KingsIsle Introduces Pirate101: Plunder Hunt - A New Mobile Adventure in the Spiral Universe | MMORP

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KingsIsle Introduces Pirate101: Plunder Hunt - A New Mobile Adventure in the Spiral Universe | MMORPG.com

KingsIsle Entertainment recently announced the soft launch of their new mobile game, Pirate101: Plunder Hunt, on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The single player game is their first mobile title.

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gameplayingmonkey

Showing gambling lootboxes within the first 30 seconds of gameplay footage is pretty telling after disregarding that 'mobile game' is a red flag for consumer unfriendly monetization. Fully offline singleplayer game but still has a microtransation to obtain a mount? Bummer.

maskedweasel

It's definitely an interesting little game. It kind of feels like it should be multiplayer, because it does have a very MMO feel to it (like monkey above said, there's a lot of ads and requests to watch ads for better rewards). 

Since I've never played Pirate101 before, but I have played a lot of mobile games I could see some potential. But if they're going to throw all these ads in there, it still requires you to be online to play and that doesn't make sense for a single player game. 

If this was offline, I might see myself playing this in a pinch.

gameplayingmonkey

I gave it a try for a few minutes and felt moral obligation to return here and discuss my experience. First and foremost the post on the KingsIsle website claims that this is an early build of the game and their goal is simply to test it and gather information regarding public interest, HOWEVER, this "early test build" already has a microtransaction shop with cosmetic skins, TWO separate buyable currencies, and paid "adskips."

Upon levelling up for the first time a box appeared prompting me to watch an advertisement in exchange for an amount of ingame currency. It was an ad for tiktok which in itself was an ad for some thermos. Despite Pirate101 being a childrens game the ad I was shown compared the addictive qualities of drinking out of this thermos to that of crack cocaine. Afterwards the screen failed to transition back into the game only giving me the option of clicking a flashing tiktok icon that brought me to the googleplay store.

I uninstalled, unfortunately it did not subvert my expectations in anyway whatsoever.

Theocritus

A few years ago Wasnt there a game made by same company that made Wizard 101 called Pirate 101?