Revan explained it well.
There seem to be still people around who think that the alternative to closing one island is not closing any islands. You are mistaken. The alternative to closing one island is closing all of them, because the game will be dead sooner or later if we don't do something.
I still don't understand why it isn't just as good to turn up monster spawns and famines in order to drive a lot of regions rogue. It's a lot easier to accept both in character and out. In addition if player influx improves then the famines and spawns can just be turned back down and new lands can be conquered again.
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!
That actually sounds like too high a density to me. Back then it took two or three years before I was promoted to anything. It got really boring. I probably would have quit if Dwilight hadn't opened up. I agree that one noble per region is too few, but four or five is too much given the way the game is now. Unless serious work is put in to give Knights more to do increasing the knight population is just going to decrease the player population.
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.
Speaking from experience, you're no less thrown into the deep end if you get a lordship after two years then if you get one after two weeks. As it stands now, being a Knight doesn't prepare you in any way for a lordship because there are virtually no shared mechanics. Being Steward might help a tiny bit.
