This entire argument reminds me of a paragraph in a course of mine. The elders of an african tribe noticed that the sick villagers would all go to the doctor. They made the link and decided the doctor had to be killed, because everyone that went to him was sick. This would cure the diseased. It was a funny illustration on correlation and causality. (needless to say the villagers started dying from sickness a lot faster and it was to late to revert what had been done)
Battlemaster had a lot of players before, and more activity. Dwilight didn't exist then and neither did the forums. Now Battlemaster is becoming emptier and less players, and there is Dwilight and there are forums. The continent which is most active is the one Tom would rather remove, and the part of the forums which have the most vibrant community is the one locked down.
This seems to me like an oversimplified panicked solution which avoids real issues, based on opinions and with no statistics to support these opinions.
-The local forums are great and provide a wealth of information. I have never seen anyone 'plan' anything on the forums. An extremely simple solution, would be to simply appoint one or two regulars to moderate each local. The idea that a forum would take away player gaming time is ridiculous and based upon nothing.
-Newspapers, I am sure new newspapers will come along, but what is the difference between a newspaper, and a thread like 'the great dwilight war' which I consider to be a newspaper in itself. It is just easier to create a topic, where several people can contribute, and where everyone can comment on the information, than a newspaper where you get no feedback and a lot more work for a small number of people (assuming people work on it constantly and regularly). Furthermore, it has been stated that people that have wanted to make newspapers, have already done so in the past, and that they aren't really inclined to do so again. I'm sure new players would try their hand at it, but there are just less 'new' players.
I'll also make my own subjective correlation causality assumption down here, since everyone seems to be doing so;
I think that there were more people starting to play BM all the time, before, because new continents were popping up. There was opportunity, challenge, without a "X-years +" battlemaster club of players ruling everything and pulling all the strings and important functions to themselves, not to mention all the ooc connections built up through the years (pretty much how it is now, and I have heard older players say as much). I think Dwilight is the least like this, in that aspect.
Yes, the best thing would be to drown two or three continents and start a new one up, which would get drowned every 2-3 real life years. To keep things dynamic.
I already added the classic standard stonewall to the post, because I'm sure everyone will shoot this down.
NO NEW ISLANDS
