What Was It Like When You First Started Playing Potco?

Tahoe Wolf

Site Founder
Edwards thread about rep stealing and remembrances of what it was like when he started kind of got me to thinking. The game has changed a lot since the days when Edward and I started and mostly for the better.


Back when I started there were no Bosses, the baddest enemies in game were at Tormenta, Kingshead, and the caverns of Padres. Our weapons were much weaker then and it was much more difficult to kill enemies. Little pirates needed help killing that flytrap for their first TP totem quest. There was no revive if you got KO'd in a fight you went to jail. As a result you didn't see as many little pirates in places they didn't belong such as Tormenta, they didn't last long there.


We didn't have boarding permissions back then, people randomly teleporting to you was much more of a problem especially aboard ship. Most of us learned the hard way to use care in allowing people onto our friend list. Seems there were a lot more griefers in game back then as well, people really pushing the limits Disney cleaned up on a lot of things that went on in game back then.

POTCO was my first online game. When I started I didn't know any better than to accept all those random friend invites, as a result my first few days of playing were very frustrating. I focused on leveling my sailing first and bought better ships as I leveled until I had a galleon. Seems I couldn't launch without having a half dozen random morons teleporting on board, you all know the type, Wheel Stealers, Random Shooters who shoot at everything in site and refuse to cease firing, players who never accept crew invites aboard your ship and won't respond to the captains chat. My ships got sunk a lot in those first few days.

In those days I didn't know enough about the game to seek out quiet servers and pretty much stayed in places like Abassa where most of the other newbies were hanging out. After about three days of dealing with the random TP people I deleted everyone in my friend list and decided to try another tactic. I wanted loot and I wanted to level up cannons, the only way to do that with any success was to crew aboard a more advanced players ship. How to do that? Well sending blind friend and crew invites to level 20+ players didn't seem to work, Being an ex military type I knew that it wasn't very likely that a superior rank would want to serve under the command of a lower rank. I began hanging around the docks and when I'd see a level 20+ crewing up and getting ready to sail I'd politely ask if they could use an extra gunner in their crew. This method worked and I began making some pretty good friends along with bringing the cannon levels up and getting some good loot.

Rep Stealing
Like most new online gamers I didn't understand the concept of rep and leveling in the begining. Hanging out on mostly servers filled with newbies with most players randomly hacking away at enemies didn't help. I did notice when sailing that if another player attacked the ship I was fighting both the rep and loot were split between players. We didn't get loot items other than things like the "Nine Rogues", "Navy Medals"etc... and gold in those days. No clothing or weapon drops.
Like Edward back in those early days I thought I was bravely helping those higher levels defeat the enemy. A high level did pull me aside one day and politely explained the concept of rep stealing to me. As Edward was saying most players don't realize the difficulty of leveling weapons until after they get grenades. Back when I started most players with new grenades started leveling them from behind the fence at the parade ground of Kingshead. Most players with new staffs also began their leveling out on the parade ground, Conflicts were frequent. One night it really dawned on me. I arrived at Kinghead with a group of friends, I needed 8 or 10 veterans for a quest so I went out onto the parade ground and started collecting them. A player up on the hill behind the fence complained that he was trying to level grenades and that he had done 5 server changes to find a quiet kingshead to level. I apologized, explained that I needed the vets for a quest and left. It was the polite thing to do.

Guilds
When I was brand new I found myself on Port Royale on a crowded Abassa I was down by the gunshop near the dock. One of those guild invite spammers kept sending me invites No sooner would I decline than he would send another. After about 5 minutes of this out of disgust I accepted just to make it stop. The guild was called "Lords O Death" I was in that guild for nearly a month and never spoke to another member. I figure they were either very young kids or non english speakers and they would never respond to guild chat. Later a group from another guild "The Voodoo Wizards" helped me with my grenade quest and I asked to join their guild. I was only in that guild for about two weeks. I took an out of town trip for a few days and when I returned discovered that the guild had been disolved. Their GM was one of those guild jumpers who was constantly going from guild to guild. I joined another guild "The Forreal Deal" and became second in command, Soon afterward the GM became absent for extended periods and I was acting GM. I was with that guild for about 8 months. Some poor choices had been made in promoting officers there and as a result these people began recruiting troublemakers into the guild, this eventually led to the guilds destruction. By this time I had two other pirates both in different guilds. I decided to leave "The Forreal Deal" and start a new guild "The Riptide Rogues". Shortly afterwards events in real life caused me to leave the game for nearly a year. At that time I had two pirates that were level 40 and mastered at the old levels and a third who was level 12 two of them were GM's of their own guilds My guilds were "The Riptide Rogues" and "Red Nations" only Red Nations still exists.

