As I begin writing this, every single campaign in Cyrodiil has at least one faction population locked. Most have 2 or 3 locked. All other factions are at 3 full bars. This is good. And this is horrible.

I think it's undeniable that the 1.6 changes and the introduction of Tamriel Unlimited have led to an influx of new and returning players. This is great.

@Zos, this is an OPPORTUNITY for you to build a long-term base of loyal (and crown purchasing) players.

It is possible that a majority of players prefer high-population servers, but a minority can still be a sizable chunk of your player base. And there is AT LEAST a large minority of us that prefer lower population pvp and we have seen our options DISAPPEAR over the last two weeks.

Don't trade 10 new players for 4 old players, when keeping the old players involves something so simple as bringing back more campaigns. They already existed once, and therefore it should be a relatively small task to reintroduce them. This should be done immediately, the very next patch or within this month at the latest.

MY EXPERIENCE:
My guild (200 members, social PvX) would previously take groups of 6-12 and enter Cyrodiil and do tremendously fun small-scale actions. We would use misdirection and speed to take outposts and keeps and then use coordinated strategy to hold them and complete against twice as many enemies (although still relatively few players). I think I can be so bold as to speak for everyone in saying this was some of the most fun any of us have ever had in this game.

This last week, many (if not all) of the 3-letter zerg guilds moved into this low-population campaign, and what followed was a predictable and sad series of events!

1) Server-side performance problems (difficulty with keep doors, dismounting, switching skill bars, etc)
2) Zone chat full of comments about r@pe and f1sting and anything else you can imagine.
3) AP farming/Emperor farming. - Where before the leaderboard was comprised of people playing only 5-6 hours per day, the leader suddenly was playing 14-18hrs per day and gaining 1 million AP in 4 days.
4) CHEATING – I personally witnessed DC players using AD alts to remove scrolls and run them north all the way to DC gates.

If you attempted to discuss any of these things in zone chat you would get some variation of the following predictable response from the dozens and dozens of members of these newly arrived 3 letter guilds: “U Sux, learn2play noob, omglol”

If you were near the zergs and not grouped with them you were accused of “leeching and soaking up their AP”. If you were not near them you were guilty of “Not contributing or helping the cause”.

Meanwhile, here is a screen shot of a group of 25+ people who arrived at a dolmen that myself and 2 friends were in the middle of completing. There were more than this, this is just the best shot I could get after it was over. Ironically (since I arrived first) and stupidly (since you don't get AP from dolmens) even here I was accused of "following them around".



PLEASE DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND ME: (Except for the cheating listed as #4 above) These people did not break any terms of service that I'm aware of, and I'm not calling for anything to be done to them. They should be free to play the game as they wish. However, the number of campaigns is too few for groups like them and players like myself to both play the game as we wish.

I won't pretend to be a software developer, but it seems to me that since Zos makes money from duration of a player's time in ESO and not the hours played, it would make sense to encourage a regular routine play-style instead of these binges that inevitably lead to burn-out.

TLDR:
High population campaigns are nothing but AP farms. Low population campaigns have had compelling combat but are now extinct. Please add additional campaigns immediately or you risk losing players that just joined or returned. There is no reason not to do this.