Why not? When you are in HAVOC with brits before wipe, you have more ports than the second and the third together, and you were most players that more factions together too, and game still works.
What problem have now a new player? If he begins game as a danish he have a 55 port points to make their ships, same in dutch and russians, and the rest of faction have 45 points ports. The principal problem for him is that he need a lot of time for make xp, take money, doubs, marks, resources... and maybe with luck he could use a 1st rate in 3-4 weeks, depends of the time that he waste playing. This is how NA works, all players need to be patient and most of them dont like that.
I know many players who started playing and left game few weeks after because they didn't progress as fast as they want. All clans are full of players like that.
And this is, in my opinion, the reason for there are only 600 player in prime time now. if getting boats of all rates were much easier, there would be many more players for sure.