If this was the case, then lowering the quantity of players would have fixed the issue - and it hasnt. Similarly, lowering the number of servers each machine is hosting hasnt fixed the problem.
What then actually is the problem then if not the game itself at this point?
I've never said the problem is not the game, there is definateley something we are now doing on the server that is eating significantly more processing power than in previous updates - we just have to find out what.
Simply put, servers with larger player counts were significantly more affected. Lowering the player count was our approach to reducing the impact on the experience in order to buy us time to find the real issue (which generally takes much longer to sleuth). Nowhere have I shared that reducing the Player count would 'fix' the issue as it is only a temporary mitigation to the worst cases.