I have had almost the same exact problem. I've been playing POTC for a year now with the same mild issues you've mentioned. Then as of early December, I haven't been able to play AT ALL. I've played email tag with the POTC IT people for weeks and they've yet given me an adequate solution. Mostly they've told me it was issues with my router or my firewall settings, so I reconfigured the ports to my router to accept POTC, and there was no change. The most recent advice was to bypass my router when I play and connect straight to my computer. Now my internet cable is the screw-in type (no USB). So now I'm wondering if I need to go out and search for a USB adapter (which I've never seen and don't even know if there even is such a thing). I play on a MAC and I'm at the point of chalking it up to the fact that they don't know how to handle MAC. It is all very frustrating, especially since I was playing just fine under a year ago. I haven't tried using a new pirate, but I can't even log on to create one. I hope you find a solution, and if you do, please let me know what worked, as I will for you.
Fair winds,
Maniac Mick
