Hi,
A quick reminder about default battleground matchmaking works in terms of number of players:
There are three important values that you can find on the xdb file of the battleground, I'll take the example of the Deserted Forest one (it's the same mechanics for all group battleground ie which event type is avatarPopulation.service.impl.matchMakingImpl.eventType.marked.MarkedGroupInstancedEvent):
Code:
<minAvatarsCount>3</minAvatarsCount>
<capacity>9</capacity>
<immediatelyStartFactor>1.69</immediatelyStartFactor>
These values are per team so:
Teams need at least 3 avatars or the battleground start the warning closing message for players
Each team can have 9 avatars max
Ok these values are pretty obvious, go to immediatelyStartFactor now!
The way things are done in java code by default make the battleground start when there are
capacity * immediatelyStartFactor players in each team queue
so in our example Deserted forest will need 9 * 1.69 = 15.21 players to start in each side to start
(I suppose they made it to compense players who will finally refuse the batleground invite)
BUT some things are hardcoded in java:
immediatelyStartFactor must be >= 1
and removing the variable hardcoded min value is not enough as the whole code was written with this constrain in mind so there are a lot of if condition in code that can't deal with the case where immediatelyStartFactor is less than one.
So to answer your question, if you want to make battleground pop with few players you can:
1) Reduce the immediatelyStartFactor to one
2) Reduce the capacity (but you reduce the max ammout of players)
3) Combine of 1) and 2)
4) Modify java code (it can be done, I've done that for AllodsNova server)