Current News: January 14, 2009 - Updates on the Horizon
 

Updates on the Horizon
January 14 2009

http://a.disney.go.com/pirates/onlin...vider_line.gif
We're making major updates to the Caribbean in 2009 that will cover everything from improving game performance to adding new adventures and features. Playing alongside you for the past year and gathering your feedback, we've created a list of updates and are working very hard to release them as fast as possible.

One of the most frequent player requests is to improve game performance and our first big update is set to help address this. It is being released to the Test Server today and we encourage those players with test access to check it. In this first release, we've changed the layout of Port Royal to help address performance problems some players were having on the island and also to enhance the experience for others.

There are a ton of other updates coming over the next 12-months - Look for information about these updates in this month's newsletter.

SWEET......glad to finally see this on the Disney site. All my pirates are very much looking forward to it.



Robert Darkskull
Pistols N Bladez

:bookishfj7:

*Does happy dance*

Honestly i would like to see this list of stuff they have planned.

I hope they listen to the testers this time around... And I hope that they don't rush things and mess them up in the process.

Awesome! Can't wait!

*Joins the party*

Sweeeeeet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If the kraken and the second story quest doesn't release this year I'll be surprised.

I'll be surprise if they actually do....

I can understand the second story quest but not the kraken.
There's almost 100 animation scenes for the kraken. There are a few where the tentacles get chopped off.(it's not gross)

The only thing left for the kraken is the head.(it's in testing right now)

Awesome!...Finaly a good news from the developers.

Stuff I saw on test!!
 

1) The Town of Port Royal
OMG!!! What they did to Port Royal was unreal!!! It's a labyrinth!!!

Winding streetways that curve back on each other, little dead ends, alcoves, several bridges within the city, archways, a small separate cemetary, and yes a massive maze of a fort takes the place of the original Fort Charles. You no longer have to run up the hill forever to get to it, but you do have to make your way around the multi-level thing. Sort of looks like the inside of the fort in the last movie.. with the people lined up waiting to be hanged.

Hey Edward Edgemenace... this is one time even YOU will have to use your tracking beam and that's just to find Lucinda!

Calling All Dueces Wild.. we will have a blast relocating AFK's!! There is an awesome bridge!

It was actually kind of fun. But to all of you old timers in the game... you know how frustrating it can be yet very easy to answer when a new pirate asks the simplest question such as ... "where can I find sand crabs?

Well.. it's not gonna be so easy to explain to them..lol..not on Port Royal anyways.

2) The Beginning Scenes for Noobs

I took lots of screenies.. even started a new toon to test out the streamlined beginning. The new beginning is great!

They got rid of that awful and time consuming speech about how to operate your treasure chest. You go right to a warehouse to get a sword from Will Turner. Undead even show up for you to start battling.

They tell you what to do with your treasure chest and what to kill as you go. You get started quicker.

Oh and I got a picture of the Dog in the jail. Actually left the jail.. then went back inside to check for him.

3) Clothing

The clothing store has been greatly simplified!!! You no longer have to sift through 35 pages of clothing. The show one of each style, but then have a box with a "C" for you to click on that pulls out a color pallet... just like the color selections you had at the beginning. So you can try on a piece of clothing and just switch colors til you find what you like.

There is also a box you click to enter a code... I'm not sure if we will be getting codes for clothing drops or if we need the codes to get useless, free, ugly items in the future.

4) The Chat.......grrrrrrr
I'm not sure.. but I really think they purposely messed this up. There are no more tabs. They say it will show appropriately. I couldn't really test it out cause there was no one I knew who was on to test the whisper or crew functions. I know for a fact there was no "+" when I clicked on it to check. And it absolutely wouldn't let me type a number. So went can't tell each other "Hey Capt, I need 5 Barracuda's." So we will see how that flies after we get a chance to test it and hope that the dev's listen.

Great features about the chat are:
-- The emotes pop up when you click on the skull.. no more scrolling to pull out the emotes.
-- The phrases pop up when you click on what used to be the "+" box.

5) New features when you click on a pirates name. (You know ..like someone in the crowd)

When you click on a pirates name, a box just like a mini dxd profile pops up. I did not get to check it much... lol..that was one time I crashed (while trying to get screenshots and check out the profile box).

