We've had this topic here and there, but I'd like to open up an honest and serious discussion about this.
This is not about WHICH island to close, but about whether or not to do it at all.
In case you have been living under a rock the past years: BM is falling apart because it was designed with a specific player density in mind. A higher density we always countered by creating new game worlds. But a lower density, as we have now, is not so easily fixed.
One solution would be the inverse - reducing the number of islands. That also means a loss of a lot of history, character achievements, realms with their culture and so on and so forth.
The questions in my mind are:
- Would the player community be open to a step like this AT ALL ?
- Can we, together, find ways to make it bearable?
I have a couple ideas on 2. For example, we could bring two game worlds together and allow people from the one to be sunk to migrate to the other one slowly and as whole realms, allowing them to war the existing realms there and maybe (if they win) create a smaller version of their realm in their lands. That way, the realm would have moved, but it would retain its identity.
That is just an example to show that I and the rest of the dev team understand that just removing an island from the game would upset many people, so even if we need to do it, we would have to think about how to do it.
And this is where the community can help us figuring out if this is acceptable at all and if so, how to go about it.
What this should not be is a topic to defend your favorite island. Please do NOT discuss which island to sink in this topic, it would only result in a flamewar where everyone tries to save his island by arguing for some other one.
