Conan Exiles will likely never see ships or even boats. At most… at MOST we might see something like a raft. But if you look at Exiled Lands, very little of the map has any sort of navigable water too it. Siptah is an Island, but nothing of note is in the coast and the amount of playable area that is water is actually quite small since its packed into the limits of what the map can have.

This means to truly get a seafaring experience, they would need to make a third map. Here’s the issues with this.

Another map would be Paid DLC. Its too much of an endeavor for it not to be.
Seafaring craft would be a major feature addition to the game.
For that feature to be meaningful, you’d need to use it on the aforementioned new map.
This means a major feature would be locked behind a paywall for its full functionality or behind custom maps (aka modded servers).
Funcom has no interest in locking such a playable feature behind a paywall.
Which is good for us because that sets a nasty precedent.

A bonus issue is that new maps means ‘new’ servers for the public side of things. Being as most of those servers are empty, we’d probably see another round of mergers. Who wants to roll the dice on losing a few years of building again?

Modders have been able to make water filled maps as well as boats and such. This is probably where that sort of feature should stay.

Personally I wouldn’t say no to Funcom doing this. All the above issues won’t affect me. But I don’t see them doing it.