WARNING: Long post...read it if you're into technical stuff as well as had just perked a pot of coffee and are ready to read a novel...
I voted yes because I believe it's time they updated the Panda 3D engine...Disney's VR Studio developed the open source engine back in 2002...the engine was first used for Toontown Online...and then they used it for POTCO, keeping in line with the easy requirements, family atmosphere MMORPG...the requirements for this game are:
CPU: 800Mhz
RAM: 512Mb (recommended 1gig)
700Mb Disk Space
Graphics: 32Mb (recommended 64Mb)
Direct X9 or better
Now, tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm sure most people by now have at least a dual-core cpu, be it AMD or Intel...even if someone had a single core I'm sure it's at least a 1.5Ghz or better...and with the way prices have dropped on systems you can buy in a store, many have a quad-core system...
The RAM looks as if it was DDR...we're up to DDR3...at minimum most systems run 2gigs of RAM, those into gaming running at least 4gigs RAM thanks to Vista...I myself run 8gigs DDR3 1600Mhz on a Win 7 Ult 64bit OS...
Disk Space...you can buy a 1Tb drive for $80-$100 nowadays...
As for graphics, the last time I ran a 32Mb card was my ATI Rage Fury...there are graphics cards with 512Mb or even 1gig DDR3 or DDR5 memory that you can buy for under a $100...and those desktop systems I talked about, most come with 1Gb intergrated graphics, but many also have stand alone cards...
Now to look at the other side of the coin in terms of MMORPG's...let's look at one of the most popular...World of Warcraft (WoW)...their min requirements are...
Windows® System XP/XP64/Vista/Vista64/7** OS (with the latest Service Packs or updates):
- Intel Pentium 4 1.3 GHz or AMD Athlon XP 1500+
- 1 GB or more of RAM
- NVIDIA® GeForce® FX or ATI Radeon™ 9500 video card or better
- 25.0 GB available HD space
Their recommended specs are...
Windows® System Vista64/Windows 7 OS:
- Dual-core processor, such as the Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2
- 2 GB RAM
- 256 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 or ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 or better
First let's look at their recommended specs...while great in the day they've been surpassed already...as I said before, most parts for a PC are better and faster while still very cheap...heck when I added another 4gigs of DDR3 to make my system 8gigs, that 4gigs only cost me $50...
But what's even more important to look at is their Minimum requirements...they're a bit more modern, if you could call it that by today standards...but they're still at pretty much the low end of the desktop spectrum...while POTCO is almost a decade behind the times...
What Disney should really do is take a hint from Valve, the developers of the infamous Half-Life series, as well as Portal, Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, etc...what Valve did when they made the original Half-Life was to make a game that could be played on ANY system...be it low end, mid-range, or high end...obviously you got to see more details and bells & whistles if you had a high end machine, yet it still played equally well on a low end system...
Now here's the kicker...especially for those that played the original HL...the requirements back then were this:
Minimum
Pentium 133 MHz
24 MB RAM
Windows 95/98/NT4
SVGA video card
Windows-compatible sound card
2x CD-ROM drive
400 MB hard-disk space.
Recommended
Pentium 166 MHz
32 MB RAM
OpenGL- or DirectX-compatible 3D accelerator.
It still had better graphics then POTCO...now if you jump to Half-Life 2...
Official Half-Life 2 Box minimum specs:
Processor: 1.2 GHz Processor
OS: Windows, 2000/XP/Me/98
Graphic card: DirectX 7 level graphics card
Hard Drive: 4.5 GB
Memory: 256 MB RAM
Other: Internet Connection, DVD-ROM Drive
BUT...because Valve uses a "SCALING SYSTEM", this is as low as you could go:
700mhz Processor
128 mb of RAM
64 mb Video Card
See what I'm talking about now? These are both Game of the Year award winners with over 80 or more awards each...now look at how low their specs were, yet notice the total difference in graphics...even with other MMO's like say Guild Wars:
Minimum system specification
Windows Vista/XP/2000/ME/98
Intel Pentium III 1.0 GHz or equivalent
512 MB RAM
DVD-ROM drive1
3 GB available HDD space
ATI Radeon 8500 or NVIDIA GeForce 3 series video card with 64 MB of VRAM
16-bit sound card
Recommended:
Windows Vista/XP/2000
Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or equivalent
1 GB RAM
DVD-ROM drive1
4 GB available HDD space
ATI Radeon 9600 or NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 series video card or above
16-bit sound card
What does all of this tell us?
It tells us that the engine used for POTCO is far outdated...I don't know of too many people these days that still run a Pentium III system other then myself (I have one as well as a Pentium 4 that I kept to play my OLD games)...
I highly think it's time for them to update their open source engine...they can still have the family atmosphere which they're famous for, just with far better graphics...not saying that they need graphics like in F.E.A.R. or CoD, Crysis, Fallout, etc...but they really do need to step up into modern times...
And for all of you that made it to the bottom of this post...Cheers!