User blog:Nults McKagan/A Critique of POTCO MC

I don't know exact dates, but about two weeks ago as of the writing of this blog (if I'm correct), a project known as "Pirates of the Caribbean MC" began. The goal of this newer project is simple: recreate the world we all knew and loved as Pirates of the Caribbean, just this time as a Minecraft server. They also plan on creating and using plug-ins to help make the experience playing the server as similar to PotCO as possible.

For a project that's only existed for about two weeks, they've done a substantial amount of work; various islands have been recreated, some plug-ins (I assume) have been considered and implemented (at least MCMMO). Perhaps they'll encounter problems concerning the actual server-building as time progresses, but as of now this project seems as if it is coming along swimmingly in comparison to many of the other PotCO revival projects, wouldn't you agree? I believe they are; however, none of these types of projects are without their faults.

An Explanation of PotCO Roleplay (Skip if you already know everything)
For those of you reading this who are unfamiliar with the concept of PotCO roleplay, I'll explain it how I can; it'll be important to understand what it is and how it works in order to understand my criticisms of the server:

The Main Description:

PotCO Roleplay was an unofficial aspect of PotCO from the very early-on days up to the end of the game. In the early years of the game, the roleplay was mainly EITC roleplayers fighting against random Pirate roleplaying guilds. However, in early 2010, a radical shift began to occur where the "power players" of roleplay began to fancy themselves as the Monarchs of various European nations; the two major ones I can think of are John Breasly representing Great Britain and Pearson Wright (the operator of PotCO MC, as it were) representing Spain; it was around this time that the power of Pirates as a roleplaying group begin to fade into irrelevancy (although it never completely died out).

As the simple "EITC vs Pirates" style of roleplay began to fade out and the country style of roleplay began to phase in, countries would make maps for themselves stating what lands they owned. As I'm sure you could guess, this caused a lot of controversy as claims began to overlap and tensions began to brew. As these problems arose in 2011, this very wiki began to place regulations on roleplay in hopes of preventing these problems; not only did the problems remain unfixed, but many of the "power player" monarchs (Breasly & Wright) disagreed with the regulations the wiki attempted to place on them, with Wright beginning to continue his roleplay on his own wiki, all whilst fighting Breasly.

Other miscellaneous, yet important facts to remember:
 * Over the course of Country Roleplay, many armed insurrections against the British and Spanish crowns were attempted by disgruntled players lower in the chain of command; most, if not all, failed.
 * Smaller countries with no relevance to the Caribbean, such as Sardinia, Romania and Nepal began to rise as certain roleplayers wanted leadership positions for themselves; almost every single one was weak and miniscule, unable to hold a candle to the power of the British and Spanish guilds.
 * The system this wiki used to "regulate" roleplay was known as the Roleplay Council: They are heavily responsible for the rise of non-Caribbean-relevant nations (Nepal, Sardinia, etc.) and gave very little, if any, representation to the actual major roleplayers.

The Actual Critique
Pearson Wright has the intention to make "Competitive Roleplay" (which is supposed to have parallels to the roleplay seen in the later years of PotCO) an official aspect of the game, regulated by the administration, entirely unlike the roleplay seen in the original PotCO. Here is an excerpt from the official PotCO MC website about this "Competitive Roleplay" we should expect to see on the server:

"Competitive roleplaying involves roleplaying as a highly prestigious pirate or privateer, Spaniard, Frenchman, EITC (East India Trading Company) member, or Royal Navy member. Each faction has its own established leaders to whom you must swear fealty if you choose to become involved in competitive roleplaying. Create guilds for your respective faction, rank up, command armies, fight in interactive battles, and display dominance over your rivals!"

Seems fairly simple, yes? You join the faction of your choosing (upon invitiation, if needed) and fight your enemy faction(s)? Perhaps for some this would be a fine system for competitive roleplaying; however, I believe this mode of roleplay won't create a competitive environment that roleplayers will enjoy.