Well my friends..I will try to post some screenshots tomorrow. Just thought I'd give people a hint at what the Devs have done.

I did not see anything with new content... but my highest pirate on test is a lvl 12.. so she is too busy just trying to survive fighting Veterans!

***As much as everyone would like to get new stuff... I too hope that they let us get a good chance to test it BEFORE they release it on open. And even more importantly, I hope they listen to us when we submit our feedback. ***

My only concern with that statement - is that its 12 months away....

I'll try to list a more detailed list of findings tonight as the 'Graveyard Gate Missing Textures' kept crashing me - but only if I approach from the north side (The Mansion) and not from the south side (through town and past the fort entrance).

As with almost all updates from Disney in the past I for one hope that the game developers have not squeezed in even more glitches for people to exploit the game.

Everyone in SVS are still reeling from the blow Disney dealt when fixing the repair glitch whilst sailing because now every captain who launches a ship in SVS not familiar with the workaround will not be able to repair his ship when damaged.

Lots of the glitches in the game were not accidental and placed there on purpose for one reason or the other by the game developers themselves be it for personal reasons to give an unfair advantage whilst privateering themselves or to combat another particular problem during game play.

Almost every update in the past while kudos for fixing problems that were already present sometimes create even worse problems then the ones they fixed.

For instance the not being able to repair ships when in SVS.

And Disney should add the workaround for that particular problem in the hint section for when you launch a ship in SVS (the load screen prior to boarding your ship) you know the screen people see forever when Disney freezes during an ammo supply run to get back to your ship in SVS

I hope they make a new boss battle!
 

With Davy Jones and the Kraken. I also hope i can beat the first one. lol. Lvl 36 and i still haven't beat it.

As for the Kraken not even on the test server? Bummer.

I thought there were supposed to be regular sea monsters in the game? Don't need a major large kraken how about a couple smaller ones or a Nessie or a big flippin shark like JAWS?

I for one wanna sea something big in the sea that wants to EAT me for dinner.

Is that to much to ask for?

aw come on guys at Disney if you can spend time making Christmas decorations and fireworks can a guy get a lil sea monster?

make it that big one from CLOVERFIELD ..ya ya that's the ticket wanna fight that one

Is there a Davy Jones Quest? which one was it? is it a new one ?

Don't remember doing it as far as I can tell finished all quests months ago. do you have to go somewhere to start it or does it come up in your quest list automatically at some point like the weapon quests?

To Clear everything up, Theres is not currently a Davy Jones Quest the closest thing to it is Pherhaps in the BP Quest you have to get a Key from Isla Tormenta.

And Arioch, About the Monsters from other Movies coming to the game, Disney can't do that that starts going in to copyright laws.

Hope it helped!

Maybe I'm just a little too sensitive, but this sounds an awful lot like griefing to me. Sure, it might be amusing for your guild; however, someone may have logged on early to meet up with friends in a particular spot and gone off to make a sandwich (or something else) while waiting.

When you play this little prank please make sure it's easy for the other pirate to get back to the spot that they were in. You'll be long gone; they won't know how they got there; and sure won't be able to report you for being nasty.

They will. There's already music for beating the Kraken boss battle.
There's also a few files for the kraken called kraken_locators. When you open these up there's nothing. These "locators" are most likely used for picking up players while they're moving around.

I'm not sure on the statement - but - from what I know of DW is that its of their own they play the AFK game with (and maybe a few of their friends ;) ) - and not of complete strangers... not 'their style' to do unknown AFK'ers.... :)

No, it's not our style. We push each other around ;)

Absolutely misunderstood what I meant, lostinthelab. Btw as an RN... I love your name.

The AFK relocation is a guild and friend thing. We have a guild rule that if we find you afk..
we get to relocate you. And we try to be as creative as possible. And of course we take screenshots.

My close non-guild friends know that I will be sorely tempted if I find them afk. And take it for the fun that it is.


Sorry if it sounded like griefing.

i agree with u on that one

I am curious how this could be justified grieving.

Did the person tell you to stop?
It takes a good while to move a person very much and they still will be near where they started.
Only possible issue I can see is if someone was dragging them into critters.
I know guilds like we had done do this a lot amongst friends, and really the main area this happens. After all, even as bored as I am with nothing to do, I don't just go push for a hour on someone I don't know.

