Pirates of the Caribbean Online

Everyone’s a Pirate!

by Karen “Shayalyn” Hertzberg

It’s been a long, busy day. The last interview on my schedule found John Hammond and me standing in Buena Vista ’s (read: Disney’s) Pirates of the Caribbean booth, a noisy hub full of pirate paraphernalia and, unfortunately, not a single soul who had a clue what we were doing there for our (scheduled) interview appointment.

While Buena Vista staff scurried around trying to figure out what to do with us, I watched over staffer Joe Shochet’s shoulder as he demo’d the game for some other folks. I’d quote Joe on some of his comments about the potential for soloing in PotC, but unfortunately I can’t. I’ll explain that later.

At first glance, PotC’s graphics look cartoony and decidedly old-school. It doesn’t get any better at second glance. But when Petrina Walker, marketing director for Buena Vista, finally showed up to give us an interview and a more official preview of the game, she explained that we were seeing an early version and “very much a work in progress.”

We did not, repeat, *did not* meet this man.

“Although this is a more fantasy art style,” she clarified. “We want to appeal to a broad audience.”

What’s PotC all about? Essentially, as Walker enthusiastically stated, “Everyone’s a pirate!” You begin your pirate career on the tutorial level (which we didn’t have the opportunity to see during the demo), in jail. Captain Jack Sparrow himself (the infamous and down-trodden pirate played by Johnny Depp in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise) will show you how to break out.

Your goal as a pirate is to gain notoriety and become, as Walker says, “the most notorious pirate in the Caribbean.” In other words, the more you plunder, the better you arrr. (Get it? The better you arrr? Oh, never mind.) All sorts of things contribute to your notoriety. You can win battles in both naval and avatar-to-avatar combat, you can complete quests, and you can even defeat other players in “parlor games” such as cards. If it makes you a more infamous pirate, it helps you advance. The game even has a notoriety meter, which appears to function like the experience bar in most MMOs.

“The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, as you probably know, has been very successful—305 million at the box office,” said Walker. “90% of the movie-going public has seen the movie, so we designed [the game] to have a massive appeal.”