Who are you to talk. You rarely even played.
30-50 people in ZC sounds amazing. Good PvP in a server with it's own unique game mechanics and shit. Reason why AoP died now was cause of how broken most things are, but if they only balanced things right and not add unnecessary things (weapons, armors, useless factions), it probably would have still been populated, even with 20-30 ppl. And don't try getting FOnline 2 crowd here cause all those people care about is hexing and non stop grinding. And you have like 20-40 people idling hub, same 20 people doing caravans while everyone else is either grinding encounters/crafting or dungeon/TC PvP, so much for "content" 
And don't forget we had those dungeons for people who wanted a chance of higher tier gear.
You're right that I've rarely played. but that's as far as you can get.
I don't play AoP because I don't give two shits about an akward mating dance you call pvp. Granted it's better than other servers, but clunky as fuck controls do not make this part of the server enjoyable for me. So that makes me not one of PVP crowd I guess.
However neither I am autistic enough to grind mobs daily for those sweet sweet xp/loots. Fuck dungeons btw. And don't tell anyone, but I hate crafting. So I'm neither a PVE guy.
I like to explore the world and I like a chance to change it. Change it in game (seems I do have to spell it out since you took my CONTENT word as if it means "lets do same shit other servers do")
I do not refuse to participate in PVP or PVE, but those sides of things are never really that enjoyable for me. I have more fun from experiencing consequences of those.
Also I don't know why you mentioned the WoWline 2, but if you'd know me, you'd figure I despise theme park mmos.
I'm really trying to steel myself from going on a rant about how much I hate other servers for doing same shit over and over. So can we just... not mention them?
Now what I meant by Content was something akin to a world simulation instead of themepark approach all the fricken games seem to take nowadays.And ofc it has it's pluses and minuses, but I think it's a better approach (if done properly) than the traditional one.
As a side note, when/if cirn0 finishes the upcoming update, I want to note that I was not influencing cirn0 in heading in the direction mentioned above.
PVP thing you mentioned, yes there was a lot of changes people feel were *insert words here*, but frankly, as I've said earlier, I don't give a fuck bout em at this point, because there's nothing for me to do either way. And as a consequence I do not know how things were and how things are as indepth as others. Things seemed pretty shallow for me either way , but that's just because I'm interested in other things. (To spell it out again, I can not possibly give a fuck about pvp changes because the pvp thing does not really complement anything else on server and vice versa)
So maybe because of this those
OTHERS (40-50 PvP crowd people whom wish to circlejerk on same thing over and over untill even they are fed up with it) might not consider me a deemed worthy of their highly valued attention. But you know what, I don't need it if they think they are better or worse than me.
It's a shame seeing such interesting server suffocating under whining of few narrow minded people.
(Will somebody hide my Global Mod status already so I can talk like an asshole?!)