I returned to a game that was much changed from the old POTCO levels had been raised, new and more powerful weapons added, new enemies, new maps of islands most of the old glitches no longer existed, most of my old friends were gone, my guilds had died out.
 
man... i can remember i started playing POTCO in 2007... my first pirate was named angel something.. and the game was almost magical :)
i miss the old islands... ALL of them were huge! port royal was my favorite... i could spend hours fighting there.. there were alot more stores to explore too.. tortuga was also awesome, not as cool, but pretty close..

In October 2009 i heard my best friend talking about the game.. ( i had completely forgotten about POTCO) and i was bored one day and made a new account. Rose Sunslipper (my pirate now) was basic for about 3 months.. (this was when we could have coats when we first started making our pirates)
and yeah.. it was still fun, so in December 2009 i bought unlimited for a year (48 days left of unlimited :p not that im counting..) i stopped playing from febuary to june.. and when i cam back i was shocked... it was like they stripped the game of everything i loved. the islands were now tiny, rude people, and tons of confusing new weapons that people are always bragging about. nowadays unless you can do pvp (and i dont consider a jumper a good pvper.. hes just fast with his keyboard) your uncool.

i just wish it was like the old days.. they need to start back at the basics. =/
 
When I first started playin I was like this is cool so after 3 days of playing basic I got unlimited acess. But then there were only 4 of every so I got bored and after taking a year break I came back and I luv the thrill of finding a famed so I don't see myself becoming basic for a long time.
 
Oh Yeah another thing! Back in the old days a player only got one shot if they survived at the Boss Battle. You couldn't redo a boss battle like you can now. It was considered unforgivable for another player to steal the wheel during a BB. I remember one BB where some little creep stold the wheel of the pearl during a friends BB, he then ran the ship down the middle leaving several of the forts still standing and ran away from Goliath. The BB was won but the player with the BB lost a very significant amount of rep and prize money. The wheel stealer found himself forever blackballed from all of our respective crews and guilds afterwards.
 
I started playing early 2008 my first pirate was Elizabeth Sunhazzard there where alot more clothes options for basic then there are now...the first 20 minutes i played i was crazy for pirates i didnt even know much about the movies but i got addicted with them.It was my first online game,i didnt know about servers,i didnt know about rep,didnt know about guilds, i really didnt know most of things that i do now. The first guild i can recall every being in was Bleed for Honor.The islands were different i prefer the old ones better, caves were different, enemies were weakier.i really didnt know about abassa so when ever i went on that server i thought something big was happening.There wasnt the tips thing that there is now for new players.Obviously no loot drops or helping people revive No Potions. I got banned some how and didnt get that pirate back.Everything seemed mush harder maybe because i was low lvl and basic,but things seem easier in the game now.One day i had too much jealousy of unlimited players that i just had to be unlimited also
 
For some reason I dont remember guilds when I first started... probably didn't notice them and I dont remember chat being as complicated as it is now with all the different types.
 
Nice post Red. Thanks for sharing.

POTCO was the first online game I ever played and I was basic at first until I could go no farther and HAD to get unlimited. The mouse had me hooked at that point.
I recall the frustration of trying to kill that fly trap as well. I could not for the life of me defeat that pesky thing! I think that is when I joined my first guild and they helped me get it. I think many things were much more difficult then. Not just for being a lower level but I remember the BB being so much harder then what it is now. I went on several BB's and not many did we win and that was with SEVERAL people on it. Unlike now doing it with only 2 and winning.

