Disney Pirates of Caribbean MMORPG or why god hates us

[Xanthippe]

You can have interactions with other players in Toontown.  Limited chat via the chat interface, or secret friend chat which is unlimited chatting - but you need to get secret friends outside of the game via message boards or email or some other form of contact other than in-game contact.  It does exist, though.

Toons can decide whether to group up or not.  Buildings and Cog Headquarters are group activities.  Streets are not necessarily group activities, but players can and do work together.

As far as the "world" aspect goes - Toons are instanced in buildings, estates, trolley games and Cog Headquarters.  Most of the world - the streets and playgrounds - are not instanced.  You will see - and can play with - other toons in these places.  All toons can access these places (safely, if they stay on the sidewalks).

[Samwise]

Maybe I don't know enough about PP - give me one example of persistence, interaction, and advancement that doesn't revolve around solving a puzzle.

Persistence: Players can build ships, shops, and governments that persist in the world when they are not there.

Interaction: You can talk to other people (duh), form "guilds" (crews), play various games of skill and chance (card games, not puzzles) for money, and trade (there's a commodities market in addition to the piddling item trade and shop sort of thing that every other MMOG has).  Not to mention all of the forms of combat (some of which include a chance of heavy item loss and/or permanent changes to the loser's avatar), but those involve puzzles so they might not count to you.

Advancement: Economic advancement is the most obvious -- see above stuff about building stuff and establishing governments.  There's also equipment (one of the first priorities for most beginning players is earning money to buy themselves better weapons).  And a bunch of less tangible stuff like social and political advancement (making a name for yourself, being part of a crew you like, etc), as well as skill-based advancement (which again doesn't count to you since it involves puzzles).

Sorry, I gave you more than one example of each.   

[Raph]

Puzzle Pirates has a persistent world shared by users, persistent characters, a full-blown economy, crafting, housing, guilds, towns... basically, it's an MMORPG where the minigame of combat got replaced with a minigame of Puzzle Fighter. It totally meets the definition. It's not a session-based game at all.

Toontown has a persistent world with instanced multiplayer "dungeons" that are minigame challenges for earning money, and shared zones for combat, plus the town proper. Persistent world, check, persistent characters, check...

[Samwise]

No game without a soul-crushing grind will ever be accepted by everyone as a MMOG.   

[geldonyetich]

The more I witness the transpirings of what takes place in a persistent state massively multiplayer world with no instancing but including, "persistent characters, a full-blown economy, crafting, housing, guilds, towns"...

... the more I'm convinced it's a bad idea.

[bhodi]

... the more I'm convinced it's a bad idea.

Are you kidding? That's the entire draw of the virtual world-as-a-sandbox. People esacpe from reality and build a pseudo-life where they can achieve things they can't / won't do in real life. It's a powerful draw and those that can harness it get money hats. The only problem is that at their heart, people are horny, selfish, stupid, and don't play nice with each other.

[Furiously]

Toontown has a persistent world with instanced multiplayer "dungeons" that are minigame challenges for earning money, and shared zones for combat, plus the town proper. Persistent world, check, persistent characters, check...

Raph - I'd argue it doesn't have instanced dungeons. It has locking dungeons, but two groups can't be in the same building at the same time saving the same street. Once you go into a building, no one else can.

[Jimbo]

I still like Toontown, even if my wireless setup drives it crazy.  I've got the linsky wireless and the wireless-g Game Adapter, which is great for everything from BF2, BF 2142, CoX, WoW, Titan Quest online-games, Diablo 2 online, surfing the internet and pirating songs and porn...but Toontown goes nuts and keeps disconnecting me.  I'm thinking of switching back to a wired system anyway, since I now have a big 42" LCD HDTV that I could hook my computer up to it, and go back to the wired router.