Yarr, There Be Pirates Here

The Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS) is obviously being marketed as a "pretend to be a pirate" game, but they are just one of the available factions. As you create your first character on a server, you choose the side you want to play for, and that choice is shared by all your characters on that server. Just like in WoW, the only way to switch sides afterwards is to delete all characters and start over, and only way to play multiple sides is to have characters on separate servers.

The Pirate faction members are unique in a way as they have only one "class" or career - a pirate. While each one can be tweaked to different play styles by skill choices, overall they are well suited for guerilla-style combat; both on land and while commanding a ship. They can access the biggest ships only by capturing them, limiting their ability to wage proper war, and economy isn’t their strongest suite (they just prefer to plunder). In addition to being able to commandeer captured ships (of any type, regardless of career restrictions), they get a special skill to scavenge for items.

On the flipside, captured ships have only one point of durability, so if they get sunk or taken over, they are gone - you have to "loan" another from someone else. You also get flagged for PvP combat when commanding a ship that is officially limited to other careers, allowing anyone to take a shot at your ship on the open seas. While you can concentrate on the Player vs. Environment (PvE) gameplay with a pirate, and nothing prevents you from making some doubloons by trading goods, overall pirates are intended for the PvP-oriented players. They have the most target-rich environment, as they can freely plunder all non-pirate NPC ships, and they can always come visit to any port contention zone just to create havoc.

On the other hand, they have no formal government and cannot control any of the ports that are owned by the European factions. They can attack them for plunder, to generate victory points for the faction warfare, but only the three player nations can actually take a port from another nation. To keep things fair, pirate ports are also effectively immune - they can be taken over, but they always revert back to pirate after a day or so. Overall they are an interesting twist in design.