I played 2.0 during beta and when it first released and then I was a little late to the HW party, so I got the ghost-town effect as well (although maybe not quite as much since I was only a few months late). That being said, I MUCH preferred the ghost-town experience if I'm being honest. It totally killed my immersion and experience when I was playing 2.0 and saw a MILLION other people talking to the NPCs that I was speaking with and crowding around certain areas that were marketed as "very dangerous" or just seemed like in general they should be rather abandoned.

Contrast that to my experience playing HW and WOW. It made the story feel so much more organic. Just me and the NPCs by ourselves. I would run into a few people now and then which felt natural and welcomed. I ran into a lot of people in the cities which was nice. I liked it a lot. In fact, I liked it so much that I decided to purposely put off playing SB until a bit after the release so that I could have the same experience again. And I was pretty glad for it too, especially after hearing about the (not totally unexpected) login issues and server failures.

Also @Penthea, you can do a player search and take a look at gridania, limsa, uldah and kugane to see a huge list of players who are currently inside their homes. It's often a very sizable number.