The game has just actually grown. Lucky Bancho's new statistics say that the game grew by 250,000 to 1.2 million (this is just people level 60 or higher, so it excludes trials which are a significant thing now). The steam statistics show a peak of 60,000 up from the previous peak of 40,000 at Shadowbringers release. It's going to grow more when the expansion releases. History shows a lot of the growth from these things will be permanent.

We may need to get instances and auto-logouts early, before the expansion.