With Disney recently making the executive decision to reboot the multi-billion dollar Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it's likely pirate peripherals will follow. The original movie series had books and video games as tie-ins, and made appearances in the Kingdom Hearts series. But there’s one video game peripheral that’s lesser-known -- the massively multiplayer online role-playing game Pirates of the Caribbean Online.
Pirates of the Caribbean Online (POTCO) was published by Disney Online. It was announced in 2005 for an intended 2006 release to coincide with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Delays pushed back its official release to 2007, and in 2013 -- a scant six years after release -- it was shut down along with many of Disney’s other MMOs. But with the franchise getting a new lease on life thanks to the reboot, it’s time that this beloved MMO gets its own revival.
What made this MMO so popular is what makes any spinoff of a beloved franchise so popular: the desire to see more of that world. POTCO allowed players to explore locations from the film and interact with its characters, presenting a rich and deep world with plenty of content to keep them invested. It had high-level locations to build up to, several skills to level up and minigames to invest in that provided notoriety (the game's version of experience points) and items to use or sell. And of course, there were weapons and treasure to find scattered throughout the vast world.
And, yes, POTCO's world was vast -- the big-name islands from the movie, such as Port Royal and Tortuga, were present with a sizeable amount of land to explore. Surrounding them was a plethora of other islands, each with their own unique aspects to explore. To get to them, players had to sail the high seas, although there was the option to teleport to one of the three main islands. It could take upwards of a quarter-hour to perform a straight-shot from one corner of the ocean map to the other -- that is, if you somehow avoided enemy ships. The game contained a vast and immersive world populated by the characters that fascinated fans of the movies.
The games didn’t stop there either. When players first start the game, they are introduced to Captain Jack Sparrow in jail. Upon completing the tutorial and sailing off from the prison island, they'll encounter the game's main antagonist: Jolly Roger. According to the supplemental material, Jolly Roger was tricked by Captain Jack and now vows to get his revenge. Part of the player's goals in the game was to help to beat back the undead voodoo pirate's legion of baddies, which ranged from skeleton pirates to hexed alligators to walking stumps that towered over the player.
Throughout all of this, the game immersed players in the style of the movies. While the game was admittedly low resolution, with an intuitive UI and fun gameplay the average player was quick to forgive and get lost in the Caribbean. Lag was an oft-persistent problem, especially during Jolly Roger’s attacks on the major islands of Port Royal, Tortuga and Padres Del Fuego, but that was also a testament to the game’s popularity.
Despite being neglected by the marketing department, POTCO had a healthy fan base up to and past its closing, to the point that fans have recreated the game through online versions like Pirates Online Retribution and The Legend of Pirates Online. These pirated versions of the game are entirely free and recreated with painstaking detail -- an impressive testament to how deeply the original MMO was enjoyed.
Disney's announced reboot provides the perfect opportunity to revive this beloved MMO. The original was so well-crafted with its sprawling environments and ability to keep players engaged and online that it wouldn't take more than a fresh coat of paint to bring back something worth players' time.
The original POTCO had everything a good MMO needs: a multitude of minigames and skills to level up, treasure, and items to find and a large world to find and grind. The game's low resolution was an executive decision to allow for more players to access the game simultaneously with ease, but with the average strength of low-end computers exceeding what was possible in the mid-2000s, a modern reboot could handle some much-needed graphical improvements.
It's also possible that a new POTCO will need new characters and new locations depending on how the reboot handles the franchise. Some characters might be consolidated or done away with, locations and their appearances might change, and lore might change. Since POTCO heavily referenced the movies, it would likely tie-in with the reboot, meaning quite a bit would have to change to fit the new world the pirates are navigating.
Whether or not we get a new Pirates of the Caribbean MMO depends heavily on Disney. POTCO was made at the height of the MMORPG genre's popularity and was intended to release during the height of the film franchise's popularity as well. Shutting down all its MMOs in 2013 and hardly giving the games any attention beforehand marketing-wise suggests that it wasn't very interested in continuing with such games. However, online PC games are experiencing a resurgence in popularity, as are nostalgic games from POTCO's era like Club Penguin. With this in mind, it would make sense for this forgotten gem to show up again on the horizon, especially as Disney tries to reboot the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.