No, it's not talk like a pirate week, that is of course unless you logged on to PiratesOnline.com, Disney's entry into the world of MMORPG's. Now some of us have been waiting for something like this since Sid Meier did his Pirates game back in the day. Buried treasure, battles at sea, daring raids... ::sigh:: Trust Disney to take a fun concept, and grind it haltingly into the ground... HARD. Now you'd think they could have pulled it off, after all, they turned what was supposed to be a walkthrough attraction into a fun ride, that eventually spawned a movie (no one but depp could have made that movie) which had enough force to spawn 2 sequels...
But in typical Disney fashion, in the process of turning movies to games, they completely ruin them. It's not the abuse of the the storyline that killed it, it's not even the standard dumbing down that disney does to all it's games, or even the poor attempts at removing the 'violent aspects' of the game (although it was painful). Nope what's killing this game is the rush to market, it's just not ready. The content in the game is scarce, the bugs are something I'd never imagine in a game released to the public, the devs randomly take the game servers down with 5 min advance notice and no way to find out when it'll be back up, and the average lag... OMFG.
That said it does have a few redeeming qualities, it's a disney game in which you kill, destroy, sink, plunder, and pillage.... the irony alone is a reason to play. You can also gamble, but it get's better, because you can CHEAT at gambling. During the course of the game certain quests and enemies will give you playing cards which you can swap into your own hand while playing blackjack or 'Tortuga'(Texas) Hold 'em. Sadly the cards you swap out are lost. The best part of the game though is the sailing, defeating other ships, and getting paids for it. Sadly basic (free) access accounts won't ever get more than the lowest level ship, though with a little practice she's quite able, it's not something you want to stick with.
Unfortunately, for all that's good the bad sure is bad. Bugs that crash you on loading when you sail a certain ship, freezes at loading screens where the game continues but the screen doesn't, crashes on firing cannons at sea, entering certain areas, bugged quests (some of which have been completely disabled, frequently laggy servers, lack of content (try watching 15 ships swarm on the same NPC boat for a kill and see your frame rate start to be measured in minutes). Nevermind their obscene memory recommendations or the fact that you're stuck installing to your root drive (actually you can copy it to another drive manually). all this for 10$US a month? hmmm nah, I think I'll wait and see if they fix it and add more content.
But by all means check it out... it has so much potential, the problems won't seriously annoy you immediately, and really is a fun concept for a game http://piratesonline.com
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