Posts Tagged Pirates of the Caribbean Online


The Newb guide to MMORPGs

Introduction

You must think I’m nuts. I downloaded 67 GIGABYTES worth of MMOGs to test. 26 of the suckers, 10 of which I’m focussing on here. As for the other 16? Well, they’re listed at the bottom of the article. If and when I get around to discussing them, they’ll be linked here as well. Let’s just say they weren’t worth my time to review, for one reason or another. Not necessarily because they were bad (although some were beyond bad)… just that I had to choose a sample that would be the games that I’d be most interested in trying out. Besides, it’s not as if one MMO isn’t enough already for most people that actually want a social life. Like you know, a social life that doesn’t involve hitting / or ENTER first.  And I had to pick and choose. So these are the ones I chose:

Dungeon Runners (overview forthcoming)

Guild Wars (overview forthcoming)

Pirates of the Caribbean Online

Everquest II

World of Warcraft (overview forthcoming)

City of Heroes/Villains

Lord of the Rings Online

Runes of Magic

Ryzom

The Chronicles of Spellborn



Happily, I can say that I managed thus far (knock on wood) to avoid severe addiction to any of them. Well, mostly.

The Scope

Before I even get started, I should mention something: I’m a PvEer. I don’t play PvP and it’s not my focus, nor interest. So I didn’t test out any PvP while playing these games. If that’s your thing, these articles may still be of interest to you, but they are talking only in terms of the PvE component of these games. Just thought I’d mention that up front.


I’m not going to be writing hard-core, in-depth reviews of each of these games. If you want reviews of them, the vast majority of these games (perhaps excepting a lot of the free to play ones) have been reviewed ad nauseum elsewhere on the web. What I’m going to do is tell you which ones I think are worth the time downloading and testing. I’ll tell you what I liked, what annoyed me, and what I thought stood out – both in a good and bad way. If you are a newbie, this might be a good place to start before you get your download on.

Just FYI, I don’t really get into that whole ‘role-playing’ business very much. I play these games to get sweet loot. I play to kill monsters.. of some sort or another. I suppose leveling and assign skills or stats has become synonymous with role-playing, which I don’t entirely buy, or take part in. But whatever, that’s for another article.


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Pirates of the Caribbean Online Review

Pirates of the Caribbean Online

State: Final
Website: http://www.piratesonline.com
Developer/Publisher: Disney.com Games
The Pitch: Set sail on the vast blue waters of the Caribbean in search of adventure, fortune, and fame in the world of the infamous Jack Sparrow and the evil Jolly Roger.

That’s reasonably accurate. If you liked the movie and you enjoy playing with stuffed animals, this is likely your game… because this game is targeted squarely at kids, even though there may be enough to like here for adults as well.

 

The Caveat

 

pirates-of-the-caribbean-31The free version of the game limits you in a variety of ways. First and foremost, you must play the game in a window and you are subjected to ads. The maximum resolution for your windowed experience is 1024×768. The game window runs at 1280×1024, with the ads included, but your viewport stays at 1024×768.

In addition, you are exempt from the following:

Unlimited access to all weapons and skills
Create and lead a Pirate guild
Access to advanced ships
Customize your Pirate with clothing, tattoos and more
Create up to 4 avatars
Access to all game chapters and quests
Engage in Boss battle
Access to all the Caribbean islands
Ad-free gameplay

That’s a pretty substantial list of limitations on top of the windowed, ad-riddled game window. A membership will run you $5 for your first month and $10 for every month after that.

 

Unique to Pirates of the Caribbean Online

 

Theme. No elves or dwarves here, no sir. This is chock-full of Pirate-y goodness, with lots of Yarrrr and swabbing of the deck, matey! Of course it’s not completely unique; there’s also Pirates of the Burning Sea, with which it shares the theme. But in the vast sea of Elf-peppered MMOs, a Pirate theme certainly stands out.

Voodoo magic. Well they couldn’t leave magic out entirely, right? That would just be madness! MADNESS! So they threw in a pseudo-hot Voodoo witch doctor to train you up but quick on how to destroy your enemies (which is to say nearly everyone) with glowing balls of voodoo.

Ship combat. Once again, done in Burning Sea. I know. Just ignore that for a moment. Whereas in PotBS Ship combat is its own little strategy game, here it’s more like a car race with guns. There’s not a lot of depth to it, but it’s hella fun when you sink a Galleon 4 levels above you. It’s not super-fast, mind you, but that’s a good thing when you’ve got no crew and you have to shoot the guns yourself.

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