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.
This is an interesting thought, and one that I tend to agree with. I believe that the stagnant nature of the old continents due to their history and long-term leadership and entrenched powerbase is what is preventing the game from growing. However, it is also the part of the game that makes Battlemaster so unique. The question is how do you treat a game that has gangrene? Do you cut part of it off and start anew or do we simply wait until the disease festers and the whole thing falls apart?
Personally, I think one clear way to revive the game's growth is to drown all the islands, and simply restart the game with a single new island. Will you lose a lot of players? Quite possibly. Is it possible that this will end up killing the game? Yes. But, in that case you've only hastened the inevitable. A lower character density WILL slowly kill this game. Personally, a long slow death doesn't seem like something that will be fun for everyone.
Even if half the playerbase leaves the game from this action, I believe it would be positive. Quite simply, you make it very easy for new players to stay and become engaged. You remove all of the history which is stagnating the game, and you open it up for new events to occur. I truly wonder how many new accounts are made each year. Is it possible that in a single year, new accounts are made equal to our current number of active players? If so, then if you could drastically increase player retention, even if you lost half of your current userbase, you could easily make it up in a year.
