I finally managed to get some free time and re-visit the game to check out the new Pirate's Life -update and here are my two cents of what I thought about it.
First of all I'd like to say that I really appreciate RARE for bringing us content update of this scale. It was massive; 5 new Tall Tales, several new enemy types and some other minor stuff. The only single content update that can come even close in comparison was probably the Anniversary update couple years ago.
Players have been waiting to see merfolk for quite some time now and we finally got our wishes granted. Exploring the merfolk kingdom was fascinating and it was refreshing to fight something else than skeletons for a chance. And I kinda liked the Trident of Dark Tides (aka. Disney stick as the community prefers to call them), because it absolutely destroys those annoying megalodons. =)
I also liked the Sea of the Damned part, because it offered some extra lore for Ferryman and his domain.
But not everything was great in this update.
I think that RARE is pushing these content updates too fast, because each update seems to introduce new bugs to the game and RARE doesn't seem to have enough resources fixing them and they pile up.
RARE, maybe you should decrease the update pace or add more manpower debugging the game, hmm?
Also, I'm probably going to get a lot of flag by saying this, but I have to play devils advocate by saying that involving characters from the Pirates of the Caribbean extinguished most of the excitement in this update for me. Sea of Thieves already had pretty decent lore that RARE could have just expand upon, so involving POTC characters in this felt forced to me.
Yes, I'm aware that some players have been asking for some sort of Pirates of the Caribbean collaboration ever since the game was launched, but in my opinion RARE went too far with this. What I mean by that is that I fear that this wasn't just one time thing and we'll see more of POTC characters returning in the future updates. And the reason why I think that's a bad thing is, because big part of the lore is now reliable on those POTC characters and the future updates have to take that into consideration. And I can't say I'm happy about that, because POTC doesn't really interest me that much and I would prefer to see RARE developing something of their own instead of relying on POTC characters.
Overall I think it was great content update, but I wasn't really happy with how big impact the Pirates of the Caribbean characters left to this game and I wish RARE won't rely on POTC assets in the future updates and instead make something of their own. We have seen with the Shroudbreaker Tall Tale chain that they are more than capable of making great stories and they don't need Disney's help.
If they add any more of that POTC stuff in the game they might as well rename the game into Sea of Pirates or Pirates of the Thieves or something along those lines.
So, to sum everything up:
Pros:
- 5 New Tall Tales !
- New enemy types (though they spawn little too frequently)
Cons:
- New bugs, while old ones remain unfixed
- Pirates of the Caribbean is now part of the Sea of Thieves lore
- New world event involving Merfolk would have been nice
Verdict: Great update, but I fear that POTC is now permanently part of the Sea of Thieves' lore.
