So far:
- Looks pretty.
- Ship combat is fun. Decent degree of skill involved with wind changes etc.
- Avatar combat is stand in a spot and press buttons to make your guy swipe his sword. boring and easy, thankfully over with quickly.
- Economy, there's absolutely fuckall npc's involved, so it's entirely player driven. could possible become another "YOU GIVE SOJ?" with nothing stopping monopolies etc. Currently a very Bill Gates style market domination going on.
- Similar PvP to Eve. Nice feeling of conflict between the various nations.
- Crafting is kinda fun but if you're a pirate you can just take over whatever you defeat, so that's entirely OP.
- Quests make you want to just go 'next','next','next','finish' without reading what you're being told to do. Thankfully the main attraction is the PvP, and only WoW carebears will complain about the quests.
- It's beta.
I wouldn't be suprised if it's a failure overall once it launches, but it's pretty fun at the moment. Might have a few rough patches ala Eve upon launching.