I have to side with Sevin here. Let's say,for discussion sake,I didn't buy the SA expansion. That would only mean I could not enter ter mur and have the imbuing/mysticism skills on my template. No true "bleed-over" I would have to deal with. I wouldn't have to deal with a stygian dragon suddenly popping up while I am in the Ice Dungeon hunting WW's. In this case,there is a good possibility for plenty of confrontations with pirates that can seemingly blow away my legacy ship in three shots. This coinsides with me having no real ability to defend myself because I have heard that the pirates take very little damage unless their ship is taking damage(is this right?).
Perhaps allow my fisher/mage to toss some fire fields on the deck to burn the ship or their sails so I can make a retreat of some sort. Other wise why should my normal game play be diminished because my CC keeps getting rejected ad nauseum by each of the EA stores that sells the booster code?
I accept it's bleed over, but there's no way I'd even consider soulstoning fishing because of it. I haven't armed my ship with cannons, I pass pirates umpteen times a day and I can honestly say the pirates are no more trouble than water eles or serpents. I don't have to engage them in any way if I don't want to. Neither do you. Which to me says this isn't a problem if you don't have the upgrade. You just sail past them and voila. Why stone off fishing when it's such a simple thing to move past the pirates?
I went several days running quests with a simple legacy boat and my giant beetle. No problems at all. My new ship is unarmed, again no problem. I'm not a tough uber player, Molly's a little RP crafter with a smidge of taming and GM armour. She hasn't had to change what she does in any way since the upgrade, it honestly is as easy as it could be. I just keep sailing and get on with whatever I'm doing. If you needed cannons to deal with them, yes, I'd agree that was a negative impact on players who haven't upgraded. But that's just not the case.
I can understand folks don't want bleed over, but if you try what's been suggested here you'll find that it's not actually a problem. In fact, I didn't realise the pirate ships spawned in that area and that they'd attack me, I like to learn things for myself. I was merrily sailing and bumped into an orc ship lol. When it happened though, I just laughed and called my partner over to have a look. I'm not remotely equipped to attack a pirate yet, but I love bumping into them. I don't know how to fire cannons and attack a pirate ship, but I'll still have a go. Compared to expansions where it's shoved under your nose that you can't have this or that, I'll take new monsters any day
Wenchy