Blog Post Developer Insider: The Old Islands!

The Crew

The Crew

TLOPO Staff
Developer Insider: The Old Islands!
Posted by The Crew

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To read past Developer Insiders, visit the forums.

Ahoy, everyone,

Prepare yourselves, as this Developer Insider has a taste of nostalgia for all of you!

The team has been working on the recreation of the old islands that many of you are familiar with. We are yet to make a decision on how we plan to use these islands in-game, which is why we’re looking for your ideas and suggestions!

Please note that the old islands will not replace the current islands. We are looking for other ways to implement them into the game.

We have attached several screenshots of the islands below. There is no timeline for their arrival, as they need to be optimized before they can be implemented.

Please leave your suggestions on how we could use the islands in the discussion thread on the forums or in the comments below! We can’t wait to read them!



Old Port Royal: https://imgur.com/a/6fBiK61



Old Tortuga: https://imgur.com/a/hOHQ9FP



Old Padres del Fuego: https://imgur.com/a/yaBI0Yv



Fair Winds,

-The Crew @ TLOPO



P.S. If you haven’t seen the screenshots of the all-new islands we’re working on, check out this post!

View this post on the TLOPO website
 
I'd love to see enemies powerful enough to challenge level 50 pirates on the old islands. I understand that such enemies were never present on these islands in POTCO, but it would be a great way to make the islands interesting for veteran players.
 
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Amazing... I've never been to the Old Islands and can't wait! (In my opinion they look even better in terms of atmosphere, more in keeping with a ramshackle 16 / 17th Century Caribbean, although I'm not sure about the Historical accuracy... I guess it's why I like our current Cuba so much)

So apart from having them for a change of scene, nostalgia or just plundering, fishing, CD, OP Bosses etc. here's an idea, in addition to that...

Imagine sailing off the edge of The World - The Map, through a Magical/Mystical Tunnel or maybe Whirlpool and you are Trapped in The Old Caribbean.

You have to solve a "Puzzle Quest" in order to be able to sail back! There could be any number of "Puzzles Quests" (That could take many hours or even days to complete depending on how good you are?) and new ones could be added over time (The quests would be more far more Cryptic and require players to use their imagination, to try many variables etc. with no information on Wiki : )... progress would be saved and you can return to the Regular Caribbean at any stage.

Your crew mates and friends can join you at anytime you are there and on completion there maybe some sort of reward for each quest... eg. exclusive famed weapon

Fairs Winds To Ye All... :raft:
:pirate ship:
 
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My two cents on the old islands and there uses, lately ive been playing tons of The Division 2. I like the strongholds they have in them and like the idea of 8 man raids, I also come from Everquest and Everquest 2 mainly so im used to large scale raids of 24 people lots of boss fights that take forever and some strategy. If we used the old islands as instances for these crew sized raids or dungeons what ever we would want to clal them that could add some awesome end game content other then farming tormenta. You could have special Zone in locations or just a queue from a window. Awhile ago i saw some post about adding dungeon matchmaking system in the game for end game content and I think these islands could be perfect. They could be what it was like before the pirates took them over. on the island there could be multiple levels of difficulties in certain areas, I know in Everquest 2 lately the way the do raid zones is have multiple tiers of mobs, to get to tier 2 mobs you have to clear the tier one mobs so on and so forth. It would be nice to have a zone with a mental challenge with it ontop of just having good weapons and a full group. I dont know if possible strategies could be put into boss such as "Jousts" or Damage reflect fazes based on emotes they do, just a little something to make people pay attentions in fights instead of spamming keys. Sorry if this seems like incoherent rambling it probably is.
 
Firstly, I would like to personally thank the TLOPO team for their hard work with reviving, maintaining, and enhancing a childhood game which we never thought possible could be brought back. It's saddens me to think that there is nothing I feel I can do to show my thankfulness enough.

Those screenshots are really sending me back to a trip to nostalgia town. As a suggestion, I think the islands should be incorporated with Isla Escondida and the other new islands as per a "Caribbean Expansion" update. Whatever main storyline quest that is being worked on with Isla Escondida should be tied together with these old islands. I feel that the old islands should be made into their own unique islands, instead of appearing as "Old Port Royal" on the map and the like. Along with the new islands, also, should come a notoriety cap increase, inventory expansion, gold increase, and maybe even new weapon types among others. After all, a new Caribbean will require a lot of changes to account for the surplus of maxed out pirates who would want to continue the pirating adventure. The obvious ambition in this project means we may not see something along the lines of my idea for possibly years, but I'd still like to put out these general suggestions for consideration.
TL;DR: The old islands should be released with Isla Escondida, in addition to a bunch of other cool stuff.

Somewhat related note: I recall having a pirate-themed dream so many years ago, and I completely forget about it until now. The reason for this is because it was on the old Padres map, and I most distinctly remember a scene from my dream where I was my POTCO pirate. I was doing some sort of jailbreak quest where I had to rescue a Royal Navy officer-turned pirate-turned prisoner from inside the caverns of the volcano itself. The scene I remember was leading the ex-officer down the Padres docks and into one of the rowboats in order to row him to my War Frigate and ultimately get him into contact with Jack Sparrow, all while having the Fort's soldiers and the like descend upon me and him as we made our escape. I apologize if this is off topic, but I am so happy that TLOPO was able to reunite me with a childhood dream that I had forgotten until I looked at this screenshot:
F1oHSil.jpg

TL;DR: I had a dream where I was on Old Padres, and the above screenshot made me remember it for the first time in years.
 
