POTBS: Pirates of the burning sea

Wifey and I started playing pirates of the burning sea, we pre-ordered and as a result get to play in the pre-boarding party (11-day head start).  Here are our initial impressions:

Day 1.

• Download for the pre-boarding party is just horrendous, took us two tries from different URL’s as well as running the patch from the client before we were able to play.  FLS (Flying Labs Software) should really fix this up…
• Swashbuckling combat is very confusing at the beginning.  Gets a bit better with practice.  Boarding a ship is really NOT done well.  But I read that they are improving that particular fight in the future.
• Ship vs Ship combat is really fun, until you get your mast destroyed.  Then you are sitting duck until the enemy ships sink you.
  This was pretty awful for Wifey, she had her sails knocked out and weren’t able to go anywhere, and we couldn’t work out how she could just give up and restart that particular instance.  I’ve noticed there is a “ship surrender” action - may be that would help her avoid being sunk.
• We got to about level 3 each.

Day 2 (this is actually Friday night and Saturday morning).

• Wifey and I really gave ourselves to practice this whole ship fighting business, with some successful results.  She prefers to get into boarding range, grapple the ship and board.  Her swashbuckling skills are Florentine which is heavy on blocking and defence.
• My privateer ship is slightly faster for moving and manoeuvring, so prefer to sail around them and pound their ships for a bit.  Boarding is technically harder for me, as I sail in alongside for the board grapple I usually ate a freaking racking broadside which is really painful for my lesser-armoured ship.
  In swashbuckling, my dirty fighting style doesn’t help me survive a long time, but some cheap AOE attacks (easily blocked by opponents with good balance) as well as an AOE stun helps me get the edge over the enemy captain.
• In melee fights where the odds aren’t so overwhelmingly crazy (like ship boarding or fort captures), Wifey and I actually work really well.
• We got to about level 9 each.

Day 3 (Sunday night).

• With the combat system a bit more sorted out, we were braver to explore the world a bit.  We finally departed from the original port and visited the neighbouring ports, as well as start to dabble in the crafting, trading economy.
• Wifey takes a lot of joy in working out the Mathematics, so I’ve left that to her.
• Sailed all the way to our nation’s capital.  Chased by NPC pirates that are at leave 30 levels higher than us.
• We got to about level 12.  Looking for new ship (still on our old fallback).

Day 4 (Monday night).

• Interrupted our play schedule when the game wouldn’t update to the new 1.0.44 patch (we were on 1.0.35) because SOE stuffed up on the patch delivery and our clients wouldn’t update.
• Reading the patch notes, it seems that FLS has removed quite a lot of newbie quests around the beginner towns.  I can understand why they did this.  We were up to level 9 without really leaving the first town via the open sea, and when we visited the nearby towns they had an equal amount of beginner quests… in WOW speak, the quests in the nearby towns were gray before we even visited the town.

Day 5 (Tuesday morning quick check)

• Sailed back to beginning world.  I attached a sail outfitting (+5% sail speed), and we caught the ocean current on our way back, with the wind behind our sails.  I clocked 86.5 knots.
• Wifey and I talked about perhaps joining up with a society (guild) to further our crafting career.  I’m keen to find a big Australian one.