As of the time of this post there are:

11 stalled public worlds with 93 total openings
28 stalled private worlds with 226 total openings
10 worlds that will rollover in the next 3-4 days creating more openings, pushing the total into the 350-400 range.

Suggestions as to what can be done to fill worlds that are stalled:

1) Merge worlds.  There is only 1 private world with 16 or more openings and it is a specially themed world so can't be merged.  That means merging 3 worlds into 2 worlds is the only way to go right now.  It is often hard to get owners to agree on a merger but there is a world that a couple weeks ago agreed to do it. 

2) Kill a world.  That may seem a bit dramatic but it is easy to implement for WIS.  The owners that are still left in that world would most likely be long time owners, not newer owners who are going to bail out of HBD completely.  Those type of owners have already left the world, creating the current openings.  I think the remaining owners will agree to killing their world if they are given enough incentive to do so.  How about adding 2 seasons to their accounts?  1 season to credit them for giving up their current team/world and 1 season to compensate them for the time put into the world being killed.  All of a sudden you have 15-20 owners with 2 (maybe 3) seasons available to spend in other worlds to get them filled.

From a WIS perspective they would lose a little money in the short term.  Benefits would be that it takes a lot less time to kill a world than it does to merge 3 into 2.  It would also get several other worlds filled quicker.  WIS makes its money when worlds are active, not when worlds are sitting around waiting to fill. 

3) Advertising to bring in new owners.  This has already been tried with limited success.  It would also cost WIS  far more than compensating owners of a killed world with 2 or 3 free seasons.

4) ????  Any other suggestions?

Customized world sizes.   20, 24, 28 and 32. 

Immediately, no world has more than 3 openings although some relocation may be necessary.   Owners don't lose their teams.

Allow individual teams to move their franchise to a different world.  If owners had the ability to keep their players from the team they've built and take it to another world, they'd be a lot more likely keep playing than if their world was simply disbanded and they had to start over somewhere else from scratch.  Better than merging entire worlds due to the headaches involved with that (getting a near majority approval, realigning cities/divisions, waiting weeks in some cases for WIS to actually perform the merger)

I floated that idea a long time ago but, in retrospect, those guys might build powerhouses and just destroy owners in the new world.   Of course, if left up to the world on whether or not to allow "travel" teams to enter, I think it could work.

Absolutely, it should be left up to the world whether or not to allow "travel" teams to enter.  It would also allow for the creation of a progression format that might add some excitement into the game.  

Customized world sizes are probably the best solution for worlds that don't have enough openings to merge.

12 of 41 would roll today(in theory) and that would reduce openings by 84.   In addition those worlds looking at 5, 9, double digit openings would have hope.   Right now, if you're sitting at 9, you know it might be months.    If you're sitting at 1, people join.

It would be a great short term fix.  Not sure it fixes the problem in the long term.  

I responded in the other thread but, if you're down to 20 and can't fill, the problem isn't lack of demand.   It's lack of interest in your world.  

Fact is that I play in three worlds that roll within hours if not minutes.   With 32 teams.   They're good, competitive worlds with clear, concise rules that are enforced to the letter.    There are others like them.   But, after that, there are worlds with 27 dedicated owners or 22 dedicated owners who have been around for several seasons if not years.  Then there are revolving door worlds.    The world, and the owners in them, need to "sell" themselves if they want to remain viable.  This has been a problem for a long time.   Owners get tunnel vision and only worry about the health of their team.   Maybe they even build a powerhouse.   But, if you have no one to play, it doesn't matter. 

WifS has to shoulder some blame for the current state of HBD but we, as users, are not without fault.

Your worlds are great, but filling within hours if not minutes, is not the norm.  If there's more than 10 that are able to do so consistently, I'd be surprised.  

Maybe i'm wrong, but a vast majority seem to want to just play with their teams, with little wait time, and that's it.   Those ships without a captain and a strong crew are what gets hit hardest when there's a huge increase in openings and any solution should be geared towards them.   

Expecting a massive upturn in owners willing to spend a lot of time going above and beyond, and then continuing to do so season after season, to keep worlds viable is unrealistic.   That's why I think customized world sizes are a band aid solution.  Somewhere down the road these worlds would still have to put in effort to fill their world and keep it viable, and the supply of those willing to do appears to be very limited. 

I realize how difficult and time consuming it can be to fill our worlds, but I wish that world's willing to merge together would be given a higher priority. we are paying customers trying to move things along.

Gaming has never been more popular.  Yet, HBD has it's struggles.  IMO, the single biggest reason is there is no escalation.

If there was way, either by performance or by paying more money, to play with / against better GMs, the rollover issue would mostly go away.

I wouldn't have known this 5+ years ago, but experience has shown that building HBD around stable words was a bad idea.

Custom world sizes would be a short-term solution.  But it's also a race to the bottom.  What happens when a world of 20 can't be filled?  16?  12?  What happens when a world of 4 can't be filled?

Escalation and relegation work in real world sports and in a wide variety of online games.  It would work here, too.

Creating more worlds, which is what escalation/relegation would require although it would probably be called levels, is horrible.

If a world of 20 can't be filled, it should probably go away.

FWIW, I believe CS stated that the initial idea was to start everyone at LoA and work their way up.   Sort of like the way HD goes from D3 to D1 but they decided it wasn't practical. 

426 openings with 11 worlds sitting at 0 days remaining. A short-term or quick fix is needed. Today. People not playing are people more likely to call it a day with HBD. There are too many of these people right now. For some, it's their fault. For others, they just didn't know better. Either way, they're not playing.