Pirate Island could be WoW’s Golden Saucer. Pirates are a huge part of why we love Warcraft. They are the first enemies that the Alliance fight against in Deadmines and they are a diverse faction that includes nearly every race on Azeroth. They have a flexible power scaling ranging from low level thugs to making pacts with ancient sea gods, so I see no reason why players of all levels couldn’t enjoy the content of Pirate Island.
The biggest thing about Pirate Island is its vast array of competitive mini games such as ship battles, gambling on brawler pits, harpooning sea monsters, flying on giant parrots through golden rings, finding random-generated treasure maps that send you all over Azeroth, you name it. Pirate Island is for making gold. Lots of gold. And spending that gold on awesome and fun stuff. It’s also a bastion for various pvp activities such as 1v1 arena brawls where bets can be placed. The possibilities are endless.
Pirate Island would require a compelling leader. The Pirate King could be quite a legendary fellow. Possibly having some god-like entity backing his reign or just being so dang rich and cool no one really Fs with him. We shouldn’t kill him as a raid boss… he should just be an ongoing factor in the story. He’d be a much needed contrast to the mary sue lineup of characters we have currently.
Also, retcon Mr. Smite. Make him the Pirate King’s right hand man. We like Mr. Smite.