A question here :-

Pirates of the Caribbean Online was a unique game. Unique because you could sail the seas in your own ship which could be upgraded with materials you'd plundered. Unique because you could sail with a pirate player crew, loot and explore, fight in ship vs ship battles, fight the notorious Jolly Roger in regular invasions of the undead, quest, pvp and take part in mini games to hone your skills.

It was a small mmorpg with a vibrant, lively and creative community who loved living the life of a pirate alongside players from all over the world and of all ages as well as being able to exist in the same virtual world as Jack Sparrow, Barbossa, Tia Dalma and the Dog!

There is no game like it in existence, no mmorpg that comes even close.

What are the chances of Gog being able or willing to resurrect our beloved game?

Bloody unlikely. Can't imagine GOG have the resources or capability to host any MMORPG, and I very much doubt that, if they were going to do it, it would be for such a niche title...

Are you aware that your question has been the source of mocking and entertainment on this very forum?

Unless that MMO of yours is somehow DRM free, which is unlikely, no number of wishlist votes will bring it back. Even if it did bring it back and set it for sale, they wouldn't host an official server, and the ones who would normally host it (that is, the developing company) are the ones who shut it down, so it wouldn need to have some kind of fan server going on.

Basically, don't count on it.

Look. You can mock all you like, most of those posts were likely written by kids who genuinely miss the game, much like Toontown Rewritten or Pixie Hollow, all of which were closed by Disney at the same time.

We're just trying to explore the possibilities of ever being able to play this game again and Gog seemed to be one of them.

What those comments do is highlight why PoTCO had such a good community, we're not interested in taking the piss out of anyone else or knocking their idea of a good game. That's not why we're here.

The trouble is that the server-side parts were only running on one server (or server farm or whatever) in the world and never left the Publisher's premises unlike other games that were sold all over the world - there's a good chance that the server side doesn't even EXIST any more!
In a world where people are willing to give up their free time to work on projects like MAME, DOSBox SCUMMVM and nGLiDE to preserver gaming history and keep everything working, it's sad that it looks like these MM games may, simply, disappear, but that's looking like the reality...

Just letting you know, so you get an idea of how unlikely it is for it to come back through GOG. I think both those threads should explain you why.

It's not about taking the piss out of anyone. MMOs are, by definition, games with an expiration date: You can only play them for as long as the company hosting them finds it profitable. After that, it's over. The best you can get is a fan server and try to gather old players, but even that has limits. It's completely different from the oldies GOG sells, that I play by myself whenever I want.

You, and many others, liked that game, that much is clear. Unfortunately, disney doesn't think that's enough and there's nothing anyone can do about it. And honestly, if GOG is going to put effort into the disney catalogue, something like this should be quite low on the priority list even before its MMO nature comes into play. Disappointing as it may be, I honestly don't think the solution you were looking for is here.

and you have in fact found one of the best communities on the internet.

know that any mocking / humour inspired by the wishlist entry for PotCO (a dubious shortening if the name I might add! :)) were entirely harmless and more in the disbelief of the amount of entries / comments in such a short period.

as to the game coming here its highly unlikely due to it being an MMO - though, with the Galaxy client promising cross platform multiplayer, I suppose there might be a glimmer of hope.

If you really want GOG to do it though, you might be better off tracking down exactly who owns the rights (as sometimes these things are not as clear as "Disney owns it" - it could be acase of the studio that made it actually owns the code and theres some legal dispute with Disney locking it in a legal limbo) and finding out what level of DRM is involved.

that would present a better chance of the game having any hope of coming here in the first place. :)


Edit: and what they said too! ^

Thanks for that 'glimmer' :)

Appreciate that and your advice about tracking down the rights.. that's a slim possibility, but the whole franchise being owned by Disney means it's probably down to them in the end as well. The characters from the movies were featured in the game itself.

Well, at the very least we're raising awareness that there still is a demand for 'niche' pirate games, especially mmo's, a genre which is very poorly represented so far.

^ well it was developed by disney interactive
siler tree media
and schell media

but even if the other two companies havent gone belly up and own the code
the actual ip it self is owned lock stock and barrel by disney

this game will unless disney decides otherwise never ever come back and even then it needs a dedicated server to run
something gog is i very much doubt is willing to do

and the dedicated server option is quite frankly your only option

at which point steam would actually be the likely / better candidate

probably yeah
i was thinking about steam too since steam has disney games too

but its a shut down niche mmo and unless the fanbase makes a hell of a racket in front of ALL parties ( disney shell media silver tree media AND valve ) nothing will happen

and even if they do the chance anybody takes notices and acts upon it is minute

homegrown server its going to be then i suppose that is the games only chance

Which is exactly what we're trying to do.

but gog cant help you with that

if the community wants it back the community has to do it themselves
and no amount of wishlist votes will change that because its an moo and gog doesnt do mmo's

maybe arena works or perfect world entertainment might be interested but thats a huge might

Let's be fair, it can happen that enough wishlist votes encourage GOG to spearhead the required legal process themselves.

It can happen. We know it won't, as there aren't enough people to push GOG to actively get an MMO here when we still don't have bloodlines, but hey, the possibility exists. Humans also need dreams.

sure peope need to have dreams but they also need to be realistic
and reality is not fluffy and nice

pirates online is dead and the only way it can come back is if the community sets up private servers as you said