I'm going to start this off by saying that I like the way pvp is in this game and don't want it to change. I don't want pve servers, I don't want to have to flag myself for pvp, I don't want outposts to be safe zones.
That said, the argument that pvp should stay the way it is because real pirates would kill whoever they wanted to is c**p. It's inaccurate and honestly irrelevant.
I'll start with "irrelevant" because it's shorter. Regardless of how real pirates behaved, this is not a game about real pirates. This game is about a fantastical romanticized version of pirates. What real pirates did is not important, what's fun is.
A lot of people here state what pirates did based on what they imagined pirates to be, rather than what they were. Pirates did not kill people any time they wanted to, anywhere they wanted to. There are real world consequences that cannot be replicated in this game. If a pirate shot someone in a bar because they felt like it, it was very likely they wouldn't be getting out of the bar alive. If they bombarded a ship at port, the people living there aren't likely to want them around. Most people don't take kindly to murder and honestly most people don't feel good committing murder.
These things were incentives for pirates to leave people alone, even if they didn't like them. You can't replicate these incentives in a video game. No matter how harsh you make the penalties, they will never inspire the same fear that death does.
Honestly, many of the changes people have asked for have more historical backing than the current way things work. Safe zones represent the way people would actually behave due to social custom by putting artificial barriers on activity. Flagging yourself for pvp represents how pirates would literally fly a flag to warn that they weren't taking prisoners. Having seperate servers for pve and pvp represents... okay, that one doesn't have any real world basis.
However, as I said earlier, "what real pirates did isn't important, what's fun is," and I'm really happy with the way pvp works now. It's fun for me and I don't want it to change. What I do want to change is the argument people use to defend it.
