I imagine very few people will care about this, but at a certain point, having consistent story and lore is important to some players -- and in other areas it seems like the game has gone through great lengths to have that.
Except for the merfolk. There seem to be about three different versions of them that have been presented -- and these aren't just "different tales" presenting different ideas, but actual in-game visual representations that are not consistent.
Native Merfolk
Introduced in the novel, these were said to have basically humanlike appearances with amber eyes. They are the ones who were allied with the Ancients in ancient times, but then when the Ancients went away, these merfolk were left alone for centuries. When pirates came to the Sea of Thieves, these native merfolk greeted them in friendship and happiness, glad to see humans return. Until Captain Douglas captured two of them. Then Ramsay's crew rescued them, and because of this, the merfolk gave Ramsay the means to make his magic chests and keys, and the merfolk promised to help "Ramsay's kin", presumably meaning other humans. In the Maiden Voyage, one of Ramsay's journals implies merfolk will help sailors back to their ships due to an "arrangement" he made with him.
The above if all consistent with itself... but then in-game when we see merfolk they seem to be...
Formerly-Pirate Merfolk
The merfolk who rescue you in-game have hook-hands, eye-patches, etc. They look like pirates who have been turned into merfolk. These are more consistent with the Merfolk Poem from Tales of the Sea of Thieves, which says that the true merfolk sometimes kidnap and turn pirates into more merfolk. If that's the case, why are these formerly-pirate merfolk helping pirates? Do they remember their past lives? Are the Native Merfolk now forcing converted pirate merfolk to honor the old arrangement with Ramsay? This reading seems to paint the Native Merfolk as having some more sinister agenda, but this doesn't seem consistent with how they first reacted to humans returning to the Sea of Thieves.
Cursed Merfolk Statues
Then we have the cursed merfolk statues, which have a more ominous, sea-alien appearance. We know nothing about them, but their appearance matches neither the "Native Merfolk" described in the novel nor the Converted Pirate Merfolk who rescue us in-game. Are they supposed to represent what "Native Merfolk" look like? Are they "Native Merfolk" that were cursed to make them look more alien? Or are they just cursed statues made by merfolk?
I suspect what happened regarding the first two is that Rare had evolving, different ideas of merfolk during development, and those varying concepts were not reconciled between the game, the novel, and the Tales book.
As for the cursed mermaid statues, I can only hope they were some early hint at a cool new underwater content wave that will explore a darker side to the merfolk.
