User blog:Cheysa Finn/Two Years of Tales

Copied from piratesonline.co
Posted by Michael Wass on March 23, 2017, 9 p.m.



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.



Hey, I can SEE you!



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



"And this gentlemen who needs no nose, is... what's your name again, mate?" "Nose! Oh well, uh, Noseless, actually."



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



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



No caption needed.



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



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