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-   -   Reminiscence (https://www.piratesonlineforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40414)

ukebec 09-10-2013 04:33 AM

Reminiscence
 
Well, as much as I hate it, it seems appropriate now to raise a mug and toast the old days.

This is going to be a bit painful. I've seen some folks I used to be fast friends with visiting here lately, but I think to most of you, I'm a stranger.

Although I've actually spent very little time in-game lately, PotCO has been very important to me since its inception.

I'm a Founder. Guess I still will be for a few days.

I found PotCO in March of 2006. I signed up to be notified of what was going on - it was still Beta then, but I'd found it too late to join Beta. In November of that year I began going through a really bad patch. My mom had been diagnosed with late-stage COPD and had been given 6 months to live. Which was unfortunately accurate. She passed in July of 2007 and I found myself adrift.

According to my emails, I signed up to play PotCO on 11/17/2007. I later made the deadline to become a founder in December of that year, I want to say it was the 5th, and have played off and on ever since, more off than on lately.

So this game has a particular resonance for me. First of all, it was the first MMORPG I'd ever played. Actually, I had to look up the definition of MMORPG.

Secondly, it was something of a lifeline for me. I'd been my mom's caregiver and I was low and wiped out after she died. I'd seen part of Dead Man's Chest on t.v. while she was sick, and loved it. I thought PotCO would be a great diversion. And it was.

I've made these comments here before, but it was such a different game then. When I went unlimited the Pearl battle was offline. They were trying to repair it. The islands were different - the old designs and there was no Raven's Cove or Tormenta or the Spanish and French islands. You had a time clock running on your sailing time - you could sail for just one hour. If you didn't make port before your hour was up, your ship sank and you lost your bounty and went to jail.

But it wasn't so awful, because you could swim to any island you wanted to go to. You weren't "on the radar" of any enemy ships, so you just swam when you were too broke to repair your ship. You could swim from Cuba to Padres, I kid you not.

There was such a sweet Giant Crab glitch on Driftwood (I think - maybe Rum Runners)- if you stood ankle deep in the water you could just level your weapons up like a mad person and they never fought back!

I don't remember what year it was, but Disney opened up test to anyone who wanted to sign up during a two-hour window one morning. I was ecstatic! I wanted to be a tester and was thrilled to get it. And then I saw what was going on. Obvious, blatant things I was reporting were going without fixes. Still wrong to this day. Go to Padres and look at the sign above the door to Ferrera's Blacksmith Shop as you come off the main dock, in the building row to your right. It's hung over the wrong door. Has been since they re-designed Padres. They never bothered to fix it.

I'm not going to lie - my guilds had some epic Hide and Seek games on glitched Ghost Kingshead - but I also reported it as a glitch. They fixed that. As well as the "behind the fence grenade leveling glitch" there. They fixed the stuff that wasn't that big a deal but let hackers reign free.

As far as I know you can still, if you're diligent, slide through the main town walls on Padres, onto what used to be known as the back beach. As a tester I was reporting this stuff left and right, but being ignored.

It's really gutting, now, to log in and see only 15 servers, and only 2 of those are Ideal. And one of those is Abassa. There used to be, what?, 30? And you'd be lucky to find one quiet.

Thanksgiving - used to be called Founders Day. Disney actually asked Founders players to come out and act as Ambassadors for the game and mentor other players. And I did. Gladly! I still do, whenever I log in. As a Founder I've always felt a duty to try and role-play and guide other players. To me, it was both a responsibility and an honor. The last two years, whenever I logged into the game, most players thought I was a GM - I had to keep explaining what the gold name means.

All of this is just sad to me. Here's the very first MMORPG I ever played, which I love so much, although I've been so frustrated with how much better it can be. The music! There was even a mobile app for a while where you could win music to play in the bars in-game - I don't even know if that works anymore, but it was great.

I soloed the Pearl once. You haven't been able to do that for a long while. The game forces you to have a crew now, but for a while you could try it. It was amazing, running all over the decks. What a phenomenal sense of achievement when I beat it!

