Been running around with this the last week as I've been able, and still having a lot of fun. I've run into more players now, but still fairly uncommon. I even convinced my wife to give it a go, and she ran with me on a couple of voyages this weekend and seems to like the game more than I expected.
My most notable achievements were killing a Kraken by myself (although I didn't get into the water in time to get any treasure), and last night as I was getting ready hop off for the night, I got the upper hand on two guys that were trying to rob me.
I put into port with a small chest of gold and turned it in, but I noticed a sloop a little ways off that was slowly sailing near the island I was on. As I got back on my ship and was about to log off they started approaching, so I rotated my sloop to give me a line of fire, but waved to show I wasn't interested in a fight. They opened fire on me anyway and I returned it. They put a number of poorly aimed rounds through my ship, but mostly above the waterline, so no real threat. I managed to put a lot of shots into their ship on the waterline and take down their mast, but then they hit me with a cursed cannon ball that disabled my guns and started bombarding me again.
That finally caused more damage than I could fix, and my sloop started going under, so I jumped in the water and swam lower just as I saw one of the pirates swim up to my ship looking for treasure. I snuck up behind him and killed him in the water before he knew I was there, and then I swam over to their ship and climbed up the ladder. The other guy was on the quarterdeck and put a shotgun blast into me, but I slashed him a couple times with my cutlass and then ran below decks hoping they might have a gunpowder barrel I could blow up to sink them. They had some treasure chests in their hold, but no gunpowder, so I turned to at least go out fighting the remaining pirate, but to my surprise I managed to kill him with a couple of quick strikes as he raced downstairs.
So, not sure what else to do, I grabbed one of the chests on their ship, jumped overboard, and swam underwater back to the island where I turned in the chest for a nice reward and logged off for the night.
I may be a peaceful pirate that won't shoot first... but DON'T FUCK WITH ME.