What is your desire tho? I feel like even tho the game is garbage, a lot of people just don't wanna set some shit up. Or if you already set some shit up, and got bored of interacting w/ people then yea... you're dun. Hard to imagine that your area would not be bustling tho unless people got griefed out. Like I live in Hyl atm and there is hardcore grief, nobody even buying shit off the broker, but it's good content. Diff world up there. There are many diff areas. You really have to have kind of an imagination to make up for the game sucking.
It's never gonna be what it was, but otoh, the game is softer and thus filled w/ soft people. Dudes have different ways of doing this, but I think punishing the nubs who are throwing their weight around is fun. Even as a small guild who gets dunked mostly, it's fun to go in on people. It's fun to show that mental toughness is still the end-all, they just added a lot more wack mechanics that make combat more indirect.
Yeah I had a guild with 12 or so members on "launch". We did quite a bit to keep us busy, even with the severe lack of content. Eventually a lot of the vets got bored because it felt like MO1 all over again just moving around trying to get fights for hours...and having to take getting zerged most of the time just to have some kind of fun. We also lived out of Hylspeia...so Fab was naturally our go to spot.
Some nights we would do dungeon runs, and they were a nightmare. Either the cheaters camped the mino boss, or all the chests would be empty in the risar dungeon and 30 risars would leash inside the walls and ruin our run lol. So that was usually a couple hours wasted, and most of us have jobs so that would kind of be it for the night seeing at its takes so fucking long to do anything in the game.
The reason I have no desire to come back now though, is because of the fucked state the game is in as far as cheats and stuff go. Why would I want to come and do some legit farming trying to play catchup while majority of people have gotten their wealth in sus ways. People have been farming Tephra while standing at the Fab bank. And people having trinkets that costs tens of thousands because they were playing at the right time, and now have the "pre-patch versions" even though Star Vault promised we weren't going to have pre-patch items in the game again like MO1.
The map is just so big its really just a drag to do anything. I understand the appeal to people that are able to play for longer periods of time, but the game really felt like 90% prep work and 10% fun.
Also foot combat felt shitty as a lot of people know. I've always been more into the hybrid groups and such, but kiting felt terrible and yeah. Idk man. The list is large. The biggest thing is SV's incompetence though.