User blog comment:CaptainEzekiel/Pirates Online Hacked? Or downtime/@comment-4132708-20110625225217

Its population/capacity problems. Too many people, think of it like this:

POTCO Servers make up quarts. Players fill up the quarts, each player is like a ounce. If there are too many ounces in the quarts they over flow and the players, the "ounces", overflow out of it and the POTCO game, the "gallons" overflow and the game crashes until they are able to empty the "gallons" and block the "flow" from overflowing but it flows back out again, they just keep making new motnh-long solotions that won't last. They need to get more servers, "quarts" so that we don't "overflow"