As it was (at least partly) me, who demanded whaling in the exploration gameplay thread, I have to comment this:
I would really like to see whaling in NA, but I totally accept if the amount of coding and political problems stops the devs from implementing it.
I just have to say its ridiculous that in a movie where 12 humans are killed violently the scene where a Hamster is killed has to be cut out. The same applies here: We're much more often throwing blazing hot iron balls at the guy next to us than was imaginable in the 18th century, but one of the major trades of that time has to be left out.
I don't say that NA is directly this way, but our world is going more and more in the direction of hiding and forgetting the things we overcame deliberately and not because the people of that time just forgot what it was. (Slavery,antisemitism, absolute monarchy, war as means of politics, whaling etc.) Saying "The one who must not be named" does not make Voldemort vanish.