We promised to be direct and honest - so not going to provide marketing fluff here.
We use community driven development. We develop MVP (minimal viable product) with 1-2 features that are awesome and best in the industry and then work with users to iterate and improve.
So far we were able to create
1) Best looking age of sail visuals
2) Fun, deep and realistic representation of age of sail combat (that will become even better with tweaking)
3) Multiplayer functionality
On early access release we will have these.
Hopefully Open world prototype will also be launched at the same time - (prototype only).
If OW prototype is not fun - we will cut it and focus on player requested features only. Like custom battles, custom servers etc.
If open world is fun and awesome - we will be spending more time on sandbox.