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Ten Ton Hammer recently posted an interview with Disney Online's Mike Goslin about the upcoming MMORPG, Pirates of the Caribbean Online. Among other things the Q&A session covers the game's player vs player content, gambling mini-games, and unique "active" combat system.

Based on the engine for Toontown Online, Pirates will offer would-be sea rogues the chance to cross blades with enemies and enter into a variety of other pirate themed activities. The PC version is scheduled to become available in Spring 2007, with a Mac version coming sometime after that.

Ten Ton Hammer: The press event showed me that the gameplay in Pirates Online a more active "first person shooter" style game, with target reticules and all, rather than a "sit back and auto attack" game like traditional MMOs. Were there significant tech hurdles to overcome in going with a more bandwidth-intensive style of combat? Will it be possible to play Pirates Online on a dial-up connection?

Mike: "Yeah, it’s tricky to design an “active” combat system in an MMO because of latency and potential hacking. We try and simulate as much as we can on the client so that things are happening in real time, but we still need to confirm hits and misses with the server in order to keep things secure. We decided to keep offense more active, and make defense rely on 'passive' skills that don’t require button-pressing to avoid some of the more dire latency problems. Forced to choose, we figured attacking is more 'piratey' than defending.

"I don’t know for certain yet if it will be possible to play our game over dial-up because we’re assuming a broadband connection, but our actual bandwidth usage is probably low enough after the game has finished downloading."

Ten Ton Hammer: Pirates Online Q&A

Pirates of the Caribbean Online

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