User blog:G-man./Pirates Online Rewritten - Closing and Reopening

Closure
On November 30, 2014, Pirates Online Rewritten was cancelled. Project leader Jacob (O'fury) made a post on the POR forums titled, "Pirates Online Rewritten has set sail for the last time."

Let's go through and dissect the post.

Most important points of the post:
 * "We are limited on resources, manpower, and skill."
 * "Then we ran into several issues and drama within the staff. Many of the developers could not figure out how to get along."
 * "Everyone was getting tired of errors and not getting far. Shadow Coder, then took a leave to work on her own projects."
 * "This left the team with very little knowledge on how to remake POTCO."
 * "When we started to figure out piece by piece what needed to be done, we simply realized that we do not have enough people to continue the project."

All of what was said above are legitimate reasons as to why the project was cancelled.

In my opinion, it was a bold and intelligent move not to continue. It would have just given more false hope to the former players of PotCO. I had gained respect for the staff and project.

Then, today came.

Reopening
The date that this blog was written, December 6, 2014, Pirates Online Rewritten reopened. Jacob made another post titled, "What if I told you......."

Once again, let's dissect this post.

Most important points:
 * "We were getting too stressed out by the constant harassment for release dates, and called failures left and right."
 * "Pirates Online Rewritten is still there but we aren't going to have a community outreach and we will not be answering questions about development."
 * "I was recruiting all of the other potco remakes to work together for the sake of the community."

When I saw this post, I lost the respect for the project that I had gained earlier. They are giving false hope to the former players.

Now let's compare these posts.

As I said before, the first post gave legitimate reasons for the cancellation of the project. It told about the problems it had. If what was said actually was the case, then why keep on trying to develop this emulator? Were these issues worked out? The reopening post does not tell how the problems or, or will be fixed. The only sort of plan we get is O'fury stating that he gathered the other projects.

How is gathering other projects helping at all? Every other PotCO remake project had no progress that was shown publicly. Simply having more people in your development team will not help, they need to know what they are doing as well. Which, by the looks of it, they don't know what they are doing.

On a different note, all of this "harassment" could have been avoided if a plan was devised by the development team. You don't have to plan a release date, just give a detailed plan of action on how you will recreate PotCO. POR was called a failure because there was no true plan, there was infighting between the staff, people were constantly leaving and getting replaced, and the lack of updates.

I pose these questions to the staff of Pirates Online Rewritten:
 * What is your plan for creating a PotCO emulator?
 * Have you resolved the issues that caused you to shut down POR in the first place?
 * If not, how do you plan on resolving them?
 * How many people from other projects have joined you?
 * Will they remain separate projects, or will they unite under POR?
 * Did you actually distribute any of POR's source to other projects?
 * Do the people that joined POR from other projects have any knowledge that would help create an emulator?
 * What made you reopen the project's development?

Of course, as stated in O'fury's post, these questions will not be answered. They will not be answering any questions pertaining to the development of the game.

Was this simply a ploy to renew people's faith in Pirates Online Rewritten?