My big question here on this is: if it is OK for someone to come jump a critter you are fighting, dropping your rep gain from 400, 500 to 90 or so, and continue even when asked to fight their own fights. This is OK by many for what ever reasons many have argued.

How could it be argued it is grieving pushing ANYONE who doesn't even ask to stop?

Lol.. which mod gets to move the AFK part of the discussion to another thread... cause the topic seems to be getting hijacked.

I would respond to Poison Elf but believe the discussion doesn't go in this thread.

My previous post, to lostinthelab, was just a response to his/her griefing concerns.

well lets see if we can't get it back on track shall we? :D

My main concern is 12 months - its a big window... you can say almost anything ya want and have a whole year to produce it... and even then by that time dump 1/2 of what you said because no one will remember anyway...

Will the letter be just another 'riddle ramble'? Or will it actually outline some details on what's to come? This is what I hope for... but our chances of it happening? Slim...

I'll still be watching my inbox though (like the fool I am) for the news :)

I agree Max. 12 months is a long time. I would like to see some kind of timeline of approximate dates (not exact dates, just "around ___/___/___ there will be a new ________ added to the game"). It may not be feasible for them to do that, but, I keep seeing players leave for other games because there is no "real" updates about what is going on. People want information, and without getting a valid response from Disney's GM's, they quickly tire of the whole game.

The Feats of Strength Contest has really put off a lot of people because of the poor way that it was handled. Fireworks are nice, but is not what most consider "new content". The Founder's Feast was good in that there was actually a benefit to players for attending.

I dunno, but if something good doesn't come along, I see a lot more people leaving for other games. The PR makeover will be fun for a few days while we all explore it, but even that will wear off quickly.

This game has so much potential. It would be a shame for it to go by the wayside due to lack of content and information, as well as poor planning for "contests".

I 100% agree.....we've talked about content for sometime now...(the lack of). We shall see.......


Robert Darkskull
Pistols N Bladez

:jack-sparrow1:

We need to take into consideration that POTCO has a small development staff.
When POTCO first came out it took three years in the making. Now POTCO is on it's forth year of development and we're still not seeing much.

All these "contests" and "curses" are obviously(I hope) meaningless things to distract us from what the developers are really working on.
I just hope it's worth the wait.

The Port Royal update has its' ups and downs. There are less lag problems with it now but look what it did. That Port Royal from the movies we liked so much is gone. Sure there were some issues with it but couldn't the problems have been solved other than changing the layout?

Players are getting bored. If the second story quest doesn't come out this year then I think we'll see a huge drop in player numbers.
My question is, why is it taking so long for the developers to add more content?

A lot of the things Disney comes up with to perk up our interest in the game only last for a short while and when it is no longer effective they should move on to something new.

For instance the whole curse thing was entertaining for Halloween and all but it got REAL OLD REAL QUICK. Because that whole doom and gloom sky affect ruined the nice blue sailing skies for MONTHS.

Not only that for Fully MASTERED pirates who only do sailing and SVS the doom and gloom skies added a TON of extra graphics that loaded down the servers and created major lagging (over and beyond the normal SVS lagging issues)

I for one would hope this event does not show up till Halloween if ever again.

I like to sail on clear blue skies with minimal lagging and until Disney creates SVS only servers (HINT) the doom and gloom curse thing is ANTI clear sailing.

Even though it is off subject the whole AFK thing should have a short time limit lets say 30 minutes and have a timer that only the player can see above the pirate.

If he or she does not move in the time alloted you get booted from game/server.

Why? ? ? 30 min is more enough time for a nature calling visit or a snack break and if you need longer simply come back move the mouse and blam ya get another 30 minutes.

IF Disney regulated the AFK pirates then quite possibly all the server resources used to keep them online could be re routed towards making players already in the game and active not suffer lag issues or get routinely booted (abassa server)

there I said it AFK pirates are hogging resources and by DISNEY even coming up with the whole AFK above the pirate says they are fine with it.

Disney needs to get their priorities straight. Cater to the players in the game instead of the players Asleep or at the MALL

updates?????

ya i agree the game does kinda stink and the lag is horrible