I'll just put an idea out there I've suggested before:
Rotating freeze. Don't freeze a continent forever. Here's a hypothetical schedule for freezing:
Every 6 months, the player count will be reviewed.
For every 150 players who logged in, one continent will be kept open for the next 6 months.
Continents will be frozen or unfrozen on a regular, rotating schedule.
So, say our schedule is:
Dwilight, EC, Atamara, Beluaterra, Colonies, FEI
If we discover that we need to freeze two continents this next period, we freeze Dwilight and EC.
Then in 6 months, we review again. If we find we still need to freeze two continents, we unfreeze Dwilight and EC, and freeze Atamara and Beluaterra. If the next time we find, hey, we only need to freeze one, we unfreeze Atamara and Beluaterra, and freeze the colonies. And so on around and around.
This would have several effects:
1. Feud would be regularly put on pause, giving players some "cooldown time."
2. Everybody would get frozen eventually, and have an incentive to make new characters on new continents they haven't played before.
3. "New" continents would constantly be opening, i.e. every year or two a continent would be gone for 6 months, and, when it came back, people would be excited to get involved in it again.
4. Many players would be super pissed off I'm sure that, despite possibly having an awesome plotline or a popular realm or continent, their spot got frozen.
Somebody will be upset no matter how we do this. But I think we should avoid just putting a continent into cold-storage, effectively ending all those plotlines for the forseeable future. Rather, we can reduce the number of active continents, and rotate which continent has to back up for a breather.
Imagine the tension if you knew your continent was next up for a freeze and you were in a war with one month to go. I think instances of the use of the phrase "Winter is coming" would increase fifty-fold, and many people would see it as kind of a "natural chapter marker." We could add to in-game calendars with "The Freeze of Irombro's Secession" or whatever. It would give players an endgame with a pause afterwards where they could escalate to a climactic moment of violence and backstabbing, then back off for thought and commentary and planning for six months.