I would love to be able to recommend this game. I've played it since the old days over 15 years ago, but we've come to a point where there is no reason to revisit the game. The game has turned into a milkcow for the publishers, who only keep it online because it's still making them money.

This game hasn't had a single meaningful update in over a decade. Everything and anything about this game is outdated. It feels like nomansland during the week, especially during the day. On the weekends when there are some people online, it's mostly island sieges (which can be big fun), but since the clans that are still active have gotten so rich over the time, the amounts of money paid for jobbers (people working on the ship) has become so high, that all other content becomes irrelevant. You get 9999 every 10 minutes on a island siege, while making like 2-3k an hour on a good day pillaging.

The money is also basically meaningless. You can buy clothes that degrade (so why bother) or swords and weapon that give you a small edge in some minigames. Since everyone uses them the edge is also meaningless. The other stuff to spend money on is furniture which doesn't do anything but look nice in an area that nobody else will see exept for you, unless you invite people. There's no reason to invite people. Last you can buy ships and supplies for the ship, but since the game has become so dead, a ship for over 30 is just unusable. Meaning after only a short period you can buy a sloop and maybe a war brig, and then you already have everything that is usefull.

The one thing about this game that is absolutely great is the community. The people on this game are some of the kindest and most relaxed people in online gaming. Everyone is there because they enjoy the game, and want you to be a part of it. So that's basically the only good thing about this game.

Wish this game was still like the old days, but with the gaming standard we have today, just don't bother getting disappointed of something that was once great.

Barrier of entry for new players is absurd with most runs being elite+. There's no longer any game content updates and the content that is usually played is littered with players with 10-20 years of experience. The only content update there really is are blockades because of the players.

I dont recommend this game in its current state, the OMs (game devs) have made it clear they want this game to die and have ceased development on the project even though the community loves the game. Steam client hasnt been updated in forever and the Original client has no account creation due to a bug that happened long ago. This game has been abandoned and it is really hard to see because its got some of the best bones of an mmorpg that ive ever seen. My top Qol as a fullstack developer would be to add the following to the puzzles and mechanics:
Overall Fixes:
- add colorblind mode and brightness settings
- fix steam client crashes and overall lagginess
- let us expand the labor system to better fit a low population
- add an ingame guide for battle nav that includes maxxes for ships, accessible while bnavving
- add the ability for officers to set their ship to flag use, this would help smhs where not all ships are from the same crew
- add statistics regarding performance after a pillage battle, include turns to grapple, and cannons shot/hit + accuracy percentage
Poker:
- add a bet pot button and the ability to save 1 bet amount for use later
Treasure Haul:
- add a performance indicator
Carpentry:
-add a masterpiece streak counter
Bilging,Navigation,Sailing:
-fix scoring
SMH,Blockade,HS:
- allow a "party" to be formed before going in with multiple ships so you can see moves and color code the ships, making coordination easier and more streamlined
- Make the HS map brighter and the squares more defined, currently hard to see the squares or backwall

I played this game daily back before it was even on Steam. I miss it dearly and the crew I had. Now its just a thousand and one bots. Honestly it was amazing to play, and the player-driven commerce, trade, I can't even describe it. This will forever be a piece of nostalgia that was once something amazing.

Locked account due to inactivity. Support is non existent. Good luck trying to play this game with an old character!

This game is officially dead, which is a shame because there was nothing like and quite likely never will be again. A hidden gem but probably one of the best pirate games of all time, left to rot by the devs. May Davy Jones have mercy on their souls.

I am playing this game since early 2000s, when it was in Miniclip. It was one of the most amazing games that I ever played to date. However, it is not what it is used to be.


Back in the day, there were thousands of players in the game. Which meant, multiple oceans (servers) to play, tons of crews to compete, a lively economy, and a lot of epic moments.

6-7 years ago, the Poker Plague has hit the game stronger than ever before. People who does not play the actual game but sinking real life money to play Poker has disrupted the economy, and started to kill the game. Prices of certain things has sky rocketted, people started to confine in the Inn more than ships.

Number of voyages has fallen and the game turned into some sort of Poker and Trader Simulator. Where people tried to flip certain items with virtually raising prices, trading from one hand to another to get a portion of in-game money that is sourced by the real life money.

