[quote=@Infichi]
yes! all those groups will still exist, it's basically > Gold Roger and we kick off the pirate age. So he died recently. So the AU will veer off course from the get go, but still allow for four emperors to fill the power gap in the new world, the shichibukai to be formed to deal with the waves of new pirates and the three admirals of course need to exist.
[/quote]

Okay, so is this more like a pre-canon setting than an outright AU, though it'll diverge from canon due to our characters actions? I'm mostly wondering about the status of other canon characters like Whitebeard and all the other major players.

By the way, I'm calling dibs on Smoker's Devil Fruit.