There are a couple of issues in this post:
1) Level 50's leaving the game.
This has happened to some of the people in our clan (Alsius/Horus). It seems to be mostly the non-hunters (or non-hunter players who don't like to hunt) that stop playing at lvl 50. With the current lack of fort wars on Horus, I guess they aren't having the type of fun they want.
I assume this is an issue that will improve in the long term.
2) The time zone issue.
This is probably the single biggest problem with realm imbalance. Since Horus is an international server, there seem to be rotating dead times. It is probably the worst for Australians and west coast North Americans. (At the time I play 8pm-2am Pacific time, Ignis usually outnumbers everyone else).
I don't see how NGD could solve this problem other than adding "region-filters" for realms, or adding region-specific servers (probably not possible). Though hopefully with more people, the situation will improve.
3) Balance is always a problem with online pvp games.
Almost every online team-based pvp game suffers from imbalance at one time or another. Most online shooters though don't have persistent realms, so you just switch sides once the current map/mission is over. Other pvp MMO's used closed/instanced "battlegrounds" or "scenarios" to balance sides.
But RO is open, non-instanced RvR pvp. How do you get balance in that situation?
Don't ask me, I'm not a professional game designer.
