Recently, Flying Lab Software decided to lift the NDA that surrounded Pirates of the Burning Sea's (PotBS from here on out) closed beta, and with good reason too; the game is launching next month. After a long and lengthy development cycle it looks like this piratey-escapeed is finally going to get released to the public. Although, anybody who has done any sort of research on this game, or been a part of any forum discussion on it has probably come across the resemblence it shares with EVE Online, albiet in pirate form as opposed to space.

The comparison isn't particularly unwelcome, EVE is a highly successful MMORPG that continues to grow today, but is this a correct comparison? Is PotBS really all that similar to EVE Online? Well, the answer gets a bit muddied up here. It shares some of the broader similarites that aren't really found in any other MMORPG other than these two games, but it also differ's in a lot of these same areas. For example, both of the games, generally, have you playing as the ship (as opposed to a person), however, where EVE Online does not allow you to actually have a character avatar, PoTBS does. In PotBS you actually do get to walk around a port and go on land missions.

Bottomline, the two games are similar. In fact, the are probably similar enough that they will generally be targeting the same crowd of MMO-gamers. However, they each bring their own unique twist to the party that they don't ever really step on the other's toes, if that makes any sense whatsoever. In the end, let's just be glad that Flying Labs didn't decide to make a pirate clone of WoW. Lord knows we don't need another one of those MMORPGs.