No stranger to the online landscape, Disney's CES presentation included word on their future plans to create massive worlds based on many of their licenses.

With Pirates of the Caribbean already well into production (if not due this year), Disney intends to "build more virtual worlds like "Pirates" based on a broad range of our properties." Disney is quick to throw out Toy Story as an example of this, but when they mean broad, think real broad. This may not mean that every game is going to own up to the standard, online RPG format. A "virtual world" can be anything from an online hack-and-slash like Pirates to something of a visual chatroom like MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach.

Disney's first foray into the MMORPG format was a kid friendly action game, Toontown, which is still online to this day and at by last account, fairly competent. Should Disney team-up down the line with some designers worth their chops, we may not insist on groaning when we hear word of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody Online.

Disney Online announced the Mac release -- and an update for PC players -- of its Toontown Online MMO cartoon game. The game lets players create their own cartoon characters to propagate the world; over 15 million Toon characters have been created by PC players.

Both Mac and PC users can access a handful of new "gags," including the old wedding-cake-in-the-face trick. The Mac release runs on PowerPC and Intel chips and is available now. Both versions have a monthly rate of $9.95 and can be downloaded from the Toontown site. A free, three-day trial is also available.

Fans of Captain Jack Sparrow and his motley crew will be wise to keep their eyes peeled this E3. Disney will be unveiling the first images -- along with a playable version -- of Pirates of the Caribbean Online, a massively-multiplayer online game that should be hitting shelves in 2007.

Although a pirate-themed MMO isn't a new idea, taking a film with such a cult following as Pirates of the Caribbean and turning it into a MMORPG could prove a stupendous hit -- as long as it's done right. Disney's VR Studio, the developers behind the family friendly Toontown MMO, are on board for the project -- it's billed as being for "teens to adults" so it'll hopefully have more of a mature feel than Toontown. However, as long as it has Jack Sparrow in, some fans might not care.