These are the rules for playing The World of Pirates Online. They are short on purpose. By making an account or playing the game, you agree to them.

1. What this is

The World of Pirates Online is a free, community-built revival of the retired MMO Pirates of the Caribbean Online. It is run by a small group of volunteers as a hobby. It is free and it stays free: there is nothing to buy, no subscription, no in-game store, no premium currency, and no donations that buy an advantage.

To play, you make an account here and install our launcher. The launcher is the only place we hand out the game client.

2. We are a fan project

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by The Walt Disney Company, Disney Interactive, or any of their partners. Pirates of the Caribbean and every related name, logo and character belong to their respective owners, not to us.

We make no money from this. We do not sell the game, the client, any game asset, or anything else. We do not accept payment for access, items or advantages. If a rights holder asks us to stop or to change something, we will.

3. Your account

• One account per person. Do not create extra accounts to get around a ban or a restriction.
• Do not share your account. Do not give anyone your password, and do not sell, trade, rent or transfer your account. Anything done on your account is treated as done by you.
• An email address is required when you sign up. It is how we verify your account and how you get back in if you forget your password. If you give us an address you cannot read, we cannot help you recover the account.
• New accounts are approved by hand. While the game is in early testing, registering does not by itself give you access: your account waits until we review it and let it in. Until then you cannot log in or download the game. We may decline an account without giving a reason, and we may withdraw access later.
• You must be at least 15 years old to have an account.

4. How to behave

Do not:

• cheat, use a modified client, or use any tool that gives you an advantage the game does not give everyone;
• use bots, macros, scripts or any other automation to play, farm or sign up;
• abuse a bug or exploit instead of reporting it — tell us and we will fix it;
• harass, threaten, or bully other players, or post hateful, sexual or illegal content in chat or in a character name;
• pretend to be a member of staff;
• attack, overload, scan or otherwise interfere with our servers, our website or our launcher;
• share, mirror or repackage our client as if it were yours, or bundle it with anything else;
• sell or buy accounts, characters, items or gold for real money.

5. Moderation and enforcement

Actions in the game are logged and tied to the account that took them, so that we can investigate reports. Our administrators can, at their discretion:

• warn you;
• limit your account to a restricted, preset chat menu instead of free chat;
• kick you from a server or end your sessions;
• suspend your account for a set period; or
• ban your account permanently.

To stop banned players from simply making a new account, a ban may also record the hardware identifier of the device the account played on, and block that device. We explain what that identifier is, and how long we keep it, in the Privacy Policy.

If you think a decision was wrong, you can appeal by email — see Contact below. We read appeals, but we are volunteers and we do not promise a reply or a reversal.

6. The game is provided as-is

This is a hobby project, not a product. The game is provided "as is", with no warranty of any kind. We do not promise that it will be available, that it will work, that your progress will be kept, or that it will be free of bugs.

We may change, reset, wipe or delete characters, items, progress and whole servers, including during testing, and we may take the entire game offline permanently. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for any loss that comes from playing, from downtime, from losing progress, or from the game ending.

7. Ending your account

You can ask us to delete your account at any time (see the Privacy Policy for what happens to your data). We can suspend or close an account that breaks these rules, and we can close accounts if the project shuts down. Sections 2, 6 and 8 survive your account ending.

8. Changes to these terms

We will update this page when the rules change, and we will change the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will say so on the site. If you keep playing after a change, that counts as accepting it.

9. Contact

Questions, appeals and reports will go through our Discord server, which is coming soon and will be linked from the homepage when it opens.