Time
Forgot to mention the size of the game world and how the world works in terms of continuation. Essentially the world is constantly in motion. Taking time at a port taking on goods? Well you are burning time in the world. The world continues to move with or without your interaction.
World
The first world we are planning on (and have in the prototype so far) is the Caribbean. Out plan is to have DLC later on that has new worlds, new ships, more quests, expanded functionality.
Current map in the prototype:
It takes around 24 minutes to sail from the farthest corner of the world to the other. Most islands are mere minutes away from each other. The world is sufficiently large to house thousands of active AI without crowding. Each active server instance will allow up to 64 active players at a time. We plan on having the server allow an option for Faction balancing so that no 1 faction can dominate the map with more players than the others.