The Pirates of the Burning Sea team has posted a couple of dev blog entries outlining some upcoming nation changes that add a new faction to the game and will allow you to have characters from multiple nations on one server.

"Starting with 1.22, you’ll be able to have characters from multiple nations on one server. However, you've got to declare your allegiance to one particular nation at a time, so you can’t play all sides of a conflict," Justinian said. In addition, the character limit for each account will be increased to six characters per nation on each server.

Flying Lab Software is also adding National Player Factions to the game to give players to opportunity to flag other users as traitors to their nation. "If a player gets flagged by a lot of people over the course of a long enough time, they can actually become Distrusted, Loathed or Hated by their own nation," Fraxl said, noting that these reputations carry consequences.

Build 1.21.69.0 is now live in Pirates of the Burning Sea, and it's a bug-fix patch that addresses some problems with the holiday content and fixes an issue with Port Battles.

You can read the short patch notes after the jump.

The Flying Lab team will be hosting an event on the Testbed server in about an hour at noon PST to address some Port Battle issues in Pirates of the Burning Sea. All you need to do is jump onto the Testbed on a British or Pirate character to participate.

GMs will be handing out money or levels if you need them, so log in and gather in the starting town for your nation at noon to help out the developers and enjoy some Port Battle action. More information can be found after the jump.

The Pirates of the Burning Sea team has published a preview of the game's new leaderboards system. According to the article, "leaderboards are a way for you to view the top ranked characters based on various statistics that we record. These include stats for PvP (ad-hoc and Conquest), PvE, Economy, Skirmish and Duels, and allow you to see how you score in both positive stats (e.g. wins) and negative stats (e.g. losses)."

The leaderboards page is currently up and running, but Flying Lab Software has emphasized that it is only a preview and is not actually finished. Don't be surprised if you run into some bugs while browsing the page. You can also check out the My Characters preview page, which requires you to be logged in to the site.

The Pirates of the Burning Sea team has announced that a special holiday season live event is scheduled to be held the weekend of Dec. 19 at different times on each server. Players can either assist Nicholas Noël in protecting his rum shipments for his annual Junkanoo feast or aid the evil Henrick Humbug and De Zeetrekkers in stealing the rum.

All participants will earn the unique "Jolly Reveller" title. The holiday event will kick off a schedule of live events that will continue throughout 2010. The event schedule can be found after the jump.

Aegir, the live events coordinator for Pirates of the Burning Sea, answered a number of questions from players regarding the event on the official forums. Aegir reminds players that there will be consequences for their actions during the event, so choose your side wisely.

A lot has happened in the world of Pirates of the Burning Sea in the last few days. First of all, patch 1.20 is now live and introduces the all new Puerto Del Principe. The update also includes multiple bug fixes and some changes to open sea NPC aggro. You can read the full patch notes after the jump.

The eighth episode of the Pirates of the Burning Sea podcast has been released, and this one features Flying Lab CEO Russell "Rusty" Williams and crew discussing Brawling and answering forum questions. In addition, Lead Designer John Grimm has written a dev blog entry outlining how the team creates new environments for the game that contains all sorts of interesting details.

Lastly, Prima has published an updated version of its official Pirates of the Burning Sea game guide. You can download an electronic version of the guide for $19.99 to unlock a code for a new exclusive in-game black iguana.

Flying Lab software is sending a care package to members of the United States military in the form of free game time for Pirates of the Burning Sea. Members of all branches of the military can head over to this page on the game's official Web site and enter their military e-mail address to play the high-seas MMO for six months at no cost. Military personnel with an existing account can add the free time to their subscription.

"The idea to do what we're calling the Care Package initially came about as a result of some posts in our Pirates of the Burning Sea community forums," Flying Lab CEO Russell Williams said in a press release. "One of our players posted about serving in Afghanistan, and it got us thinking about the challenges of trying to play an MMO while in an unpredictable situation like active service. We feel a special gratitude towards the members of the armed forces who take the time to get involved and play our game, in the face of the very difficult job they have to do to keep us all safe."

Members of the U.S. Military have until Nov. 30 to sign up for the six free months of game time.

Patch 1.19 is now live on Pirates of the Burning Sea servers and includes new port battle encounters and a revamped economy tutorial. As we've reported, the two new encounters are Jawbone Bay and Savage Cliffs. In addition, the other encounters now have their own swashbuckling rooms.

Cayo de Marquis has been updated so it no longer looks like Grenville. This is an example of Flying Lab's efforts to replace duplicate towns in the game. You can read the full patch notes after the jump.

The seventh episode of the Pirates of the Burning Sea podcast has been released on the game's official Web site, and Flying Lab CEO Russell "Rusty" Williams and crew talk about the new port battle maps and the upcoming Power and Prestige expansion.

The team also discussed a recent exploit that hit the game as a result of a zone server crash. The exploit allowed players to duplicate items, and rumors have been circulating that Flying Lab banned hundreds of players. In fact, a handful of accounts were temporarily frozen while the team assessed the situation and removed duplicated items. Flying Lab them returned the accounts to the players. If you ever find an exploit in Pirates of the Burning Sea, the team asks that you file a support ticket.

Listen to the 16-minute podcast for more information on the new port battle maps and the expansion. You can also check out our recent interview with Associate Producer Janice Vonitter and Game Designer Greg Hanefeld for Power and Prestige details.

As we reported, Flying Lab Software is adding two new port battle encounters to Pirates of the Burning Sea and giving existing encounters their own swashbuckling rooms. If you're interested in being among the first players to try out these new maps first-hand, all you need to do is participate in the upcoming testbed events. The first is actually being held today at 1 p.m. PDT, while the second will be held tomorrow, Sept. 25, at 11:30 a.m.

The Flying Lab team will be giving out levels and money before the events start so you can prepare your character for the test. Players who participate will be rewarded with an exclusive title and belt. Directions on how to take part in the events can be found below.