In fact, while I'm here grumping, here's a link to a thread I killed with a veritable essay on what I think has happened to BattleMaster in the last six years and what the problems are. Seems as Estates, whilst a big factor, can't be the only reason why the playership is declining. I mean, I'm sure we could solve a lot of problems by simply closing a continent and adjusting the number of nobles you can have on Dwilight, but that would be a very sad day and doesn't really address the how and the why. Estates as presently constituted would work fine if we had the players for it.
http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,196.msg2454.html#msg2454
