It’s funny how you mention that pirates, as an MMO concept, is a very much under-tapped thing.

But then I remember that the single player pirate games as of late haven’t exactly been stellar either, with the Risen series and Raven’s Cry coming right to mind… >.>

Nice to finally see PotBS being given the MMOG treatment. I recommended taking a look back when the game went F2P and was still under Flying Lab development. Better late than never.
Seemed like you didn’t really have access to someone who had been playing the game a lot, since most of what you covered was first hand experience from your playtime. While that is fine, it also leaves out a lot of information regarding aspects you didn’t encounter yourself.
While I was playing, the high points were the 24v24 instanced port battles that were the culmination of putting a port in contention. I’d also would have liked to see you cover the ship upgrades (outfitting), treasure hunting, faction reputation (plus the perks connected to that) and the different swashbuckling styles available.
Worth mentioning is also that to get a mostly self sufficient ship building and outfitting setup you only need two accounts. So if you want to start supplying yourself and/or friends with all you need to keep sailing top ships with good upgrades you don’t need to do much. A big plus is of course if you like to play “crafter” and don’t mind a bit of open sea hauling. Doing it together with one or more friend speeds up the process but isn’t required.
I don’t know if this changed since I played last, but I remember there being a “Captain’s Club” or something which was basically the subscription option. The key thing about it though was that once you paid for the first month you could cancel and still keep the most essential advantages like max ship slots (6?) and production building slots (10?). So you got massive value there.

Anyway I very much enjoyed the episode. Looking forward to future ones.