I'm not sure what people expect a merge to do besides maybe congest the server in unwanted ways.
Try playing on jp time with 1400+ and try find a place to farm sparks/xp/time limited records of eminence challenges. Even with 600 people on and fast travel everywhere, its hard to find a place to yourself and I feel like im having a dynamis style monster claiming competition with all these soloists and their entourage of npcs.

Even with low pop server time,
*wildkeeper runs either die super fast or most are capped on gear and rme item value crashing so that (possible drop) no longer a reason to go.
*people already lowman pug friendly stuff like voidwatch with 6 people