Pirates of the Burning Sea, the Caribbean piracy MMORPG published by Sony Online, has shut down seven of its original eleven servers. The game's official website states that the server reduction was instituted because "the overall population was spread too thin." Not exactly a good omen.

To be fair, the game does need a large player population to run smoothly. The economy, for example, is entirely player-driven. Furthermore, a good chunk of the gameplay is devoted to player vs. player combat; a battle for control of a port requires 48 players total (24 on each side). A low population just makes the game, well, incomplete.

So I can't argue with the logic of condensing the player population...but I also can't think of a successful MMO that was closing servers this soon after its release (Burning Sea came out in January). It usually happens when a game's player base starts to level off or decline. There's an old saying about business: "You're either growing or you're dying." Out of curiosity, I just Googled that and found out it's a quote from the movie "Tommy Boy" and the character was talking about the auto industry. But nevertheless, this isn't a sign of vitality for Burning Sea.

An MMO failing to meet sales expectations isn't surprising at this point but Burning Sea's concept was pretty novel in a genre dominated mostly by medieval fantasy and science fiction. Or at least it would have been novel had Disney not released an MMO based on their Pirates of the Caribbean movie last fall. For a long time (up until I wrote this article in fact), I actually thought the two games were one and the same. Given how crappy Pirates of the Caribbean Online supposedly is, the confusion probably didn't help Pirates of the Burning Sea much.