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   Don't go packing your parrot and eyepatch just yet, though. Pirates of the Burning Sea may be "content complete", as they say, but it's still several months away from release. However, the good news is that the devs over at Flying Lab have finally reached a publishing agreement, after years of hard work on the most promising naval MMO (ever, I dare say). And the lucky winner is... *ta-daaa*... Sony Online Entertainment. Not the "big, evil SOE", mind you, but their "Platform Publishing" label - which apparently is a lot more friendly with independent developers.

   So have no fear, Pirates of the Burning Sea is still fully owned by Flying Lab, they still make all the design decisions, and they're still the ones taking care of their community. The only things that SOE will be taking care of are "Billing, Launcher, Retail Distribution, Localization and Marketing" - as explained in this lenghty update on the game's website, clearly pointing out why Pirates of the Burning Sea won't lead to another scandal a la Star Wars Galaxies NGE or Vanguard.

   Being on SOE's Station Access Pass also gives the game some other advantages: "for one price you can play EQ, EQ2, Pirates, and everything else SOE has to offer", the devs continue to explain, once again confirming that PotB will be a subscription-based MMO. As for the game's current status, here are a few more bits from another recent update:
"Against all odds, ConCo has in fact put over 1000 missions in the game - FOR EACH NATION. There is still some polishing to do, but the content is in the game and you can play from level 1 to level 50 (which many companies would call "content complete").

(...) "We want to launch Pirates this fall. The game is in great shape and we're going into large-scale beta testing this week.

(...) We'll be releasing our big new build to the beta in the next 24 hours and after a couple weeks of shakedown time, we'll be inviting 10,000 new beta testers in to try it out!"    Between now and the planned autumn 2007 release, there will also be an open beta at some point. But for now, hold on tight. Oh, and there's a dev-chat in just an hour, in case you have anything to ask them.