Most of the Oceans are merged with each other. Only thing that divides the populated Oceans are now whether it is a Subscription Ocean or Doubloon Ocean; the Subscription Oceans are practically dead, there are just a few crews playing the game. Doubloon Oceans are dying. Normally they were the most populated oceans with legendary characters in them.

They tried to revive the game with Dark Seas, but it did not lived to hype, as it felt like it is a re-skin (at least, personally), and not really providing the faction-based competitive environment it was advertised for.

The game is now practically dead.

If you want to play poker and dress your character up to look nice in the paperdoll. This game is for you. Otherwise, it is nothing but a ghost town. Sadly, not even the shadow of what it was used to be.

What a lovely game for the minigames versus each other. I would recommend with friends. Finding random people was not my strength. I have to be honest, I never got my mind around this doubloons and how it exactly works and also how the housing works. I may have never reached beyond the starting point to fully grasp the map setup other than random travelling.

Today the game is just outdated (unfortunately).

As much as I loved this game back in the day, and still occasionally crave some of the puzzles, the game itself is hard to recommend, given some rather user-unfriendly practices, a bit of old-age jankiness, and a pretty dead online community.

In order to keep your pirate permanently, you need to spend real money on it (otherwise, it is deleted along with its assets and reputation after six weeks of inactivity) -- over the last decade or two, I have lost many a pirate from this mechanic, and a couple were ones that I had developed enough that I had a crew of online friends who were deleted along with the character. My advice: if you make friends online, share contact info with each other in some other way so that you can find them again in case life gets in the way and your pirate gets deleted.
In order to play any game you want to on any day, you need to spend real money monthly (though most games have "free" days of the week where you can play them, and the basic "duty" games are always available)-- it should be noted that the monthly costs for games is broken down by types of games, so "labor" games are one charge, "parlor" games are another, "sea monster" games are a third, and "officer" games of varying ranks are others. These charges are via in-game currency, so in theory, you COULD play the game enough to farm enough PoE to be able to afford the in-game currency on the marketplace (which explains the extremely high costs of all items in the game). For reference, in five hours of playing a new character, bouncing around between games as the mood struck me and completing the majority of the starter missions, I earned about 700 PoE. One in-game currency costs about 3,000 PoE. The Labor badge costs 5 in-game currency, "sea monster" costs 5, Parlor costs 4, and Officer costs 8-20.
In order to purchase furniture or other items in game, you need to spend real money on the in game currency (or a massive amount of your earned PoE in the marketplace), but it's very easy to miss the fact that some things will require this currency, and it will charge the PoE cost of the purchase before leaving your item in an inaccessible limbo wherein you can't retrieve it due to not having the in-game currency (and after forty days of not picking up the item using the in-game currency, the item will be released to the vendor to do with as they choose--and your PoE isn't refunded). (Yeah, I'm a little salty about that last point, since I assumed the "delivery charge" was only if I didn't want to go to the vendor's stall to pick up the item myself, and not a second charge in a completely different currency that would completely waste the money already spent if I lacked the in-game currency for this second charge).
The window sizing issue of the game IS fixable with some creative modification of the java executable program for Windows 10 users, but the game still struggles to run at times--some games take a really long time to register individual mouse clicks, like Blacksmithing (still playable, but slower than is enjoyable), and the program will freeze up and require force-closing if you try to browse the stall of a store with a lot of items. This second point is a rather large issue if you actually want to spend money on this game and get into the luxuries or have your own stall to sell goods.
Many aspects of the game are unexplained, as with the aforementioned delivery charge, or how to customize your chat experience (like muting). The game is absolutely overwhelmed with people spamming the trade chat for things that they're buying or selling (most of which are likely bots, given how often they're repeating the exact same message, though not as bad as the bots in, say FFXIV)--fortunately, you can mute the entire trade chat channel, though then you'll notice that the online community is VERY quiet.

In its defense, the game does still function and the games are still quite enjoyable when you get to play them. There is enough variety to keep you occupied for a long time, though you sort of have to accept that unless you pay money and secure your pirate from deletion, you'll never get to experience a good percentage of the game (eg. luxury items, different weapons, having your own stall, hunting monsters, and most "player crew" activities). But as long as you remember not to get too attached to your pirate, their assets, or their job reputations, you can still get a lot of puzzling fun out of the game.

No longer seems to work via Steam. Subs are unrealistic when you can pay the same for something like WOW .
Managed to get the game to work by using my browser and 23 people online , such a shame .