This game was once a real masterpiece with a huge following. However, the devs have made some disasterous decisions in recent years.

I was one of the original players and loved the game with over 2000hrs played. However, the devs now have a useless Caribbean Server that is wiped clean every couple of months so that the players lose everything they have built and have to start all over again. Including your hard-won rank/XP. Like virtually everyone, I left when I heard about this. The Caribbean Server is available to all, but is hardly used because of this ridiculous 'wipe'.

There is a peace server and I recently returned to the game to thinking it was just a practise server to train the player to be ready for the War Server. The War Server is only available to players who bought the game before it became free. Then the game became free, it was all adjusted to force players to buy the DLC Ships rather than build their own.

Originally, I spent hundreds of hours building and dismantling minor ships to gain the XP to become an Admiral and command up 2500 men. This was a long and very grinding process. After my 'retraining' on the 'Peace Server', I moved over to the 'War Server'. Slap, bang, wallop! My rank of Admiral has gone and I simply could not be bothered to go through all of that grinding again, so I quit.

There are very few people playing now. Usually around 30-40 on each server. Most of the newbies leave disillusioned when using the Caribbean Server after just a few hours when they realise that no progress can ever be made. I understand that the idea of the 'wipe' was to stop one faction completely dominating the map and nobody else joining any of the other factions. However, to take away my valued rank was just the final straw and served no purpose.

On my recent play, I found the devs have destroyed the trade system by not having very much in the way of assets or upgrades that are worth having or using at the shops in port. Fighting other NPC ships is pretty pointless too as the reward in terms of 'drops' of upgrades and other such materials and assets when sinking an enemy ship are now pathetic and rarely worth keeping/using.

I am astounded at how the devs have seemingly systematically destroyed their own product.

Conclusion - Wait and see how good the current rivals in development are such as 'Ahoy', 'Age of Corsairs or 'Age of Pirates' as this game is dead. Oh yes, any grievances, criticisms or suggestions to the devs are usually responded to by them in a very immature and childish, sulky manner.

Im done with this game.
back many a year ago. i bought this game and damm it was a blast. so many fun hours. i kept going and going.
i recorded all the stuff i needed to build the next ships, it became something i was genuinly managing even during my day to day activities.

now....its reduced to a cashgrab.... all the good stuf is gone and made way for some weird MMO clanfest.
map is getting reduced. im sorry that sailing back in the day took a long time. guess they shoulda made the world smaller back then....
oh and its free to play now. nice. so do i get a refund? or can i play the game i bought from back then?
also funny thing that the game is free while the DLC kost more than some of the better games these days.

even if its free. dont add to your account. save yourself the many hours of grinding only to lose it all on a reset.
devs. you where great. where did it go wrong?

i'm really heartbroken to write this, but stay away from this game. once this was the anakin skywalker of games for everyone nerding about the age of sail, but oh boy has this promise been crushed. coming from predecessor games like pirates of the burning sea, for me naval action seemed to be the next-gen prodigy to this in an open world, including beautifully crafted ships with excellent graphics an physics. the game's engine imho still holds up to this day from a technical point of view. the mmo experience has once been great with hundreds of players login in daily, epic port battles and clan rivalries.

this has all been lost.

the devs on their epic journey of turning this game into a pile of ♥♥♥♥ have managed to first destroy the motivation of all the casual players with recurring server wipes, then destroyed the ingame economy, But that wasn't enough. then their greed took over and they started bringing ships as paid DLCs. DLCs for single ships with a pricepoint exceeding what you might pay for a simplane on MSFS, which has actually professional level of simulation depth and systems integration.

At last they made the game free to play and started 3 stand alone server. one for PVP, one for PVE (to which both of no newby whoi did not buy the game before it went f2p has access to) plus a third server for the newbs, which gets wiped on a monthyish base. splitting the playerbase even further.

Please, to everyone considering to play this game, don't

go and wait for some alternative to be released (see 'Ahoy' for example) or just don't or you'll end up with an utterly miserable experience.