This was my question. Why the slow and steady decline??? This is the matter I don't think the shrinking is going to solve.
This "steady decline" have a cause... or we solve it, or not matter how many regions we ice, the game will not survive.
Because, put simply, text based browser games aren't as popular anymore and because the kind of people who play them are often significantly older now and have more RL things consuming their time. When you can play a game like Crusader Kings 2 in multiplayer with intricate politics, rebellions, wars, alliances, etc, etc. then a lot of people are going to plump for something with shiny new graphics and which can be played on demand instead of a slower, less graphical, turn based game.
We also have, as part of this general trend, a decline in the popularity of websites and forums talking about and reviewing browser based games which means there are fewer "gateways" for people to discover Battlemaster. It's like asking why MUDs are in decline - put simply because MMORPGS like World of Warcraft came out and so new players will go for the fancy new games and it's generally only old timers who'll go for a MUD because they have direct experience of how fun it can be.
On top of that, we then had the opening of an entirely new continent at a time when the player base was already shrinking - that spread the player base out even more thinly and then we had the first estates system rolled out which, in many ways, turned the game into "Region Maintenance Master" and these two things, between them, made the game less dynamic and less fun.
So reducing the number of regions in the game to increase character density won't magically stop the decline of the player base. However, what it will do is do a lot to make the game more dynamic and fun. And if that happens then it may be possible to reverse the decline of the player base by removing many of the reasons which make people lose interest in the game.
