Now, I'm going to say something very unpopular, but since the population of active players has been shrinking for a long time, it's pretty obvious to everyone we will eventually come to a point that we will have less players than we had in first month of the launch of the game (been there, done that - on multiple trial accounts and shortly after got the game itself).
I'm afraid that Anet's moral duty is to merge all of the localised EU districts into one, big ENGLISH (or simply EU so some people won't feel offended, but the end result will be the same ...) series of districts for the good of this game. Why? Because districts are empty. Entire purpose of districts is meeting other people.
Previously introduced 'party search' module was said to reduce the problem of wide-spread community, but in the end not many people use it at all and there are still many who act like this feature didn't exist. So, they just hop from district to district, while you do exactly the same ... in turn everyone is hopping districts and no teams are formed, better yet, impression of emptiness is astounding. Now, I'm not talking about abandoned prophecies outposts but generally about any outpost which is not Spamadan ENG-1.
Now, of course we have a big problem, since publishers in localised countries will go berserk that they can't advertise that their game not only has localised language but also districts and that could mean breaching some kind of permanent (theoretically) agreements.
So what's the problem exactly, why it's not as easy as 'quote my post, write 'gtfo noob, you have party search!' or 'game is dying, stop QQ!''? It's not as easy because there are still people wishing to play this game, but not necessarily committed enough to enter it few days in a week and participate in a guild. Basically such people now have nobody to play with and are given false impression that nobody is in the outpost. Something as silly as merging ENG, DEU and FRA districts would already do wonders. But hey, explain to proud Frenchman now that he 'has' to use English now? No sarcasm intended, but that's what will happen.
Basically, Anet has shot it's own feet with introducing localised districts, since the beginning. I remember that when there were very few different kinds of EU districts and playerbase was moderately big such problem wasn't the case. I could go to FRA or DEU district, shout anything in English and I would get immediate attention when it came to joining or forming a party and then discussing strategy, tactics, skill bars and all else.
These people (dunno, maybe matter of education program in school or simple good manners?), even if on their own districts, didn't create unnecessary communication problems. But that was early. When more different districts were introduced, FRA and DEU were no longer treated by their primary users as 'global-national' districts, but many started to act in a way they were their sole property and if you don't speak their language you don't 'deserve' to even talk to them.
Now, this is heavy kind of b-shit, but I could clearly notice it after launch of Nightfall. This was most noticeable on arrogant Polish players (mainly kids I guess?), who deliberately cursed everyone who came to their district, refused to talk in understandable English and even deliberately joined English districts to talk in their native language.
I remember all the hype then, they felt like they are gods and no longer 'second-category' users because their version was localised. Sadly, attitude of most of them towards other nationalities and players in general was unacceptable. This was true more or less for other localised versions in other languages, but since I'm Polish I saw this disaster on my own eyes and for that simple fact I can't be biased, it's not national rant but example from my own experience of playing this game close to 4 years.
Now, I could imagine many other users to get 'diseased' with this attitude and start to act rude as well. Now, when I join Deutsch or French district I'm basically forced to speak in German/French and have good grammar, otherwise chance is good they will rather take their own folk instead of me to the team. It wasn't uncommon for me as well to get cursed for shouting in English. It's not matter of generalisation, I'm merely saying that such behaviour was considered unacceptable and was quite uncommon back at the time there was only Prophecies campaign (speaking from my experience). Level of manners and social norms was way higher, so do the willingness to communicate with foreigners even on own districts. My belief is that it was closely connected with small number of localised versions as well as good English and manners of it's players.
Ironically enough, problem wouldn't exist if there was only ENGLISH/EU district on EU part since the beginning. Everyone who wanted to play this game would feel the need to read and write in understandable English, just like it pretty much was at the game's launch. That sole need of learning (for many) foreign language set the bar much higher for all newcomers and greatly contributed to more mature player base. Now, save me your national rants, because from my experience game was much better back then when everyone at least tried to use most common and effective means of communication, and that was English language.
So, that's it.
TL'DR' - Localised districts serve no gameplay purpose. We need to get rid of them, even if it's too late now. Certainly something to rethink in upcoming GW2, which won't last for ages no matter your delusions and wishes.
