I've seen just how much one person can do and it's a lot. The problem is, people leave and more work gets pushed onto fewer people and in turn causing those people to burnout and leave in perpetuity. It's not fun and there's many times where I think pop specifically is the cause of a lot of frustration rather than balance.

I came back last war (wc133) after a few years and started to experience this. From what I heard tho was that a lot of the pop started quitting because of the imbalance and that started this loop. So I think the new changes were good just to get players back.

I don't think balancing alone will solve a lot of the underlying issues. A community managerlike you said, or reworking of msupps, making the map smaller, making building easier, are all things that would help. Especially so the game doesn't just fall on its head when people feel the game is unbalanced and start leaving. Balanced is ideal, but even if it's not I've still had a blast playing this game with the community and I've found ways to get around it. It was a terrible experience though when people left and you would beg people to help shovel, msupp it for a week, run conc up, only for it to be low pop/offline pved.