What you say about grinding pve amd mission players is spot on if the forum chat and nation chat is true. Every day i see less of the people hell bent on only doing pve amd working against, purposely, the pvp players.
Myself amd my friends completely have withdrawan from the pirate area because of their constant name calling and insults just because they were getting boared with the game. Its a shame too because the 4 of us pvp almost exclusively and only pve to supply ourselves with mats to build new ships to fight with.
The server seems stable for the last week with the population being 500-600 when ive looked even though the pirates are infighting again i think the server is ok.
It will continue to grow slowly while in EA and thr pve grinders will leave because they are bringing the wrong attitude to this kind of game.
On a side note ive fought LOTS of brits and some US and french and with only a few exeptions the player base is solid amd have good attitudes.