Before you read on, this isn't any form of advert for the game or anything, this is simply me posting information about changes to an SOE game in the right section, you will see at no point do ask you to come play the game, I'm simply relaying information 
I think it's safe to say that FLS has had a tough time of it recently. They had the server merges to bump up populations on the remaining servers and they also had the utter and total failure of the Spanish launch of the game.
That being said, FLS are still going along their path to creating the game they want. They admit that they have potentially released too early, yet as they'd already had so much time in beta they had pretty much no choice. Anyway, there's a number of massive changes coming up with the game, which those who have been a bit 50/50 about the game might want to hear.
Firstly, there's a lot of stuff coming in patch 1.4, which I'll link to in a moment but there's also a lot of stuff coming for 1.5 which will make the game more appealing to those who like PvE and not PvP; most notably the player port governance.
So onto patch 1.4. The main part of this patch is a massive re-balancing of the player abilities and also and introduction of a new pirate career!
The links below are the breakdown of all of this, so feel free to have a read of each at your leisure 
1.4 Skill Changes: Overview
1.4 Skill Changes: Naval Officer
1.4 Skill Changes: The Privateer
1.4 Skill Changes: The Freetrader
1.4 Skill Changes: The Buccaneer (the new pirate career)
1.4 Skill Changes: The Cutthroat
Ok, so with the stuff for 1.4 out of the way, there's a couple more things you might want to read, which include:
PotBS at MMORPG ~ members of the PotBS staff met up with MMORPG.com to talk about the server merges and things still to come in the game: a good overview of all things Pirates currently.
Changes to the Underdog tools ~ these are tools that are given out to the nations who don't win the map, in various scales depending on their position ie the nation who was last in the map standings gets the better underdog tool to help them.
User Content 2.0 ~ this is a change to the user content system which is now finally finished and ready to impliment. For all details on the new system, click the link!
