Well we had 500 player online during peak hours in the last few weeks, that's far more than we had 2 months ago. But if you do PvP outside a Captial... Well there is always enough to be killed. And you can't spawn reinforcements in an outlaw battle.
And if all the Pirate PVE and Carebears leave the "Pirate Nation" there are enough to populate a new small nation!
BTT:
I think it would be a nice idea to bring in a Trading/PVE Nation that can't interact with other Nations. The can only trade with the shop and their own Nation(to reduce abusing with alts), but can enter any port with any ship. This would also allow it to reunite the servers again! As 100% PVE Players would than have the option to be safe on the PVP server.