This was such a good game. It had so much potential, as has been said. If they'd bothered to actually improve it, to solve the catastrophic lag issues and memory leaks and deliver more content, it could have gone on indefinitely.

There was the PotC On Stranger Tides movie - what a perfect tie-in, cross-promotional opportunity to bring new players into the game. But they didn't bother.

I was raised as a Disney kid - one of the first movies I remember seeing was Peter Pan. I've had many friends tell me how they hate Disney's blatant mercenary consumerism and lack of integrity.

Now I get it.

After hearing this news that Disney is just slamming this sucker shut, I can't help but hear Captain Jack in my head, justifying his actions with one word: "Pirate!"

Yeah. That's the part Disney got right.

Sarah 09-10-2013 03:24 PM

Aww, Bec...made me a little teary.

*Dirt

Many fond memories
xoxox

Cannonfury 09-10-2013 03:58 PM

Thanks for sharing! BTW you can listen to POTCO music here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-I2t...pXnuk8APaY7SSw

CarribeanThunder 09-10-2013 10:02 PM

Manly tears were shed upon reading your post, Ukebec. It is such an unfortunate thing to see this game go.
No. Not just unfortunate. It's absolutely horrible. The kin of Disney's MMORPGs is being slaughtered mercilessly.


This is the tune that started it all for me. The song that brought me closer to the ocean than my ships' hulls.
The song that made me a pirate.
It is probably, above all, the most memorable thing from this game. I would often just set sail and not touch the helm of the ship simply to hear this song. Then, before the hour was up, port, and then set sail again.
And now, in the final days of the game, I continue to listen to this song. And I leave it here for the lot of you to reminisce. To take yourselves back to the golden days of the great game.

John243 09-11-2013 08:41 PM

Good old days? I started around January 23, 2008, and what good days those were. Still wear my skull cap they gave out to all Unlimited Access members from back then.

Where to start about what it was like though, how about when everyone was doing the story quest instead of leveling weapons? Or better yet when not many people had something larger than a Light class ship so you went to the beach and asked "Who wants to go on my Galleon" and instantly get a full crew?

Being able to sail next to someone else's ship, click on their pirate, and TP to them.

Sailing to the end of the world, getting on the top cannon of a War Galleon, then walking off the ship for the flying glitch.

Kingshead invincibility glitch, ghost Kingshead.

The hill behind the beach on the original Tortuga that you could get to.

Hiding behind the fence at Kingshead as you mentioned to level grenades, or the wall in the Padres Mines.

Farming the Juggernaut behind Padres for quick gold.

Only getting new weapons once you reached a certain level with your current one.

No SvS, no jumpers in PvP.

Rushing to port because you only had a minute left before your ship sank :P

Searching for Marauders to sink for the Story quest because the Ray of Light didn't help you locate them.

War Galleons held 16 cargo, and War Frigates only 12, 65k gold cap so having 3 War Frigates or 2 War Frigates and a War Galleon was not uncommon.

There were no bosses, most people went to the top of Kingshead and used the invincibility glitch if they wanted to level a weapon and master it.

That's all I can think of right now

Nate Swordwalker 09-17-2013 03:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CarribeanThunder (Post 380365)
Manly tears were shed upon reading your post, Ukebec. It is such an unfortunate thing to see this game go.
No. Not just unfortunate. It's absolutely horrible. The kin of Disney's MMORPGs is being slaughtered mercilessly.


This is the tune that started it all for me. The song that brought me closer to the ocean than my ships' hulls.
The song that made me a pirate.
It is probably, above all, the most memorable thing from this game. I would often just set sail and not touch the helm of the ship simply to hear this song. Then, before the hour was up, port, and then set sail again.
And now, in the final days of the game, I continue to listen to this song. And I leave it here for the lot of you to reminisce. To take yourselves back to the golden days of the great game.

You and me both, brother.

ukebec 09-18-2013 03:23 AM

Thank you, Thunder. Really. I just love hearing that. At least some of the music from in-game will still exist outside. Some of the game-specific music will be lost, but this helps.


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