I have an idea to hopefully prevent the need to freeze an island, through a game-wide effort by all to improve player retention.
What if a game-wide announcement was posted, for everyone to see, asking all players to come together to make the game more appealing, lest one of the islands be closed. I think we could solve a lot of retention problems if there was just a bit more chatter going on around realms. Right now, out of the three realms I play in only Riombara has any semblance of people talking outside of the usual realm affairs. In Sorraine, 95% of messages i got the past 7 days are either turn reports, scout reports or reports of TOs being helped. Astrum is a bit better, though for a realm with almost thrice the number of nobles as Sorraine, I wouldn't call it much of an improvement. Rulers could make extra effort to act as the figurehead of their realm, rather than sit quietly and let their subordinates do the work. Lords could make extra effort to just talk to their vassals and make them feel like they're more than just estate occupiers. Especially newer players would feel more inclined to keep playing and possibly even invite some of their friends to the game.
Making your realm interesting can be as simple as a few letters going up and down the chain of command, beyond the usual orders and reports. Right now in many places BM is just a strategy game, and there is almost zero roleplaying going on (and by roleplaying I don't just mean narrative RPs, I mean nobles interacting among eachother). To me, the reason I've been playing BM for over 8 years now is that it was an entirely unique game, but it's lost a lot of its flair recently. But I don't think that the problem will be (or even can be) solved by adding or removing mechanics. I get the feeling that a lot of players are expecting Tom and the dev team to come up with solutions, but to say it with a huge cliché: true change starts with one's self.
The community is what makes BM unique, so the community bears a responsibility to keep it that way. If enough of us put in a little bit of extra effort, I think it will create a snowball effect, involving more and more people until the game is back to the level of activity it had years ago. And it really can be as simple as just sending a few letters here and there.
