......pure and simple. Class imbalances aside (because we all play the same classes) The gross population imbalances are causing huge problems, you are either hopelessly outnumbered or you are playing essentially a PvE version of Cyrodiil. Neither are what any faction wants (I would hope).
For instance last night for EP was a pretty demoralizing situation......at 1am mst, AD's pop was capped while EP and DC were at 1 bar each. Even if we had decided to become the purple menace, we were STILL outnumbered 2 to 1. So then AD easily sweeps through our keeps, taking our scrolls and the 1 bar of EP pop had no chance defending anything much less attempting to stop the huge yellow zerg(s) from steamrolling all in their path. I pretty much gave up for the night at that point since we didn't even have the pop to retake any of our keeps.
This is not the PvP I was promised and not the one I wish to continue playing.
The only resolution I can think of is to buff the underdogs or nerf the zerg. I will go with buff though since we ALL hate the "N" word.
To that end I would say that for every bar lost in comparison to the other factions, you would get boost to offensive and defensive abilities.
1 bar disparity (capped vs 3 bars) - Personal damage boosted by 20% and you gain a 15% mitigation to all forms of attack (which cannot be removed or otherwise marginalized).
2 bar disparity (capped vs 2 bars) - personal damage boosted by 45% and you gain a 30% mitigation to all forms of attack (which cannot be removed or otherwise marginalized)
3 bar disparity (capped vs 1 bar) - personal damage boosted by 75% and you gain a 50% mitigation to all forms of attack (which cannot be removed or otherwise marginalized)
Keeps and guards controlled by the faction in question would also gain these bonuses.
This would be applied and calculated separately when comparing each faction. So if AD was capped, DC was at 2 bars and EP at 1 bar, EP would get the 3 bar boost against AD but only 1 bar boost against DC.
These numbers are obviously arbitrary as I have done no real research but my hope in something like this would be that even severely outnumbered, a couple of people could take resources and maybe a group of 5-6 would have a shot at a keep (or defending it). It would also make the underdog solo player very dangerous.
This would also mean it would be much more challenging for the overpopulated faction to take keeps and defend (so no more steamrolling through keeps in 5 mins at 2am to have a scroll in 30 mins, you would actually have to WORK to get them)