That said, I am confident that migrations generally will not be opened to the most active, nor newest, world.
Well first of all, it doesn't make any sense to open migrations to a much newer world, due to the unfairness imposed on native players - see that one person that went from World 1 to Idaho and the complaints that received.
Under ideal circumstances, I'd possibly be more inclined to agree with excluding the most active world, both because it's likely that a player already has an account on the most active world, and also to give other almost-active worlds an influx of players (players = content in a MMORPG)
We are, however, not under ideal circumstances, there's only one world currently worth playing, if you play for the PvP, and it's bleeding active PvP players at an alarming rate.
Fewer people are going to be willing to join from level 1, with 249 levels of unbalanced and non-sensical content in front of them - not getting ranked until they're level 150+, dealing with the disadvantage of missing that one tombola 3 years ago that gave the meta set for their preferred activity... stuff like that.
There may well be other factors in the migration status of Colorado, but I can't really think of any, and the only one that's ever been offered to us is the fact that it's a classic premium system.
I've never accepted this reason, since it's simply not economical to buy skill points anymore. For 100 euros you can buy 4850 nuggets = 22 skill points.
Colorado became popular because it was the fairest world available at the time - now it doesn't make any difference, because, like every other game world available, clothing is where we get almost all of our skills from.
So there's no legitimate reason to hold Colorado - currently our only hope for competitive and fun fort battles in the future - back due to a relic from the past that is completely meaningless now.
In addition to opening routes from worlds with no PvP, no market activity and no future, into almost-active worlds like Arizona. The game has changed and we need very high level accounts to be viable in PvP now. Most of us have new-generation dead world accounts just rotting away because their homeworld has died.
These trapped characters could be free content in a game completely bereathed of content.
Or they can remain as hostages on a dead game world, not allowed to leave and not having any reason to play/spend/be a part of the living ecosystem that we players create and need.
I'm sure the magic numbers in a spreadsheet that says a world can stay open knows sooooo much more than the boots on the ground.
Which relates to the management situation we find ourselves in, we have 2 CM's, neither of them played here afaik and neither of them have a clue about our community, out history, our current needs. Most of the mod team follows this pattern too.
We, as a community, can't communicate with the people that actually make decisions, we have to rely on a manager deciding that our problems are worth raising, when they don't live those problems themselves.
We certainly don't need another speed-world for actual-game-breaking gear, we need migrations.