Playfish/EA's newest Facebook title, Pirates Ahoy, landed on Facebook shores in early July. For the last two months, it's clear that the game has proven fun, but hasn't truly stuck with players. But last week, membership in the game skyrocketed by 3 million monthly average users, and 137k daily average users.

Such a change can be attributed to the fact that -- a week before the increase -- Playfish released "The Cold North" cross-promotion between Pirates Ahoy and Hotel City. So the promotion is clearly working. Now let's see what's so popular...
To unlock "The Cold North" in Hotel City, you must collect 15 Golden Pirate Flags. Each level up in Pirates Ahoy gets you one flag, so if you're already at Level 15, the location should already be unlocked for you.

Leveling up 15 times in Pirates Ahoy is no simple task. The game employs an energy bar, and for the most part, you're going to run out of energy quick. This will leave you stewing around for the bar to refill, or petitioning friends and fellow players to send you more food to recoup. All this, of course, is pretty standard stuff. But if you want to see the action for yourself, here's our Getting Started video for the game.

After the unlock, you'll also have access a Pirate Tavern, which nets you 160 Hotel Points and 160 Coins per hour. The offer isn't clear whether the tavern will be free, or if it'll simply be unlocked for you to buy. But once I unlock mine, I'll be sure to update this post and let folks know.