The game has many aspects, including RP, PVE and PVP. All these aspects are enjoyed by different people. The problem is without a sufficient population, these events take a lot of organising outside of the Star Wars game design, either through Team Speak, Vent or guild websites which again means that guilds / alliances take on the bulk of the organising, not game features like the group finder or (ranked) warzone queues which often break down. With RP, it is the same, because there are no in-game features pointing you to the nearest RP event or hotspot and lacks visibility. I'm sure many people come to Dav Garagon looking for RP, but the only way in is through existing guilds or to start your own arcs, but with a low population it's too hard and many give up on RP and join the general population. In the end I don't think RP is about playing on an RP server, but finding a group of people to RP with and to do that, you've got to have a decent population. I would suggest in-game publishing (guild notice board) for guilds could announce events and prompt people to get involved in player organised content, such as announcing when your guild is going to queue to all server players, or inviting people to get involved in operations, etc. That would help a smaller population, but SWTOR is a MMORPG and is designed for a massive population so if you're not going to make the game compatible with smaller populations, then you have to ensure there are large populations and in my opinion that means merging servers or allowing character transfers.

A lot of the problems have to do with a lack of population. It means that we are not playing the game as it has been designed. There is no progression to ranked warzones, instead it's an endless grind for gear, and no competitive teams can exist, because organising means changing the lineups every time, to get a fairer game and prevent rage quits. It puts pressure on a small number of loyal server instigators to organise any progressive lvl 50 gameplay at all, which can suck for them. There should be options.