The current build has been blessed, and Misha has just sent out a thousand new beta invites. We'll watch for a little while to see how the new system absorbs these users, and then send out another round.

I ended up spending close to an hour playing Pirates of the Burning Sea (practically an eternity by E3 standards). I went again through the tutorial missions, my first naval combat, landing at the first port and a few ground-based missions that showed up the sword-fighting system. The impressions I cam away with were mostly very positive.

Lebow told us of the latest build of the game, which he feels brings it to a point where it is a really solid product - likely read to launch in years past. To emphasize his point, he related something a developer friend had once told him: "Every game sucks until about two months before it ships". This is for them the build that represents a complete and fun product.

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Pirates of the Burning Sea is on show at this year's E3 on the Sony Online Entertainment stand, and that means that we're likely to see quite a few updates on different press sites. Aether says "CEO Russell Williams, Producer John Scott Tynes, Content Director Jess Lebow, Lead Game Designer Kevin Maginn and Game Designer Drew Clowery are all taking turns chatting with the press."

So far we've got this effort from IGN, and this article from Gamespot. Both articles are more or less positive, but there isn't all that much new info at this time.

Player-made, custom flags and sails are a big part of Pirates of the Burning Sea. We’ve added more than 3,000 of your creations to the game so far, and each one is a work of art that you—the creator—can take pride in. In no small part we’ve been able to approve so many because of our fantastic community of players, many of whom have taken it upon themselves to help others make the best flags and sails they can to show off in the virtual Caribbean.

Saturday afternoon rolled around and our fleet crowded into a small Spanish port. Battle Royales are somewhat canned, so we’d wait until everyone was ready and we’d get teleported into the instance where no one is allowed to fire. Once it’s clear that everyone is in the instance and ready, we’d lift the firing restrictions and the battle would begin. This needed to be a fair fight, so I was prepared to make last minute adjustments to my fleet. I scanned across the army of testers and tried to compare our overall gun count. It looks like the devs had an advantage, but it wasn’t significant enough for me to strip the ship out from under one of my captains. The testers appeared to have more First Rates, but they also had some Light Frigates and fewer Second Rates. However, the real problem in evaluating this came from the stewing ships. While no one can fire, everyone was moving around and we were quickly entering into battle formations and maneuvers – just without the cannon fire. I decided we had to start before people started mixing up the lines and ramming each other. The GMs lifted the firing restrictions; the battle had begun.