Pirates might have to get more creative, but it’s possible.

Proxies that scrape and save server-side data while you play, going through as many areas as possible, for instance.

Even if the communication between client and server is encrypted, the client can’t decrypt if it doesn’t have the key. And if the key is on your computer, it can be procured.

Reimplementing the server from scratch can certainly be necessary in a lot of cases as well, of course.