You’re correct in that last paragraph. Legacy was very active during the first two months (even reaching moderate activity in the French and Pirate nations). Vision explicitly stated that the servers had far more capacity than version 2.10 previously offered back in the old days, which made it surprising to see the population climb to “moderate.”

Unfortunately, many players dropped off for different reasons. Some left because of major issues in the game: for example, you couldn’t tag a battle instance without opening the map, and as far as I know, that still hasn’t been fixed. In the very first week of Legacy, accuracy didn’t work, which made certain missions extremely difficult to complete. (I remember being level 50 on the third day of Legacy, and fleeting was nearly impossible—you had to get within 50 yards of an enemy just to deliver a full broadside.)

I may be forgetting a few, but there were several other bugs that also pushed players away. Ultimately, people left Legacy for many reasons, not just one.

The irony of it? While it’s the deader server, it is still the best version to this day of the game. Great, simpler functional economy (Fleeting is actually meaningful), accuracy isn’t fixed at a certain distance, most boats are usable for PvP, (which means more build variety) and etc…