Last week, at the Bay Area Fencing Center, I got a chance to play Disney Online's Pirates of the Caribbean Online. With its variety of activities, the MMO is targeted at a more intermediate, casual audience than World of Warcraft and other online games. Beyond level grinding players can engage ship battles, venture through quests from characters in the Pirates movies, play card games, and try other pirate-based objectives.
Pirates Online is based on the Toontown Online engine, meaning that a fairly old PC can still play. (Final requirements are still uncertain, but a P3 800 with 256MB RAM is the target.) But because of the low entry, the graphics are far from current standard; I saw a lot of blocky shapes and simple gradients. While good graphics would be ideal, I thought the visuals sufficiently conveyed the world.
The Toontown engine's recent Mac conversion will also benefit Apple's gamers; Pirates Online will be released for OS X. The developers were excited about Mac prospects and hope to get the game out at the same time as the PC launch in the Spring, but Disney Interactive's official stance is that a Mac game is coming, but without any timeline.
I had fun exploring Pirates of the Caribbean Online, taking the helm of ships, shouting arcane seafaring phrases, and swashbuckling. Keep reading to learn about pirate garb, fluid fighting, and massive ship battles.
To begin the pirate life, players design their character, much like any other MMO. I could choose from broken noses and other warped characteristics, but the developers were uncertain about pirate mainstays like eye-patches, peg-legs, hooks, tattoos, shoulder-parrots, and helper-monkeys. (Such things may be in the final game, but the representatives from developer VR Studio seemed non-committal.)
With a piraty character -- or as close as I could get -- I explored the landscape, beach, and fought hordes of skeleton monsters. The combat felt responsive and fresh; unlike other MMOs, I swung my sword every time I clicked the mouse, unless I clicked too quickly. If I timed it right, I could attack at the end of each motion and string together more powerful flourishes. Players will also be able to fight other players -- with their consent -- if the monsters get too repetitive.
While I relied mostly on my cutlass, I used a voodoo doll and other pirate-centric attacks, coupled with a few random weapons like bombs I lobbed from a distance. Each weapon can be customized, creating dozens of combinations.
Pirates Online interests me -- while a game like World of Warcraft is less appealing -- because of its casual accessibility. The goal is to become a "notorious" pirate, but players choose several methods like sword-fights, playing cards, and sea battles, to define their idea of a model scoundrel.
I grew bored fighting skeletons and heeded the call of the open sea. Depending on a character's ability and wealth, players choose from three ship classes with three options each. The developers also said that gamers would be able to customize a vessel with special sails and other markings.
Like the rest of the game, the sailing is meant to be casual and accessible most; the boats drive like cars without concern for tack or wind-speed. A single player can pilot a ship and launch its cannons, but the process should be much easier with a crew.
The demo was sparsely populated -- so I couldn't find a crew -- but the final version of the game should support a boat of about 12 to 16 players, with each one individually aiming a cannon. These weapons shoot a range of loads from generic canon balls to flaming blasts that ignite an enemy's deck. My favorite weapon launches a grappling hook that ratchets an enemy vessel to boarding distance. At that point, the crews can storm each others' ships for close-quarters combat.
Pirates of the Caribbean Online will be out in Spring, 2007 as a downloadable game with a $9.95 monthly fee. Disney Online will also offer the game in an ad-supported, free version that will give players about a third of the total quests and areas to play. The company hasn't yet defined what that will mean, but the non-paying players will be able to interact with the paid gamers.
