -- One thing I've learned is that we can't really accept any privately submitted ideas . . . instead we encourage people to share publicly on our forums (mostly), but I also look at other official fan sites or anywhere people gather to share ideas. Here's a few that stood out over the weekend:

Coolster brought up the fact that Pirate101 doesn't really have Lore Book quests. He's right and it's something we've thought about expanding on -- for now the closest thing we have in game would be the quest The Halls of Learning in Valencia where you run around and click on the pillars to learn a Valencian point of view on the worlds of The Spiral.

Sirap asked for a way to toggle the auto ship attack off and on. I think there's definitely some validity to his request. It's been something cumbersome that's been hard to explain to players who want to help fire upon a ship that's already being engaged. Most new players simply allow the Auto attack to return fire when they are fired upon and don't know that you have to manually select the ship and click your ship's abilities to join in the attack.

At the 21:21 Mark of the most recent Talkin' the Plank podcast, Luke and Brandon suggested giving players more to do within the Spiral Threads since these seems to be nothing more than a staging area to go from one world to the next. They had some cool ideas like adding a Ship Wreckage collection quest or something like a minigame involving steering around waves . . . in essence, it seems like a waste of extra space and opportunity. On a side note, players on Central noted the hidden value of the Spiral Threads for farming as a free-to-play player.

OceanPainting had an interesting idea for a new class he called the “Brigand.” Posts about new classes will pop up from time to time, and I always find them interesting despite the fact that I don't think there really are plans to add an extra character class, but this was definitely an interesting idea . . . and who knows! Stranger things have happened, right? What I liked was that his idea seemed more fleshed out and had an understanding of how to make the class special. The introduction of an Intelligence score would have ALL KINDS of implications that would touch probably every mob in the game, but I appreciate the creativity, and it's not really my job to worry about the implications (is there a national Hug a Designer Day? There should be!)

Vinny and a bunch of others on the forums made a call for more One-Eyed Jack! :) I can't say I disagree with them. Obviously One-Eyed Jack holds a special place in my heart.

Moltenshadow made a request for World Arenas for Pirate101’s PvP--Just like they are in Wizard101. This has been brought up before and obviously we're not done with PvP in Pirate101 yet, but I like the way he's thinking here. Themed arenas would be great in my opinion! Of course, eventually a whole PvP revamp will happen.

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2- Player questions -- There are so many questions that come up in a day. Although most of them are about things that have a very standard answer, or things that CAN'T be answered (the dreaded "When's the next world coming out" question), many of them are simply thought provoking and taking a stab at answering them can be a bit of a stab in the dark.

Lucas asks why Lucy Sterling has a mustache (have to be logged in to see that thread). LOL. Well, that sounds absolutely crazy to me, and I've seen Lucy Sterling and no she doesn't have a mustache. So the question for me then becomes, is there some reason why Lucy Sterling would appear to have a mustache under the lighting of the Earth Guardian room? It is kind of a darker area. Or, is this a new glitch or simply a strange glitch on this person's computer? If someone has a good picture or can explain this, please let me know! April Fool's joke?

Coolster asks how come Wizard101 loads faster than Pirate101 even though Wizard101 has twice the worlds? Well, that's a really good question, and I believe we're looking to bring that back in-line with Wizard101! This is part of the reason we reduced the size of the introductory sequence of the game and made a number of other behind the scenes changes.

Coolster wonders why it appears the Black Storm Shaman is to be a Musketeer companion, but that there isn’t a side quest that grants him. It very well may be that there is a quest that used to grant the Black Storm Shaman, and perhaps it was removed. It's hard to tell, and further research is required.

Oceanpainting had multiple questions:
1. Will the Troggy Pack ever be revived as a full-fledged pack?
2. Will the Hammerhead shark ever make an appearance
3. Will the Water Mole concept art of the shop with the rock gorilla sculpture ever be used?

Truth be told there are several concepts that never become anything, and sometimes other concepts we simply hold in our back pocket until they're needed. Right now, I don't think the Troggy Pack is among the list of upcoming releases, but again, you never know!

Coolster asks, why are there variances between Lucky Jack Russell’s Promotion and Birgus and Gaspard’s Promotions . . . especially given the fact that the 3 of the MooShu five have a very similar promotion. It would be nice to have someone step up and answer a question like this, but it's kind of just "a thing that makes you go hmmmm." I imagine it was just something to provide variety (and the designers haven't got back to me on this one).

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3- Player fun and feedback -- Our players have a lot of fun and always give a lot of great feedback. Here's a quick look at what made this last weekend interesting:

Y'all liked our free Jug of Yum surprise we gave you for hitting 20,000 likes on Facebook! Awesome. We're going to keep growing, and I'm glad we were able to give everyone a little something.

This post just made me smile: “did you make the name el dorado up? or did you get it from the car the cadillac eldorado?” One of my coworkers said I should reply and say the next world after El Dorado will be El Camino. ;)

This is an awesome player-made “create a new companion” contest. I can't wait to see what comes out of this contest. Either way, it's really fun to take a look at these.

Enquiring players’ minds want to know . . . what could be behind the double doors in Lucious Fox’s shop? OOOOo! Nobody knows! I love a good mystery! :)

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Thanks everyone for all you do daily to make this a really fun and interesting community. Let me know your thoughts about these community posts. What did I miss mentioning from last weekend that you thought was interesting!?

Happy dueling