El Patron's Sword on Open over 24 hours...now what?

[Edward Edgemenace]

It has been 24 hours since a friend got El Patron's lost sword that changes him into a ghost. Now, 24 hours later, pretty much every pirate that wanted it, has it.

Now what?

Disney seems to be adding a plethora of mini-games (e.g. near Darby Drydock, in Tortuga graveyard, etc.) Target audience for the mini-games obviously is 8 year-old boys. Boys with no pants? Can't have 8-yr old potty humor without underwear!

So what happened to the adventure family game this started out as? Why is Disney so militantly refusing to add the second story quest that they've promised over and over, each year? 2007, 2008, 2009 and now 2010 they still talk of the Kraken. Why is Disney negating the purpose of doing each quest, opting instead for instant-gratification weapon drops?

Dozens (hundreds?) of new weapons, way too powerful for combat with the existing enemies...for what? To castigate basic members EVEN MORE? Popularity contests? Special tonics to re-enable the speed glitch since they never trapped the 3rd party applications on the server side? (Which completely ignores the fact that every variation of "speed" de-stabilizes the servers.)

And gold? If you play blackjack for only a couple hours swapping cards, it is trivial to get to the new maximum (200,000 gold doubloons.) Camping on General Darkheart is nearly as fast.

A little more lag, with every update...especially updates that claim to reduce lag. Game freezes absurdly common now, even for computers with double or quadruple their posted minimum specs. Militant refusal from Disney to release memory consumed with each scene change (yet loading screens now take 30 to 90 seconds for no reason whatsoever.)

Game-loading that used to take mere seconds now takes a half hour or more. Standard window controls disabled supposedly to prevent glitches, without actually preventing the same glitches (hint: server-side heartbeat check, not partial client side non-standard manipulations.) Silly window resizing at arbitrary points (login, pirate selection, etc.) just to be annoying.

Essential features like teleporting to a friend disabled ("You are already there!") since they don't know how people do glitches in the first place. Bugs like "Can't teleport while in battle" made worse instead of being fixed.

Exploits like ship-invincibilty from "Take Cover" never corrected. Timing of "take cover" made 3 seconds worse instead of being corrected to activate immediately.

Ships redesigned to give war frigate broadsides too much accuracy, while breaking accuracy of war galleon broadsides? Why? So that people learn to rely on the front cannons that are only useful when your crew size is 3 to 5 people? (Useless when solo or with only 1 friend aboard, extremely harmful with a full crew and a captain that relies on them.)

Body types changed from the original attractive cartoons, to child-like body forms, to encourage what? Original body types no longer available, just to be elitist? Reduction of "triangles" supposedly to reduce lag, instead causing severely more?

Server-side lag issues rarely addressed. Game-rule lags (pirate stuns, ship stuns, etc.) never exposed so that people can tell why their game suddenly slows down in PvP or SvS. Over a dozen types of stun possible, only 3 currently exposed when your pirate is hit.

Boss Battle that was originally a tremendous challenge, now made extremely trivial, extremely easy. Not sure it is even possible to lose a boss battle at all now. Synchronization of cut-scenes (that used to be perfect) utterly destroyed for no reason.

Storms never added to the game. Hurricane sea battles never added. Thirty foot sea swell waves never added. Fog and smog (to make my eyes hurt) added instead. Server times never synchronized to make the top of the hour be "pirate midnight" consistently. (1 hour real life = 1 pirate day.)

Eye-patches, peg-legs and parrots never added to the game. Tricorn hats that used to be starter items no longer allowed to be worn, even for pirates that originally had them as starter clothing.

Leaderboard pages that never update. DisneyXD that is always out of date. Guild rosters always inaccurate. Guild-control features never added; guilds still being "deleted." Player-friends lists that clear themselves every time you sign on test.

Chat-window delays caused by a malfunctioning text filter. Random, arbitrary application of 24 hour suspensions. Rep-stealing made easier instead of harder or being solved. Lack of chat transcripts being e-mail to parent's account (or even being saved locally.)

Chat colors changed randomly from previously high-contrast fonts and colors, to text that often is invisible now (good example: stand in pool near the thrall captains and try to read anything; guild, local or crew.) No user options to change the colors in F7 game options.

Simple things like "fury blindness" never solved. Special effects animations over-animated, made more glaring and painful to the eye, even at lowest setting. Crucial game animations (e.g. explosive charges) made completely invisible when at anything less than "high" special effects level.

Complete redesign of weapon and inventory system resulting in even worse lack of inventory space. I do not know anyone that can play for a single hour without having to either ignore drops or find a place to sell off their inventory. Four icons added to the bottom right of the screen for no apparent reason, except to disable working weapon keys F5 and F6 and to hide the total gold for no reason.

I really miss the original game. Better ships. Lower level caps. Better islands with wide open spaces. Better glitches (in that you could teach someone a glitch fairly easily, leveling the playing field, instead of now, only a handful of people like me that are able to go invincible, sail inside islands, fly, etc.) Better caves - new caves are claustrophobic, too dreary and have odd rock formations for what purpose? (Stalactites always match stalagmites in the real world.) Infinitely better quests, that actually made some sense and introduced every island, every NPC.

Now that we have the "lost relic" weapons, what's left to do? PvP? No thanks. PvP is now a measure of how expensive your computer is, not a measure of how much you know about how to play the game. Teaching kids about "fairness" or to be a good sport, is pretty much the opposite of POTCO's PvP.

Seriously? No new quests? There should have been a quest for each new weapon. But with the release conducted so hurriedly, Disney has painted themselves into a corner. That aside, now what? Mini games will be interesting for about 5 minutes each.

Intellectual property law being what it is, only Disney is in the position to re-release the original game. I honestly can't believe it could be that hard for them to do. Warts and all, the original game was quite superior to the current version. Come on Disney - at least release a stand-alone version of the original game! Even better - how about a few servers that run the original game?