Blog Post TWO YEARS OF TALES

Posted by Michael Wass on March 23, 2017, 9 p.m.

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Hello everyone!

For those of you who haven't met me before, my name is Michael! However, I commonly go by the nickname "mfwass." I am a System Administrator at The Legend of Pirates Online. My job is mainly to assist in the development of the game and to oversee several departments to make sure everything is going smoothly all around!

Today just so happens to be the two year anniversary of TLOPO's announcement. This is a huge milestone for us, and I'm here to give you all an inside scoop of what our project looked back when we started; along with a sneak peek of the latest updates in action.

This is the video released by The Legend of Pirates Online on March 23rd, 2015 announcing the project to the public for the VERY first time. At the time of this article's publishment, that video has had over 40,000 views.





TLOPO first began development in early November of 2014. JohnnyDaPirate had begun recruiting several community members and established a formal team to begin development. Soon thereafter, in mid-late November JohnnyDaPirate sent a message to our esteemed Lead Developer, Nacib Neme, whom has made a massive impact on the project.

Nacib is a fantastic developer and young adult who takes pride in his work and can do anything he puts his mind to. We are honored to have him as our Lead Developer and love working with him. We couldn't ask for anyone kinder and more qualified to lead our project. This may lead to the question, how on earth did you recruit this guy? What would make him want to join YOUR team, of all the games in the world. Well, the following messages are seriously exactly what recruited Nacib onto our project:

[11/23/14, 2:57:41 PM] JohnnyDaPirate: Dear Nacib Neme, my associates and I contact you today on behalf of our project recreating "Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online" requesting assistance from your team in our development.
[11/23/14, 2:57:52 PM] Nacib: k
...and that's it. Anti-climatic and really funny, I know, but that is what started all of this!

Following this, Pirates Online Rewritten caught wind of TLOPO and began to have talks with their development team. I was one of the project managers of Rewritten, and at first the team was actually heavily against joining TLOPO. They were not familiar with who they were, and overall wanted to steer clear. I knew deep down in my heart that a TLOPO merger with Rewritten would be incredibly successful, and asked for my team to vote on what we should do.

That vote unfortunately decided that we would NOT be joining the TLOPO team by 4-1; my vote being the only one in favor of the merge. I took some time after that and proposed the idea to the team again, this time explaining in crisper detail why it would be better to go forward with the merge anyway. While they were heavily reluctant they all agreed to give it a shot. On April 29th, 2015, Pirates Online Rewritten joined The Legend of Pirates Online. The merging of the two projects was the best decision that we have ever made. As of today, the game is nearly fully released with over 62,600 registered members.

Following the merge, development was booming at a ridiculous pace. We had planned to have Alpha released before the end of August and knew it was well within reach. When we did this, we encountered several, incredibly hilarious bugs. These bugs were really funny to experience, and made working on the game something everyone always looked forward to.

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Hey, I can SEE you!

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That face we all make when you realize you have a few more hours left at work.

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"And this gentlemen who needs no nose, is... what's your name again, mate?"

"Nose! Oh well, uh, Noseless, actually."

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I haven't seen crabs that big in quite a long time! Giant Crabs are quite fearsome creatures!

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Risked your neck, huh? Looks like you're really testing your limits with that boat resting on your shoulders.

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No caption needed.

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When you're so bad at Ship Repair the game actually charged YOU for fixing ships.

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Lastly, this was when our animator, Jack Scurvyfoote, first began testing animations he made in-game. The first ones that were tested in-game easily made the cut for this gag-reel.

Now, the moment you've all been waiting for -- some details of the big update of 2017! So far, we have been mainly working at compatibility with the older server's database, and I'm happy to report that the database has been successfully migrated entirely to the new server. We have had our Quality Assurance testers in-game testing the game for major flaws. We have fixed a ton of bugs, and are almost ready to release the game to the community on our live/production servers.

In addition to several bugfixes, we have added in a few features as well! Daily Quests and Privateering will be making their debut when this update is released to the community. This update overall is the third largest update we've ever made to the game, and know you all will love it. It is well worth the wait.

Thank you to anyone who actually spent the time to read through this whole novel! Drop a comment at the bottom saying what you're looking forward to the most in TLOPO! We look forward to reading them!

Michael @ The Legend of Pirates Online
 
Thank you @Mike Wass for taking the time to make this delightful announcement! It was really interesting to hear about the beginning days of Tlopo and fun to see those bugs including the first animation and the giant crabs - which may be a fun idea for another day!

It's great to know the game is almost ready for release to the community again!
It's amazing the amount of work that you guys got done in such a short amount of time.

Thank you and thanks to the Tlopo Team from all the Privateers and avid questers and thank you from everyone who is looking forward to just getting back in game to do whatever they want.
You've all made a lot of people happy. Cheers! :cheers:
 
Awesome! I didn't know much backstory about this game(TLOPO)/developer team and how it got started. Also the pictures made me chuckle, bet you guys had fun with them. Was neat to find it all out. Congratulations on getting it moved over to the new server. Take the time you need to get it ready devs. I imagine many people can second this, that most of us appreciate all the work you guys have put into this game along with time and money. I look forward to being able to privateer and do daily quests at whatever point it comes out.

Edit: also looking forward to see what in-game codes will be added
 
That was great to read and learn about. Pretty jealous I must say for the QA team :D but knowing that daily quests and privateering plus the all around tune up and glitch fixes, I'm beyond ready to just go full force in.

Those funny glitch screenshots... reminds me of some of the stuff I've come across in my days. Getting back into a game has never been more anticipated before, except when my first SSD corrupted(yes laugh, I do now that it's funny)
 
Cool history. LOVED the pic of the bugs. I needed a good laugh this morning. Happy Anniversary and wishing for many more to come!
 
Thank you for the history, Michael. And for sharing the behind-the-scenes photos and animation (although that flail is somewhat unnerving to me).

I'm looking forward to the daily quests - I really like the idea.

I'm glad the work is progressing the way the team had hoped and thank you to the entire team.
 
That was a very good read! You guys are an awesome team and have done a huge amount of work in just two years. I love how you guys can still enjoy laughing at the bugs and such, you have to lol! If you don't laugh at work you'll lose your mind! I've worked at ups for 6 years now and it can get stressful and the boxes never seem to stop coming but as long as you and your coworkers can talk and laugh it off the work gets done and is enjoyed. Not just by you,but by the customer. I've never done any programing but I've been studying it a little and I can compare boxes to coding for you, all the codes you guys type up and such is greatly appreciated by the community. Take your time and keep enjoying working with one another, because the more that box/coding is intact the more it will be appreciated :)! I have patience! P.S. that giant crab was nightmare fuel for me, as a child I had a nightmare of a giant fiddler crab running around my yard lol.
 
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