Even though the core mechanics are great (dynamic player ranking, full player ran economy), the game is heavily neglected, and has been so for many, many years. About the only thing that is consistently receiving attention is cosmetic items, such as limited edition vessels and boxes with special colored stuff. This is all content that requires a direct purchase with real money, or indirect through doubloons (which are only acquired with real money).

They made some small steps in the right direction with dark seas, but focused on pvp elements, which were abused heavily (bounties on ships, owl familiars acquired through pvp, ...). Very quickly dark seas was also completely neglected. But not before they squeezed in some special packs (which provided lifetime badges (which you need to actually do the puzzles), some ships etc). Of course these packs cost real money as well. When the ocean was obviously dead, they still took the time to do sales on those packs. Anyone that still purchased them soon found the server to be completely empty, and thus unplayable.

Even though the core mechanics are great (dynamic player ranking, full player ran economy), the game is heavily neglected, and has been so for many, many years. About the only thing that is consistently receiving attention is cosmetic items, such as limited edition vessels and boxes with special colored stuff. This is all content that requires a direct purchase with real money, or indirect through doubloons (which are only acquired with real money). They made some small steps in the right direction with dark seas, but focused on pvp elements, which were abused heavily (bounties on ships, owl familiars acquired through pvp, ...). Very quickly dark seas was also completely neglected. But not before they squeezed in some special packs (which provided lifetime badges (which you need to actually do the puzzles), some ships etc). Of course these packs cost real money as well. When the ocean was obviously dead, they still took the time to do sales on those packs. Anyone that still purchased them soon found the server to be completely empty, and thus unplayable.