Pirates of the Burning Sea has several things that immediately stand out. First and foremost is the amazing ship based combat. Each player controls their own ship, and can engage in a variety of naval combat against both players and NPCs. The ship based combat is fantastic with graphics that are truly remarkable; the water has extremely well done reflections and like much of the real Caribbean when looked at from above allows you to make out the bottom. Its ship-based combat is realistic with wind, reloading and weapon types affecting combat, as players increase in experience they will gain access to larger ships.

It also contains a land component which seems to have a variety of purposes from orders and re-equipping your ship to finding new quests. Currently you can customize your avatar to a large extent to fit the archetype you want to play. The build we were shown has some amazing environments, with trees that sway, normal mapping on the avatars and flames with very realistic particle effects. They are however, going through the process of updating the textures and environments to an even higher graphical quality.

The game play seems straight forward with players being sent to sea to accomplish missions for their faction. Here though, they may encounter both players and NPCs in combat with no restrictions. This game could develop a PvP combat system that is not only fairly robust but allows one to rely on skill as opposed to equipment, though it doesn't hurt. While it might be a tough thing it may be possible for a player in a PvP situation to defeat or capture a ship much larger then themselves though I expect this will take mad skills!

The game keeps to the fairly historical taking a few liberties in what equipment might have been available. At the moment you should be able to obtain up to 3rd and 4th Rate Ships of the Line mounting up to 64 guns, though they are currently evaluating adding 1st and 2nd Rate Ships of the Line that might mount as much as much as 110 guns. It also has a variety of cannon of both the long and short range variety; these cannon have a variety of ammunition and as you increase in level you should gain access to a larger selection of shot. The different ammunition types include chain, grape, solid, expanding bar, canister and canister type of round that fires an Acid/Greek Fire type of round. Though its not 100% clear at the moment what form this will make in the final build, the game should allow for customization of ships in a mixture of ways from reinforced planking to larger guns.

They also informed me that they will be fully supporting player guilds, and in addition to guilds each faction should also have its own community support, and communications channels. While they are not sure all the features that will be available to guilds one can imagine that it will include some customization so that your band of buccaneers will stand out from the rest be it custom flags or sails.

One of the more interesting aspects was that I was informed that Flying Labs was self-distributing the game using Valve's Steam Networks for the subscriptions, updates and initial download of the game. Since they will be distributed fully via download the minimum specs do include a broadband connection as they will have several large file downloads. At the moment, the minimum graphics card and machine specs are fairly reasonable and sit at a 1GHz Machine with a measly 256 MB of Ram and a GeForce 4 or equivalent card.

After seeing this game I am truly eager to venture out with my comrades to take to the high seas and follow in the footsteps of the famous 'Calico Jack' marauding and plundering in Caribbean. I was very impressed at this pre-alpha build and its phenomenal design, remarkable graphics and entertaining game play. I for one am waiting with great anticipation for this game to enter beta.