Nice screens! I still can't get over the open world implementation (I just can't get past the fact that it looks like you are zipping along in a speedboat). It is a beautiful game though, especially when in a battle instance or in screenshots.
There's simply no other way to have such a large map in a multiplayer environment. Other solutions like shrinking the map would lead to a host of other problems.
Just think of it as permanent time compression. And once you get to bigger ships the effect becomes less distracting.