But I think the biggest problem is that this idea seems too unfair. They were talking about sinking an entire island, but instead they went for the middle ground, which was what I was afraid of. If they had done away with a whole island, no one would end up with an advantage or disadvantage. Yes, some people would be angry, but not enough to want to quit, because if their island sinks, all their enemies sink with it, so no one "wins" due to dumb luck. It's all about perceived fairness.
I am 100% certain that this is false.
If we closed an entire island, many people whose "main" characters are on that island would quit the game. Not only would everything they have worked for be destroyed, there wouldn't even be an island around anymore to remember it by, or a chance of getting it back.
Closing an entire island doesn't give us the freedom to open it up again until and unless we see a huge boost in player numbers.
Glaciating parts of several islands lets us monitor the player density numbers on those islands, and if one of them gets above certain thresholds and remains there for a while, we can begin moving the glaciers back. Land can be returned bit by bit, rather than all or nothing.
You talk as if closing an island would have had people saying, "Well, gosh darn it, I lost everything that made BattleMaster fun for me—but so did my character's enemies, so I guess it's OK! I'll keep playing!" That's obviously unrealistic. I am still convinced that we made the right call by not closing any of our continents, and doing this instead.
Again: There was absolutely
no solution to the problems at hand that could be implemented without pissing anybody off.