One of the major aspects of PotCO Roleplay was that if there was a leader a group of people didn't like, they could rebel against him or her and create collision within the roleplay community, causing it to be more active. In a system where "each faction has its own established leaders to whom you must swear fealty", the opportunities to create more activity within the roleplay community are greatly decreased, as rebelling against the "established leaders" will result in you being removed from the faction; the roleplaying will become too static and uninteresting if nothing controversial happens.

Additionally, Pearson Wright stated in a Pirates Forums post that guilds will be a roleplay-exclusive feature. He states that this is to avoid the rising of "extremist" roleplay groups that may try to create something, such as the Mongolian Empire, on the game (something that could have easily happened in PotCO Roleplay). While I do agree that the rising of "Mongolian Empire" groups and others of the sort is a bit silly (although I did similar things in PotCO, which I regret now), what I don't agree with is the idea that guilds should be a roleplay-exclusive feature; guilds were undoubtedly one of the biggest social features of PotCO (second only to the friends list), and removing them for non-roleplayers due to fear over the rise of "extremist" roleplay groups is "extremely" ridiculous. Regardless, these supposed "extremist" groups, provided they're determined enough to reach their goal, may attempt to create their supposed empires without the guise of a guild, making the argument for disallowing non-roleplay guilds moot.

In the same post mentioned in the above paragraph, Pearson likened the proposed factions to be similar to the Game Master-led and NPC-led factions from PotCO:

''Just like on POTCO, the EITC was officially run by staff, Game Masters, and the main pirate guilds to which thousands of players flocked upon getting a glimpse of, were also Game Masters. As for the Spanish and French, well, their leaders were NPCs. That being said, having game masters for those two factions I'd say is a major improvement.''

These "established leaders" of factions mentioned earlier on in the post are apparently going to be Game Masters. Considering Pearson Wright's hope is to create a competitive roleplaying atmosphere, I don't think appointing Game Masters to lead the factions is a smart move. Sure, the Marceline and EITC Black Guard guilds created a spectacle when they performed their in-game events, but they were just that; in-game events. The Marceline and Black Guard guilds were not competitive roleplay guilds by any means; they didn't even let non-Game Master players join their ranks. It seems a bit odd to radically change the role of Game Masters and have them lead supposed "competitive" roleplay factions without any possibility of being removed by anybody but the administration (see the above paragraph about "established leaders").

''In a nutshell: Pearson Wright's attempts to regulate roleplay by instating hand-picked leaders to the factions will only result in a static roleplay where nothing happens and the players don't feel a sense of urgency that compels them to be competitive. Additionally, the disallowing of non-roleplaying guilds will only limit the freedom of players to enjoy playing the game the way they see fit, while barely limiting the ability of "extremist" roleplay groups to form (as they may as well just form in secret).''

Possible Solutions
Due to the nature of PotCO MC's "Competitive Roleplay" model not really being suitable, I've come up with alternative plans that the PotCO MC team may consider if they find my critiques to be worth evaluating:

Kickstart Roleplay; Leave it Alone Afterwards
Perhaps at the beginning of the server's life, the PotCO MC administration could select who will lead what factions in the beginning (preferably a normal player). Then, after the game begins, they don't touch the factions and allow them to take their course; rebellions, wars and all of the roleplay-type events, without outside inteference from the administration. Of course, they could ban people who break the rules while roleplaying, but they would leave the roleplaying itself alone.

Leave Roleplay Alone Entirely
This is my preferred option, although I'm sure the administration would dislike this one the most: the PotCO MC administration would have to remove "Competitive Roleplaying" as an official game aspect in order for this to happen. This means that, once the server starts up, people are left to their own devices in terms of roleplay; although this creates more opportunity for leaders the administration may not like to rise up, and for "extremist" roleplay groups to become a major influence in the game. Regardless, this allows for more freedom of the players to decide how they want to enjoy the game, which will ultimately result in people enjoying the gameplay more.

Discuss, Share, Get this Known
Discuss my critique in the comments, add your own critiques onto it, debate the critiques I've laid out, share this post on other websites, share it with the PotCO MC team, share it with everybody; I think it's important that this issue be highlighted, for fear of the game being less fun due to issues with a major aspect of the game.