I wanted to like Pirates of the Caribbean (PotC) Online. It seemed like a cool concept. However, what I played was a game released well before it was ready. There was a severe lack of polish in this game that made it nearly unplayable.

I picked up the game after a co-worker had created a character and accepted a few quests. The game seemed to run slowly and the graphics were average for an MMO. I was happy to give the game some credit based on the fact that it was dealing with pirates, which is a fun premise. Unfortunately, there was little story outside the scattered quests and I soon found myself forgetting the idea of fun I had when I began.

When I went to solve a quest, there was no indication regarding when I was getting close to a quest objective. For example, if I was supposed to talk to a certain person in a town, I would have to search through the whole town. In World of Warcraft, there are indicators on the map when your character approaches NPCs relevant to completing active quests. This is immensely helpful when completing multiple quests at once, as you can run into a town and see immediately which few people matter to you. When I completed a quest in PotC, I had no idea where these people were and wasted a lot of time trying to find them.

The game was riddled with bugs. There were camera bugs, where my character was obscured by plants and buildings. The maps were incredibly poor in general and provided little direction. It was really hard to isolate enemies, so many would gang up and I would die quickly. The respawn rate was fast on the enemies, so by the time I returned to the spot, any progress I made on cutting down enemy numbers was lost.

One of the worst mechanics by far was the sailing mechanic. Sailing between two places seemed to take forever. Sometimes other ships would attack, but it was difficult to aim and retaliation was near impossible. I was dying frequently due to my enemy isolation and respawn issues, and, each time I died, I would have to spend five minutes sailing back to that island. Sometimes I didn’t make it, especially when ship was attacked.

PotC Online suffered from a severe lack of adequate development and polishing time. The core mechanics were in place, but the balance was off on much of the game, from sailing times to the enemy behavior. This game may have the potential to be fun, but in its current form, it is too unrefined to be enjoyable.