Rose I remember venturing to Abassa as well and wondering what was going on there because there were so many people there I could not understand. I guess I was the typical noob asking why everyone was there. I also for the longest time did not even know you could change servers in the game. I thought it could only be done at the start up screen. lol :oops:
 
When I first started playing, the server was only up half the day and only on Thursday through Sunday. If I wanted to play on Thursday or Friday, I had to trade sleep for a long nap after work. That was back in March or April of '07.
 
yes. i remember how hard the game was back then, i too was basic until i could not go any further I only played on week ends because work took up all my week days. I spent days looking for barried treasures becuse there were no X to mark the spot or a green circles to show you where to dig. No hints on what to do next so the first time i sailed my light sloop i didn't know how to get it started. i stood in front of the stirring wheel thinking it took an unreasonable amount of time to get to the next island. I didn't know i was supose to push the up arrow to get the ship to move. I didn't know i could stop the ship while shooting and did "sail by shootings" for a long time. And if a small ship went to PDF you may not get back becasue of the larger ships that hung out there. they would sink you before you got very far.
there were no weapons drops and the rusty sword was what i had until i got a quest to get something bigger. AND quests . I thought i needed to accept every quest possible and it was chaos. You know how the journal puts all quests in order? Well i didn't know that it jumped back to the first quest that was not completed. So i would accept one quest complete part of it and end up on another quest and didn't know what happened.

I like the changes. Piarates are more friendly now than they used to be. The islands where different and the only thing that upset me was after i had mastered the layout of the island it changed. but i got used to it and i like the changes. It keeps the game fun.
 
hehe... well let's see...:drink:i remeber playing Molly back in like januarary of 08 and i remember no tutorials and learning on the fly was a must. i was the won person i think to miss the light sloop part of the intro.i swam to Port Royal from Tortuga. That being said, i think that was really what i remeber about my ealy days in pirates. green under my chin ( aka gills ) and sweet between me ears. and i agree with all here i do miss the old islands. and yes to me the game has sped up also.back then you grinded out levels after doing all the quests and weapons upgrades. simpler but more challenging in my eyes. now it's all about the famed weapons. i play to play not to be known for being first to master everything or getting world ender or what ever the name of that cursed blade is. really simple ppl i loved my first guild Clashing Titans. they were much like Spania is now.fun loving and great pirates.:D it really boils down to the caliber of company. i have leveled mostly on my own in game.not because i don't like company...mostly because i experiment. i find things that work when one is alone. kinda like running and jumpimg around after defeating a tough opponent. try it you will be surprised at what your health does. as for now i think the game is way more stream lined easier to manage and easier to level than back then. and i agree great post Red
 
Great post Red! I started playing early this past summer so I've really enjoyed reading everyone's experiences from early in the game, it really has changed a lot. I felt much like a fish out of water when I first started as this is the first online game I have played. My son had started playing a year before me so I got a lot of help and advice from him.lol Thanks for sharing everyone! :)
 
i swam to Port Royal from Tortuga. That being said, i think that was really what i remeber about my ealy days in pirates. green under my chin ( aka gills )
I also remember swimming from island to island back in those early days. I had issues with the graphics card on the computer I was using when I started playing. I could not use the maps, so my TP totems were useless to me. I was forced to sail everywhere I went in game. This glitch also caused serious problems whenever I was on or around Padres. If I happened to be crewed on a ship that landed on Padres I would be stranded there my game would crash if I tried to launch or board a ship from there. Often times I would crash if I even sailed too close to Padres. Also couldn't TP to someone on Padres My only options if stranded on Padres back then were to swim to another island or TP to a friend. I had friends who would stay in game AFK overnight just to give me an escape from Padres. I was able to swim to Padres without crashing. These problems made parts of the Pearl quest totally dreadful especially dealing with Gunner. Got a new graphics card and that issue went away.

i have leveled mostly on my own in game.not because i don't like company...
I remember hours and weeks of grinding away, killing stumps on Cutthroat and Outcast, Skellies and Crabs on Cangrejos. With that first pirate my weapon levels were all out of balance with things like Mastered Sailing, but only level 5 dagger and grenades. I was later taught to keep my weapons leveled evenly. I tended to do a lot of my leveling alone until I got caught up. I still tend to level alone when all weapons are mastered and I'm Power leveling those final levels of Notoriety.
 
Nov 2007...

I remember being a total noob.

I remember meeting someone level 8, wondering how they got their pirate to such a high level!

I remember not figuring out the SKILL panel for the first couple weeks, Couldn't figure out how people were able to do "cleave" - I thought my timing was wrong.

I remember being groggy all the time. (Groggy lasted 20 minutes back then.) The first time groggy went away, I thought my pirate had gone invincible or something.

