Our first design goal when we sat down to work out the details of the PvP system can be summed up in one word: “Relevance.” Too many games place PvP on the borders, as something that happens at the edge of the map between players who aren’t necessarily tied in to the rest of the game. Often, PvP takes place in areas that are wholly separated from the main geography of the game. That isolation makes the player versus player struggles seem less exciting to us, so our first decision was to place the PvP in places players go, places they care about. In Pirates of the Burning Sea, the hottest PvP areas will be right in the middle of the map, where players live and trade and do missions.