Puting together several trains of thought here is a little difficult when it comes to this subject.

Those that are active in BDO be it daily reward grabbers,AFK training or life skiling along with those that are full time active will always come back to BDO. Some play other games currently on the menu is Lost Ark who still accourding to steam has been hitting close to 500k daily users meaning a lot of players still have not hit the P2W brick wall. We have about a half a dozen players in our guild that went through this and are now back to BDO full time with the few hours per week on lost ark.

Gamers are gamers and some are like Fruit flies and just cant help themselves with new things, like a cat to a laser pointer they run to the next open game, play it then run to a old game with new content or free things. Most of these players never really get to enjoy end game of anything they dont have the patiance for it. I would have to say a majority of those that say things like "where is everyone" or "BDO is Dead" generally fit the bill on the afor mentioned Fruit flies. No matter how much we explain that is not my guild OR not my alliance and or not where i grind wont beleive me anyway they join dead guilds from page 300 with little to no activity then claim game is dead.. So i realized that those players really dont take the time to play BDO long enough to know when BDO's peak time is and dont explore beyond collecting rewards walking to the nearest vendor and then loggin out.

Now that the above is said, lets move onto some issues that have stagnated the upper end of the game.
Class Balance:

After the Reboot which was supposed to fix everything prety much in one fell swoop wrecked the PVP dynamics, Sure it fixed and closed the gaps on the PVE side but over all made PVP like a One legged man in an ass kicking contest.

Classes like zerker,musa,striker, ninja , kuno got much stronger specifically Musa and Zerker for Siege and node wars now add in the new drakania and its an absolute friggin mess with Meta chasers in tow you got every FOTM and cronic re roller with a 730 GS  playing these classes.
Thanks to PA and there absolute garbage Reboot and the complete ignorance of the class balance (willful neglect or just dont know how to balance) OR the lack of care in this area have driven players from end game content. Its not very hard to see it when you look at the map and almost every guild from T1-T4 and Siege are almost all Allied including the top guilds. Not to mention that Siege is pretty much a scripted event with X group of guilds Vs X group of guilds destroying everyone else that are not part of those 4-6 then becouse of effort over time this guild or that guild is "Allowed" to take the castle defeats the purpous of even having Siege.

Couple this with allowing those high end guilds that get the castle to be able to interupt any node war they choose to and or remove anyone they choose to from a node is absolute trash. Now this long term abuse of the game mechanics, Meta chasers and scipted fights have taken its toll on the community this is leading to a decline in the players that have played BDO for almost a half a decade.

This doesnt even account for the change in Grinding areas, the crap drop rates for items, Enhancment casino, ilogical decisions in high grinding zone nerfs just to name a few that have left long  term players hitting dummies and not realy playing. We are all still playing BDO at one level or another but i think PA really needs to get there shit toghether or its going to get a whole lot were if its left like it is.