I remember it took about 20 minutes to sail to Cuba from Tortuga.

I remember getting marooned on Padres. Trying to sail back to Port Royal was nearly impossible, as there was a wall of enemy ships in the way (that would attack more viciously than treasure fleet now, attacks.) I remember taking 4 or 5 tries to get out of jail on Padres, unable to fight my way past the veterans there (since I was level 4.) There was no sneaking past those guards, back then...if they saw you from the other side of Fort Dundee, you were toast. And OMG, that sergeant in front of Gunner's Shack - the way he would drop out of the sky just to send me back to jail as I'd be standing there thinking I was finally safe!

I remember the first time landing on Tormenta...blissfully running into Tormenta Cave (as it was called back then) and seeing the scene change to port royal jail. Had to scroll back in the text, just to see that it was a seabeard that vaporized me before making it through the cave tunnel.

I remember going to jail. And going to jail. And going to jail. Then, I remember going to jail. Sometimes, we'd go sailing and I'd go to jail. Sometimes we would try to fight our way up the hill to Fort Charles and I'd go to jail. Sometimes the guard just outside the jail would nail me and I'd go to jail.

Man, even the 4 skeletons (level 1 gravediggers) right outside "Kings Run" would send me to jail.

I remember getting to level 12, venturing to Murky Hollow. I could shoot one of those impossible-to-kill brigands, go to jail, run all the way back, shoot them again, go to jail, run all the way back, shoot them again, go to jail, run all the way back, shoot them again and ONE OF THEM WOULD FINALLY DIE. So cool! My first exploit - their health points didn't come back if you went to jail! W00t w00t! Why, in under 2 hours, I could then kill all the brigands dancing around one of the three circles! Less than 50 trips to jail, too!

I don't think words can really describe the emotions that washed over me, the first time someone showed me how to get behind the bar in Faithful Bride.

I still remember the first time I sunk a phantom. I was a big level 10, or so. My light sloop (the only ship we could have, back then) took 89 broadsides to sink it, but by sailing forward 15 seconds, then turning for 5 seconds, then firing, I was able to keep it chasing me until it finally went down. (Getting hit once, of course, meant another visit to jail.)

I remember being shocked and disgusted by the near fraud of Disney saying the game was "free to play" when everything about the free-play was so bad. (Since then, they have made it a hundred times worse, since nobody sued them, therefore they know they can get away with it, still claiming that it is "free to play.") I remember with horror, the lag-inducing animated border and 60 second login delay.

I remember that each scene transition (TP, cave tunnel, ship boarding, etc.) took between 2 to 3 seconds - which seemed like a long time. I remember in early 2008 when that became 8 seconds, wondering (correctly) why the original team of programmers had left. That was the start of the mass complaints about LAG - every aspect of the game has enormous lag now, compared to back then. Each thing they added, layered on some more lag.

I remember the story quest being interesting and fun and actually making sense (if you stopped to read it.) I remember being a little upset learning that you didn't need to actually read any of the quest - the journal thing dictated exactly what you need. Usually that was somewhat different from what the quest person told you. (But they wouldn't completely steer you wrong, like the quest does, now.)

There was so much to learn, about the game back then. It was all challenging. There admittedly is a lot more to learn about the game now, but the learning process is trivial and obvious. Back then, every little detail was shrouded in such mystery!

Oh, did I mention going to jail? I went to jail a lot. Then I found the leaderboards and learned that most people went to jail a LOT MORE than I ever did. Switching back to the Pirates window from the leaderboards, I'd see that I was in jail again...
 
I remember when padres was for unlimited access only but basic members finding a glitch to get in and privateering was not there and the old port royal tortuga and padres and the massive glitches and lag people were getting :)
 
