As a returning player I was surprised at how empty the Ebon Hawk was compared to its glory days. I returned only last week after a hiatus of a few years, and was saddened at how empty the server was. It takes a good hour at LEAST to get a WZ to pop, and 50% of the time its a auto complete WZ because one side doesnt have enough players. I was the ONLY person on a few planets while leveling a alt, and I was glad when I saw they were going to merge the server.
The server NEEDS a merge. You can still RP even if there isnt a dedicated RP server. Its not like its the first game to merge an RP server into a non RP server. Noone is going to stop you from RPing . If someone trolls you you can easily add them to your ignore.