Considering the amount of people quitting due to the punitive emotions such as frustration from being ganked in wpvp “when they don’t even choose to participate” (which is a misunderstanding a lot of modern gamers have about classic’s design philosophy, that it’s meant to create a struggle and not be so extrinsic-centric in the reward loop like in modern games, including retail), this makes the post linked to above more likely.
We’re now finally seeing the true tourists leave. Once the frustration makes the losing faction leave their servers, the lack of wpvp will affect the other faction on the same servers.
What will remain will be the true classic players, and it’s meaningless to go too hard with trying to sort out the faction balance until then.
You can blame layering for making it too convenient for the tourists so they stuck around longer. Now the frustration is finally hitting them.
Disclaimer:
I still argue layering should’ve never been a thing in the first place and the population caps should’ve been true to the vanilla values, so the many consequences from this nonsense is what you’re dealing with now.
But wpvp would’ve happened regardless, even at times many players wouldn’t be “prepared” for it.