You mean like Morek?
The situation that developed around Morek, and the Lurias, too, is definitely undesirable. It was the result of a lot of bad factors, including the old estate system and the low player density. We didn't have enough people to conquer the rogue expanses of land. People struck out on their own to start new colonies far away. We ended up with isolated pockets of civilization that had essentially no hope of interacting with each other. And literally no reason to do so, even if they could. Everyone had all the land they could possibly want or use, and more. It wasn't until the old estate system was torn out, and realms could expand farther, that things started to pick up. But by then too many realms had just given up. And the major realms were so far away from each other that they still really had no hope of interacting in any major way. There weren't enough players to drive the pressure to expand. If you tried to institute a rule where you had to have X nobles assigned to a region to control it, you'd be returning to those horrible days of the old estate system, and the excruciatingly painful isolation that killed the island for so long.
The original Dwilight map would take a LOT of characters to fill. I'd estimate anywhere from 800 to 1000 noble characters, at an absolute minimum, to make it a really fun island.
It's no wonder that Tom refers to Dwilight as the biggest mistake, ever. (Except he uses a lot more profanity...)
