Pirates Ahoy!: Pirates Ahoy! News

With historic content and extensive features, Age of Ocean is one of the most anticipated browser game of 2010. Age of Ocean will provide players a magnificent seafaring adventure, a chance to conquer the world and even rewrite the history! In Age of Ocean, you can feel the waves as they crash against your ship, you can smell the smoke from the cannons as you go broadsides with your foes, and you are the commander fighting for your country. You can recruit sailors, trade with merchants, and battle pirates and other players. Go in search of new lands and the treasures all based on real history. The world is out there for taking. Historic browser game fans can find more information on the official website: http://ao.hithere.com/.

Features:

* Historic Web-based strategy/simulation game
* Multi-player, compete against thousands of people from around the world
* Huge game world; an entire world to explore and conquer
* Unique Massive trading system and real player economy
* Huge sea battle scenes
* Completely browser-based, no downloads required
* Playable via Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera
* Hundreds of rewarding quests.

Saga's Captains of Darktide is being made using the Unity 3D engine, which means a gorgeous 3D world in a browser playable on both PC and Mac. Check out the screenshots at the bottom. I am expecting a lot of very surprised looks when I exit full screen mode and people realize what they just saw was a browser game. There are no downsides unless your boss catches you playing at work.

We are creating one huge seamless world where players take control of a ship in the SAGA fantasy universe complete with cannon decks bellow and dragon summoning wizards up top. Unlike the 2 large AAA Pirate titles we are going to focus on the ship. This means even though your captain will have his own skill tree, and be able to choose from among various classes, all the action takes place at sea.

At release we are aiming to have the following features

* A huge seamless world where tens of thousands of captains may adventure together.
* Over 200 troop types that may be used to crew your ships ranging from dragon summoning wizards to Orc snipers.
* Hundreds of cannon types.
* Over 1000 ship upgrades
* A crafting system that may be used to build cannons or the top level ships
* 3 talent trees (Defender, Commander, Destroyer)
* Hundreds of ships, with ship types for each of the above Captain trees, each with its own unique strengths.
* Cooperative questing in groups
* Epic Boss level encounters
* Player trading
* Whatever else we can fit in from the wish list

Two passengers aboard a cruise ship were killed when 26-foot waves crashed into the vessel Wednesday, officials said. As many as 14 others were injured. The Greek Louis Cruise Lines ship was off the French port of Marseille when it was hit by "abnormal" waves, some more than 26 feet (9 meters) high, cruise line spokesman Michael Maratheftis said.

Five windows in public areas were smashed, and two passengers, a German and an Italian, were killed, he said.

Fourteen others were treated for light injuries, Maratheftis said.

The vessel, the Louis Majesty, was sailing under a Maltese flag and traveling from Barcelona, Spain, to Genoa, Italy, the Greek Public Ministry of the Mercantile Marine said.

The ship had 1,350 passengers and 580 crew on board, the ministry said.

After being struck, the cruise ship turned around and was heading back to port in Barcelona.

Buoy data off the French coast indicated that weather was the likely cause of the high waves. Winds were at 45 mph at that buoy.

Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island takes players to the Azurbbean, a vaguely recognisable interpretation to the Caribbean of the late 1600’s. The player enters theElectronic Theatre Image shoes of three protoplasmic adventurers, cursed by a sorceress and now looking for their human bodies. The plot obviously allows for the justification of a number of typically bizarre gaming conventions, such as long distance communication between the three playable characters, and also grants each of the three a number of unique abilities. Crossing paths at only predetermined intervals, the three pirate lead are a consistent source of humour throughout the game.

The story of Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island was created by Bill Tiller of Monkey Island fame, so of course a lot of wit and a relaxed pacing are expected to be drawn from the script. After the somewhat confused and overwhelming opening the story begins to evolve at a reasonable pace, but only through cut-scenes. While the player may draw some background detail from their interactions with non-player characters (NPCs), there’s never any indication that you’re actually progressing the game by doing so.

Patch 1.2


An overview of the most important changes:

- The Golden Ship is now available after accomplishing all the Achievements (the corresponding affected Achievements have been corrected and can now be completed).
- The cooldown period between individual Quests for the Emperor and the Sultan has been reduced.
- Sultan Quests are now available even if players do not have Noblemen in their City.
- Players can no longer see the routes taken by opposing Transport ships.
- Buildings and fields may now be rotated by pressing the middle mouse button.
- Construction time for the Large Oriental Trading Ship has been doubled.
- Players can now also connect to the Gateway to the World under Windows 7.

Other changes:

- Savegames in user-content scenarios are no longer corrupted when a fellow player is vanquished in that scenario.
- In some cases uploads to the Gateway to the World failed. This bug has been fixed and uploads to the Gateway to the World should now be much more stable.
- Fixed a bug in mission 7 in which, under certain conditions, a black pearl necessary for completion of the mission was not given to the player.
- Fixed a bug which allowed the player to multiply the Goods on a Ship through skillful movement between the Ship's cargo slots.
- The title "World Traveler" is now correctly displayed in the title selection.
- Purchasing the second or third stage "Occidental Shipbuilding" Attainment sometimes led to all the Goods over 40 tons being thrown overboard by the Ships involved. This error has been corrected.
- Ships in the "Historic Battle" Quest can now shoot back!
- The cost in Gold shown in the Caravanserai delivery notification was displayed incorrectly. This error has been corrected.
- Envoys whose Needs are now all met and who pay very few Taxes are now "euphoric" instead of "angry".
- The Experts Customs goods Items are now somewhat more powerful.
- A number of small improvements have been made.
- Several spelling errors were corrected.

