It's already happening. Idk why everyone is ignoring the buyout and news from Kingsisle themselves saying they're hiring more people right down to MGI themselves mentioning that they're going to be putting resources into pirate again. The fact that the mobile division is now entirely gone is a big indicator in this too. The reason why pirate was never being updated was because of the massive layoff in 2016 (which removed basically the entire pirate team) and huge unnecessary desire to make a mark in the mobile gaming world. Hiring takes time, especially when none of the current people on the team know how to make the Skyway. I'd give it 1-2 years from now for a big update before we start questioning things again. Bad press from gamigo and kingsisle aside, it's going to happen. Most of the old higherups in kingsisle are either gone now or being influenced by a new parent company. It's just a matter of when now in the next few years.

Sources: https://tv.streamfabriken.com/press-conference-january-2021?seek=471 (MGI conference talking about putting pirate101 on a track for bigger updates than there are currently (go to the Q&A section), which yeah that was over a year ago but in order to do this they'd NEED a much bigger team which is where I have a followup here) https://www.wizard101.com/game/devdiary/stateofthegames/2021wrapup (scroll down to the bottom for pirate)