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?
Personaly i m not open to this step. You pretty much answered it yourself. That would be a lot of history gone.
There are islands which i wouldn't mind see closed but i am sure they are important to others.There are islands that i don't like but respect their history. It is one tough decision to just put a name forth.
Even the islands i adore and believe that require some radical changes it would pretty much hurt me to see them go.
Since invasions are pretty much off the table, re-arranging some islands could be a way to wake them up.
I really liked Indirik's ideas and i m pretty much supporting changes on islands over deletion of an entire island.