Lets see, I saw a commercial for the game, and probably a month later and I started playing. It was around 2008 when I started, I had a very old PC. Then since there was SO MUCH LAG. Like not even joking, there was SO MUCH LAG!!!! It took like a minute to tp! And a minute to go into some room or cave or WHATEVER. Terrible Graphics. I just quit right after that. Then a few months later on December 2008 later I finally got my own laptop, a MacBook. Fastest thing you could use. Then I tried playing it on here. It was so fast! And I didn't even have unlimited! I went all the way to level 15 ON BASIC! Then I got Unlimited and went up to level 25, then got Terminated because I kinda cursed a lot and said a lot of stuff on it. Then I made a new account and went all the way up to level 30 and that one got terminated ALSO!!! I even had my own guild called Co. Mercenaries! It was EITC. But then I made A NEW ACCOUNT which I have right now and I've only been banned one time lol, Im in the United Empire also. Level 16 with lvl 20 sword. Cuz im justa Jumpa.
EDIT (Nov 8, 2010 9:46 PM):
man... i can remember i started playing POTCO in 2007... my first pirate was named angel something.. and the game was almost magical :)
i miss the old islands... ALL of them were huge! port royal was my favorite... i could spend hours fighting there.. there were alot more stores to explore too.. tortuga was also awesome, not as cool, but pretty close..

In October 2009 i heard my best friend talking about the game.. ( i had completely forgotten about POTCO) and i was bored one day and made a new account. Rose Sunslipper (my pirate now) was basic for about 3 months.. (this was when we could have coats when we first started making our pirates)
and yeah.. it was still fun, so in December 2009 i bought unlimited for a year (48 days left of unlimited :p not that im counting..) i stopped playing from febuary to june.. and when i cam back i was shocked... it was like they stripped the game of everything i loved. the islands were now tiny, rude people, and tons of confusing new weapons that people are always bragging about. nowadays unless you can do pvp (and i dont consider a jumper a could pvper.. hes just fast with his keyboard) your uncool.

i just wish it was like the old days.. they need to start back at the basics. =/

Um excuse me I'm a jumper tyvm. And I am pretty cool I pvp at abassa tortuga a lot. K bye.
 
Nov 2007...

I remember not figuring out the SKILL panel for the first couple weeks, Couldn't figure out how people were able to do "cleave" - I thought my timing was wrong.

I remember being groggy all the time. (Groggy lasted 20 minutes back then.) The first time groggy went away, I thought my pirate had gone invincible or something.

I remember it took about 20 minutes to sail to Cuba from Tortuga.

I remember getting marooned on Padres. Trying to sail back to Port Royal was nearly impossible, as there was a wall of enemy ships in the way (that would attack more viciously than treasure fleet now, attacks.) I remember taking 4 or 5 tries to get out of jail on Padres, unable to fight my way past the veterans there (since I was level 4.) There was no sneaking past those guards, back then...if they saw you from the other side of Fort Dundee, you were toast. And OMG, that sergeant in front of Gunner's Shack - the way he would drop out of the sky just to send me back to jail as I'd be standing there thinking I was finally safe!

I remember going to jail. And going to jail. And going to jail. Then, I remember going to jail. Sometimes, we'd go sailing and I'd go to jail. Sometimes we would try to fight our way up the hill to Fort Charles and I'd go to jail. Sometimes the guard just outside the jail would nail me and I'd go to jail.

I don't think words can really describe the emotions that washed over me, the first time someone showed me how to get behind the bar in Faithful Bride.


Oh, did I mention going to jail? I went to jail a lot. Then I found the leaderboards and learned that most people went to jail a LOT MORE than I ever did. Switching back to the Pirates window from the leaderboards, I'd see that I was in jail again...

I totally agree with you! I think I started in early 2008, and played with some of my friends. All the things I quoted happened to me as well, especially the Fort Dundee part. Now, if that happened I would cancel my membership, and play another game. With some helpful updates you can do more things now like get loot, and sail to Cuba in two minutes.
 
Nov 2007...



I remember going to jail. And going to jail. And going to jail. Then, I remember going to jail. Sometimes, we'd go sailing and I'd go to jail. Sometimes we would try to fight our way up the hill to Fort Charles and I'd go to jail. Sometimes the guard just outside the jail would nail me and I'd go to jail.

....

Oh, did I mention going to jail? I went to jail a lot. Then I found the leaderboards and learned that most people went to jail a LOT MORE than I ever did. Switching back to the Pirates window from the leaderboards, I'd see that I was in jail again...

ROFL!!!!!!!!

I am going through the BP quest again on test... its the first time doing the BP since the early days... WOW that has changed... I have only gone to jail a few times but I remember when I originaly did it.

I remember doing one quest and asking another player about and she said "as long as you dont mind dieing its not that hard at all..."
 
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