Tom said in the OP that 'BM is falling apart because it was designed with a specific player density in mind'. If you want a visual example of just how much the player base of BattleMaster has declined since its heyday, you need only look at the 'Most characters in one realm' record on the
Records of BattleMaster wikipage. In October 2006, Abington on Atamara had 183 characters (and this was before adventurers.) Today, Suville occupies excactly the same 20 regions as Abington did then. But Suville has a paltry 36 nobles.
There was a time when East Continent, Atamara, Beluaterra, Colonies and Far East Island all had probably double the number of characters you see in the table above (in fact, Beluaterra once had nearly double the regions she had above!) In the days when Abington had over 180 characters, just three or four realms in Atamara had more nobles combined than what 14 realms in Atamara provide now. Relatively, the BattleMaster of today is like a ghost town compared to what it was.
I know a lot of people seem to find the older continents boring but I'd say it has a lot to do with how diminished some of the realms are. I cannot adequately describe how much better BattleMaster was when realms had scores of fellow comrades-in-arms for you to interact with. If you add together all the realms in Colonies, Atamara and Far East (Guess where I play? >.<) there are only five out of 26 realms that have more than 40 nobles. Time was you would struggle to find five realms amongst those continents with
fewer than 40 nobles. Today some people speak of a 50-60 noble realm as being a big realm. Once realms of that size were practically minnows!
My guess is that in most realms nowadays lords and council members outnumber knights by a wide margin. These days it isn't difficult to become a lord or a ruler. It's difficult to remain a knight. You don't need to build relationships with anyone to advance and a lot of newer players easily find themselves thrown into the deep end of BattleMaster with barely any advice or experience whatsoever. And that is before looking at any other problems of low player density. For instance, these days on multiple character continents a realm of 30 nobles can easily be one of only 15 players.
I really wouldn't mind if even two continents were closed if it meant seeing big realms in BattleMaster again. As a rule, the more players in your realm, the more things that will happen and the better everything will be. There is nowhere in BattleMaster where the game experience would not immeasurably improve with the sudden influx of 100-200 more characters. No matter how painful it will be to close an island or two in the short-term, in the longer term we'll all be better off for it.
