That is actually shockingly close to the experience I had after taking a break at the beginning of DT. My circle was not big but a lot of people I knew seem to only be doing maintenance, aka checking in on events and then leaving again. It stands to reason that, because of the housing system, there are actually a good chunk less players active than we can see via external software. I am currently in the unenviable position to be long-term sick so I spend a lot of time online to distract from the pain and I have been watching the population go from absolutely dead to populated in the main cities for about 2-3 hours and then just dying again every single day. I suspect most people are just doing their dailies and then leaving again, either for venues or out of the game entirely. I know there have always been high traffic time for this reason but the emptiness everywhere is depressing. Playing an MMO in which you only see people around daily quest givers and capital cities... may as well play a single-player game at that point.

The only comfort I can offer is that the post-MSQ content is actually decent. It's nothing world changing but compared to the base game it is a breath of fresh air. If you are willing to give it a shot (I hate the way they did the mechanics so I stay away from raids, that is something you will need to check out for yourself) follow along the blue quests to grab some of the new content. The writing is at least better than the rest and the music slaps. The variant dungeons are kinds fun if you are still missing some and we are getting another soon so if the comic-book style is not a turn-off that will likely be fun. Maybe exploring the glam changes and new content coming with the patch will alleviate some of the pain you are feeling looking at the current state of the game?

I hope you find some of your old friends again, that genuinely sounded awful. And if not, I hope there will be a new FC you can make memories with should you choose to stay.