It is! Hopefully it stays this way! I'm scared to play on my main pirate!

Oh no...is it down AGAIN?

I'm logging on right now and it seems that there's been an update.

How long was it down? Or is it still down and fewa re able to access it without any trouble?

It was down for like a minute. It might have been just me.

I can't get above level 1 Scoundrel after sinking about twenty three ships. Does it take a long time?

EDIT: I just had my first encoutner with bounty hunter ships on test. Three went after me, two Lightning Storms(war sloops, I believe) and two War Frigates, one with a red sail and one with an orange. The orange sailed war frigate destroyed me but five player ships following me had the opportunity to sink her and they did.

If you're going to let your scoundrel level get high, I'd really suggest having a crew with you because after a sinking a few bounty hunters, they get extremely hard to fight alone. I've also noticed they give you almost no time to repair before they spawn near you.

This update also screams ship customization. Hunter ships with different colored haults, flags, etc... There are really endless possibilities with flag colors and ship colors. If this is a hint at ship customization, I think the next thing we'll see is decorations for the deck.

If ship customization and SOTL both come out, the Sorcerors, Partners, and about every other organized guild are going to be sailing around in their own flagships! ;)

Managed to get in the game about an hour ago, and there was massive lag around Padres in Andaba. People no longer sink normal ships, they just crowd around the SOTL Warship now, lol.

When I got on a ship, there was 20 war Frigates in front of me all attacking the SOTL Warship, then after it was sunk, they went after the next one that appeared nearby.

Its more like "Hey, its a bountyhunter, now that all go and attack it at the same time!!"
My game was freezing every 2 seconds, lol. During the one hour log in, more than half is spent on the time frozen.

The striped flags we see on the new ships, along with the new ship haul/wood colors(dark grey and dark brown) are extremely easy to make, from the looks of it. You can go into photoshop or any other program and simply edit the colors to change your liking. If this is how the developers go about flag and haul colors(probably not) then we should expect a huge amount of different flag and haul colors.

Not to mention that these bounty hunter ships came along with two new ship logos, a spider and wasp. I don't know how they'll go about adding a lot of these, although many different types of ship logos can be added in a short amount of time(couple months) if they have a good artist on the development team.

If they want to get Ship Customization perfect, though, they're going to need to take into account ship decorations. Lanterns, door colors, stair placements, flag and mast placement, etc...

I see Ship Customization coming out in two updates. The first would be Flag and Haul colors along with a variety of ship logos. But this release would have to come with many ship logos and a variety of colors, some of which would have to be aquired during quests. If they Ship Customizaiton is going to be big, they're going to have to keep us busy and a small update to get it started would be perfect for keeping us busy.

Then, the second update would involve the six more ships we saw released to test earlier this year, along with the rest of Ship Customization, including mast and stair placement, along with some ship decorations. The most notorious pirates would get decorations such as the picture on the back onf the Queen Anne's revenge.(if you haven't noticed it, look closely, it is beautifully scary!)

I know I'm thinking far ahead but this update screams and hints at customization on the seas even more than any other. The update I see coming after this, though? It'd have to be merchant ships. If we have ships that go after us, surely there are ships that we can go after/protect. But I get this idea from the files, where there are a variety of merchant ship files. The haul being a very light grey. Maybe this is a false assumption on my part but I like the idea.

EDIT: Hull, not haul.