It's possible you have some weird, unique experience of Dual Invite Harassment happening to you, but I've never even heard of it before this thread.
As someone who has been playing on and off since 2012, I can tell you 2000 hours is almost comical.
Just one of my 20 or so characters has almost 5000 hours and I don't AFK... much.
I just took a look in Highwatch on Kaia, there were 5 other people there.
Imagine a potential returning player loading up and seeing 5 other people in all of Highwatch, they'd think the game was completely dead and log right back out again never to return.
Merging won't save the game, but it might delay the inevitable.