“We were very clear that we didn’t want to be associated with being a movie game,” says game director Alex Peters. So developers Propaganda games went about creating a new hero, Captain James Sterling. They then devised a massive open world, containing loads of familiar locations from the films and introduced a bounty of action RPG elements.

What they wanted to capture most was the the swashbuckling heroes constantly getting into scrapes and somehow surviving by a cat’s whisker even when it seemed impossible. Propaganda also wanted to keep the humour and the supernatural elements that make the universe so unique.

East India Company, First Voyage (1601–1603)

Formed on 31 December 1600,[7] the East India Company's first voyage departed on 13 February 1601. The flagship of the five-vessel fleet was the Scourge of Malice, purchased from the Earl of Cumberland for £3700. On a more peaceful mission, the East India Company renamed the vessel the Red Dragon.[8] The other vessels in the fleet were the Hector (300 tons), Ascension (260 tons), Susan (240 tons) and the Gift, a small victualler.[9] In spite of their February departure, the fleet did not clear the English Channel until early April due to delays from contrary winds. They landed at the Canary Islands, and then, keeping too close to Africa, fell into the Doldrums, where they remained for a month. They replenished their provisions from a captured Portuguese vessel on route, but much of the fleet was affected by scurvy by the time they arrived at Table Bay on 9 September. Lancaster had managed to prevent his sailors from being so stricken by regularly dosing them with lemon-juice, and he was forced to send members of his own crew to help man the other ships. They stayed at Table Bay for seven weeks before departing, navigating along the eastern side of Madagascar. Since leaving England, they had lost more than a fifth of their crew complement across the fleet, but those that remained were fit and healthy. Adverse wind conditions, and a second bout of scurvy forced the fleet to drop anchor in Antongil Bay, where they remained from Christmas Day through until 6 March 1602. On the resumption of their journey, they reached the Nicobar Islands after two months further travel, and took the opportunity to take on water and trim their vessels, staying for three weeks.[10]

On February 5, 2010, former players of Pirates of the Burning Sea™ have been given up to 28 days of FREE play, allowing them to try out the new features we’ve implemented since they last set sail.

The period of free game-play described in this offer begins on February 5, 2010 at 12:01 AM PST, and ends on March 5, 2010 at 11:59PM PST. This offer is only available for Pirates of the Burning Sea accounts that have been closed and inactive since January 22, 2008, and is not available for accounts closed prior to January 22, 2008, current Pirates of the Burning Sea or Station Access accounts, or for accounts that were banned or were not in good standing when its Pirates of the Burning Sea or Station Access subscription previously expired.

At the Paradox Interactive convention, Nitro Games highlighted their upcoming historical strategy title, Commander: Conquest of the Americas. A spiritual successor to East India Company, Commander takes many of the trading and wartime features from that game to provide new tactics for players trying to establish their mark on the New World. The game is set during the dawn of the 16th century, and lets you choose from six countries trying to stake a claim: Britain, France, Sweden, Spain, Portugal or the Netherlands.

While each country will initially start out based on their historical actions, the decisions made by each one will be randomized to encourage replayability. Furthermore, the territory each side will have to choose from is vast, as the game world will encompass everything from Hudson Bay down to South America. That should give any young colonial governor more than enough areas to conquer.

In the early 1600s, an English captain, Thomas Warner, set sail with a crew to found a colony on the Guiana coast. His colony proved a failure as his crew was ravaged by disease, unfamiliar weather conditions, and Carib raids. A friend of Warner's then suggested that he should instead try to colonise one of the islands in the Lesser Antilles because of their favourable conditions. In 1623 Warner abandoned his Guiana post and set sail North through the archipelago. After checking each island, Warner decided that Saint Kitts would prove to be the best-suited site for an English colony, because of its strategic central position ideal for expansion, friendly native population, fertile soil, abundant fresh water, and large salt deposits. He and his family landed on the island and made peace with the local Kalinago peoples, whose leader was Ouboutou Tegremante. Warner then left his family behind and returned to England to gather more men to officially establish a colony. In 1624, he returned and established the colony of Saint Christopher, the first English colony in the Caribbean. They established a port town at Old Road, downhill from Tegremante's capital village.

UK Government Awards Exclusive Salvage Contract to Odyssey Marine Exploration for Recovery of SS Gairsoppa Silver Cargo


January 25, 2010 - Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (NasdaqCM: OMEX), a pioneer in the field of deep-ocean shipwreck exploration, has been awarded the exclusive salvage contract for the cargo of the SS Gairsoppa by the United Kingdom (UK) Government Department for Transport. The contract was awarded after a competitive bid process and is for two (2) years, which commences immediately.

The SS Gairsoppa was a British cargo steamer enlisted in the service of the United Kingdom for the Ministry of War Transport during World War II. It was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in February 1941 in the North Atlantic while reportedly carrying a significant cargo of silver.

Odyssey will assume the risk, expense, and responsibility for the search, cargo recovery, documentation, and marketing of the cargo. If the salvage is successful, Odyssey will be compensated with a salvage award which consists of a majority of the net value of the recovered cargo after deduction of expenses of search and salvage.

"We're looking forward to working with the UK Government to recover the silver carried aboard the SS Gairsoppa and return it to the stream of commerce. The shipwreck is lying in the deep ocean well within the range of current search and recovery capabilities. We have good location information which suggests a search area that can be completed in approximately 90 days, and we are scheduling this project for summer 2010," commented Greg Stemm, Odyssey's CEO.

"We're pleased to expand our excellent working relationship with the UK Government with this contract, which will provide a significant economic benefit to the UK upon a successful salvage of his shipwreck," Stemm continued. "This project aligns with our strategy to focus on partnership projects with several governments that provide straightforward legal ownership arrangements."