Awesome idea! And why not let TLOPO be all things to all pirates?
Either have a portal/cave entrance to the old islands from any of the current ones, or have a server dedicated to them.
That or have 2 Caribbeans, where you can sail to the old islands.
Anyone having an issue with this needs to lighten up and read the dictionary for the definition of FUN!!!!
 
As far as the old islands are concerned, I'd actually like enemies for maxed pirates like @Beggar mentioned. Imagine if you will, running up the path to the fort, over the old stone bridge following the path from one boss to another fighting your way towards the fort? love it, bring all the nostalgia back.
@Shamus The Brute I guess in a first come/first serve mentality, TLOPO's code which is in use in 1, if not 2 other places at the moment would be in the clear integrity wise.
 
Some of my suggestions...
  1. Turn the islands into old towns that have been overrun by Jolly Rogers undead minions... Maybe make a quest where we could go and try to retake them?? Like someone said before in this thread add some lv 50 bosses on them for us level 50's to farm.
  2. Turn the islands into PvP maps or make them Open PvP islands.
  3. Maybe once a guild reaches a certain amount of members they can purchase one of the old islands as a Guild Hideout for a lot of gold.
Just wanted to say Thank you Developers for all that you've done for us.
 
I think it would be cool if you could have it so that on Tortuga, Captain Jack Sparrow sends you off to visit Tia Dalma because of some sort of curse or something, and then Tia Dalma has the player do a bunch of quest stuff to open up a "time portal," which she built to send you back into the past before the old islands were burned down (https://piratesonline.fandom.com/wiki/Island_Destructions) to fix the curse. Then, once you've gone through the portal, you're back on the old islands, and you have to talk to "past" Tia Dalma, who starts you off on a whole story quest.

This seems like a good idea to me, because it doesn't destroy the lore that has already been put in place. Also, the exact time that you travel back to could be DURING the island destructions, so this could also allow for the enemies on the island to be super high level, by making them the same enemies that destroyed the islands in the first place.

EDIT: Plus, you could add back all of the "Missing" characters (https://piratesonline.fandom.com/wiki/Port_Royal#Missing_Characters).
 
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Richard Seastorm said:
I think it would be cool if you could have it so that on Tortuga, Captain Jack Sparrow sends you off to visit Tia Dalma because of some sort of curse or something, and then Tia Dalma has the player do a bunch of quest stuff to open up a "time portal," which she built to send you back into the past before the old islands were burned down (https://piratesonline.fandom.com/wiki/Island_Destructions) to fix the curse. Then, once you've gone through the portal, you're back on the old islands, and you have to talk to "past" Tia Dalma, who starts you off on a whole story quest.

This seems like a good idea to me, because it doesn't destroy the lore that has already been put in place. Also, the exact time that you travel back to could be DURING the island destructions, so this could also allow for the enemies on the island to be super high level, by making them the same enemies that destroyed the islands in the first place.

EDIT: Plus, you could add back all of the "Missing" characters (https://piratesonline.fandom.com/wiki/Port_Royal#Missing_Characters).
Click to expand...
Great idea!
 
All hands hoay, is this a blast from the past?

The old islands... From where do I begin and where to end? There is this misconception these are the old islands, that's invalid. These are the original islands you'd go ashore after escaping jail a bit more than a decade ago. The reality is not the Island Destructions (that's for the storytellers) but rather the hardware limitations at the time which prevented a percentage of the playerbase to ensure a stable gameplay (performance-wise) due to their low-end hardware setup. That's actually the reason why Disney re-constructed the main islands from scratch and to their credit, this might have worked well for some, but totally ruined the experience for others.

My idea for the original islands (might be far from being a suggestion, at least technically-wise):

Ever since the developer stream that showed us around a bit of original Port Royal, I had this thought of mine. The Liberation of the Black Pearl storyline quest was already a part of the original islands before they got re-constructed, starting in January 2009. The next major storyline quest (Raven's Cove) landed in late 2010. That's a full year of content updates that were implemented based on the re-constructed islands. If TLOPO developers could fill in that gap, we could (in theory) have a v.2013 of the game completed (improved as well), but with the original islands. Raven's Cove quest did not include much activity on main islands other than speaking with Jack to start off the quest. There are a few details that will have to be included manually. For example, merchant Peddlers did not exist before the re-construction. They will have to be placed manually to be on par with the latest codebase update. Invasions on the other hand, is really the only cumbersome update I can think of that might require a lot of patience to get them work properly on original islands.

I do believe that every major update happens for a reason. But I also believe that some bad decisions can be made along the way. We no longer have the hardware limitations we used to have... And Disney had made many quality compromises in the name of optimazing performance. But who doesn't recall running up the hills of Port Royal in their way to fortress? No need of extra loading screens, nada. The original islands were more spacious and spread out. This can be especially useful for future in-game events or even extra content. And while some areas might seem a bit more emptier, I'm sure TLOPO can contribute with their careful attention to details. Have you seen the detail additions that jails have gotten recently?

Maybe I'm biased about this matter, but my take is to either go hard or go home. I'll embrace whatever the outcome might be although please notice that these islands were the ornament of the Caribbean... And still are, in a way! Thank you for sharing the pictures with the rest of us! :treasure::flag1:
 
I am very much for the idea of using the reconstruction of the old islands as an opportunity for end game users to have activities as suggested by @Beggar, combined perhaps with a storyline quest that addresses the lore already provided in the Island destructions by Disney from some time back (as suggested by @Richard Seastorm). I feel they could easily be a great way to keep those who max a pirate to keep going. A notoriety cap increase to say like 55 or 60 could be in order. Maybe more than one storyline can exist with the reintroduction of these Isles. I could imagine many different stories that could be told.
 
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