This time around Pirates of the Burning Sea talks about the ship date ,when,and why. You may get some idea here.

In a word, yes. But don?t go scanning to the bottom of this log, because it?s not in here.

As we?re noted a few times on the forums, we?re been working on the schedule to release. Usually on a game this is a tough period, in that you have to make some painful cuts to get ready for release. In our case, it?s been exhilarating. We?re cut some things here and there, true, but most of them are behind-the-scenes things you?v never see, or things we still intend to do after we launch (such as my supercool Officers system ?sob!!). What?s exhilarating is that we have a specific date that we?re confident in. To give you an idea of where this confidence comes from, half of every milestone is reserved for bug fixing and general polish, so we?re not exactly cramming in features to the last second. Also, we?re had very good feedback from beta, and while we?re got a lot of improvements planned, we know we?re on a good course.

So why not announce it now? It?s because we?re announcing a month, not a quarter or a season. And a month is pretty specific. We have some items in the schedule that we think will fit, but have the potential to balloon up in size. Work is starting on them in the next milestone, and once we?re confident that they?re under control, we?ll announce the ship date.

Caveats, as ever, apply. Open beta could reveal some terrible performance problems, our dev team could be hit by a car walking to lunch, etc. But the reason we?ll be announcing a month is because confidence is high, and we want to keep you guys in the loop.

As I said, we have a scheduled time to announce our ship date, and given its proximity to PAX, we?re decided to announce the date there. PAX is a great show, it?s really the only sizeable gathering that?s for the fans, by the fans, and while E3 serves a purpose, we expect to keep on using PAX as our main presence each year.

So, onto other news.

We?re started working on the PR campaign. We?re looked a bit at this in the past, but with release in sight, we?re now starting to develop a concrete plan that?s going to be very different than the usual ads in gaming mags. Part of that is sending people out to LAN parties so groups can play the game early. Part will be going to more public appearances, such as the upcoming GenCon in Indianapolis. And part of it will be advertising in non-game magazines, such as college newspapers and the Stars and Stripes.

The Great Office Space Search has been called off. We were able to get expanded space on the second floor, so we?re going to stick it out until we ship and avoid the time hit of moving. The fact that I don?t get asked whether we?re moving to the East side of Seattle or staying here on the West is just one more benefit.

As ever, we?re expanding our staff. Recent developer hires have meant Joe was spending all of his time just keeping up with his people, so we?re promoted Brady up to dev lead and moved some of the new devs over to him. He?s insisted that we not call them the Brady Bunch, which has left us stumped for a name...

We?ve also hired new testers, which will enable us to expand the beta program faster. We?re starting to get to the point where I read as many beta test threads as regular threads, so there?s a lot of activity there going on behind closed doors. Also, since we?re not willing to skimp on testing, more testers also helps us ship faster.

And finally, we?re putting the last touches on M19. The beta testers have already gotten to play an early version of it, and we?re just fixing bugs and tuning the content before we sign off on it. The next milestone will be what we show at PAX, and it?s going to be pretty exciting, so I hope to see a lot of you there.

Till next time!

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