Hey there,
I'm going to start off this response by mentioning that it is our aim to bring back all of the content of this game as it was. Of course, this is only our initial goal. No game survives by sitting without updates. We have a lot of great ideas that the Disney staff did not have the chance to implement. There are so many ways we can make that original Pirates Online experience nostalgic, while adding in new content. I know change can be a bit scary for people. When POTCO closed, a lot of people lost a place to hang out. Lost a hobby, or something they loved doing. We want to bring that back, and we have had so much support in our adventure to do it.
I digress, I'm not sure what would appease the less satisfied audience more. I spend easily 4 hours or more a day on this project. I have committed a lot of time, and push new fixes and features almost daily. And I am only one member of the development team. We all work very hard to make sure this game is working at its highest efficiency.
The game is massive, there is so much that this game has in it. We have a lot of that content near completion, but of course there are difficulties and challenges that we are realizing and overcoming each day. Did you know Toontown shipped most of their game with the server-side logic in the client code? This meant that when the client was decompiled, most of that server code already existed. It made implementation of features easier for the Toontown teams. When you compare such a project with Pirates, it really isn't fair. There were absolutely no backend files shipped with the Pirates Online client. We had only our brains to work with. Given that, we managed to get the game running and implement easily 75% of the features or more at this point. That is a huge accomplishment. Consider this: POTCO existed from 2007 until 2013. And even before that, the game was in development (some say since 2003?). We've accomplished over 75% of redeveloping a game, that was in development for 10 years time. And we've done it in roughly 1.5 years. Yes, many will claim it has been longer. However, we did not use any of PORs code. another remake was a different project (started in 2013) using a different codebase entirely. TLOPO was begun later, using their own codebase to initialize the project. Only a couple of members from the another remake team joined in to TLOPO, when they decided it wasn't worth working on two projects (and some of the project leadership was dwindling at that time).
Okay, enough about that aspect, let's get to the criticism comment. I openly ask people for constructive criticism on a daily basis. None of us shoot down criticism, or ban for it. We are appreciative of positive, constructive comments about our game. That being said, there have been rude or abrasive comments made on occasion, which have only been posted in an attempt to undermine our rules, or the forum rules (depending on the medium they are communicated with). We do implement a set of rules in our game, in our IRC, and the forums implements another entirely separate set of rules here. They do not correspond with one another, were created individually, and no staff implements rules from one medium on another. So the accusations that our team is banning, or removing messages, here make no sense.
We love this game. Our goal is to create a positive climate where people can once again stow away from real life and enjoy themselves in a story, in an adventure. If your goal in this community is only to bring in negativity (not to say negativity won't show its face once in a while), this might not be the place you want to hang out. I do hope you'll all stick around, and contribute positively to our community. We always look forward to happiness!
Christopher
