I didn't role-play on POTCO I kind of wish I had, however when I think about it I'm too much of a literal person I think. That Minecraft server definitely looks cool. I've seen RP servers before but they are always medieval/fantasy style, which is cool but overdone IMO. I always thought it would be a great idea for a pirate RP Minecraft server.
First impressions are average I would say. The video showed some really nice builds which most Minecraft RP servers I've seen and played lacked. Although that is where it stopped, the video did not show any of the game mechanics. I checked out their website and it is very professional, however the Minecraft overviewer map (a Google Map of a Minecraft world) was kind of distorted from the looks of it. When looking at it the amount of players online was only two, however this was at 11:00pm CST so it may not be very accurate.
That all being said I'll definitely have to check it out. I kind of remember seeing a project like this a while ago somewhere, might be the same one. I'll follow up with another post of my experience tomorrow. Thanks for the post Shamus.
Looks great!
I worry it will fail, MC's community has shifted from RP servers to Factions, Minigames, and Prison servers, and generally if your server isn't one of those it doesn't do great.
I wish them luck
But to me MC died shortly after it left BETA with the 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 updates killing off what was left of the game.
It definitely has shifted, but not in the way you would expect. It's kind of like an average. You can have some really high numbers but if you get a ton of low numbers your overall number will decrease. It doesn't mean there is less high numbers, it just means there are more low numbers.
As the popularity of Minecraft increases you get more and more people. For some reason most people are easily entertained and gravitate towards these minigame, prison servers. More people play on these servers than on vanilla, RP, etc servers. The same amount of people still play on the vanilla and RP servers, it's just less than the ones who play on the minigame servers.
Also I never played Beta, (besides 1.8) so I wouldn't know. I think the newest updates make the game better each time. I will say when Jeb was the main developer things were a bit strange. But with Grumm and Dinnerbone as the head devs, things are looking better than ever.
________________________________________________________________
UPDATE ON EXPERIENCE
I didn't get that far, I logged on and there is a tutorial for the RP server. However there is also a creative and survival server as well connected by a hub. There were about 5 players on when I logged on which isn't many. I went through the tutorial but some parts seemed outdated as it linked to parts of the site that didn't exist. The tutorial was a bit confusing, such as part of it said to use their texture pack. I looked for it on their website but couldn't find it.
After I was done with the tutorial, it brought you to where you choose your nationality (British, Spanish, Pirates, Dutch, French, Taino) However to choose one you have to fill out a biography on their website for that one. So I naturally went to go fill one out for the Pirate Nationality. "You can't submit the form" it said so I just assumed they were broken.
But apparently not, deep into the website I found out that they don't want too many people playing one nationality so they close it when it's full. Which is aggravating. I then filled one out for Spanish Nationality and it took me like 2 hours to fill out because they want long descriptive paragraphs, or a story on your character. They say they will look at it in the next 24 hours so I still haven't gotten to actually play the game.
I can see why there aren't many people playing. Not all people want to write a story, or are good at writing. I'll have another update tomorrow when (hopefully) I'll actually get to play.