People will be people I guess.
There are a few kinds of people that I've met on GW:

The hardcores, they can't stand non-hardcores and will give hell to people around them if they don't constantly PvP and do it well. Frankly, they're best with their own kind and away from the rest of humanity.

The friendlies, like you and those you've mentioned, plus a few others. Problem is that those people usually have a RL too and sometimes RL takes too much time (we've lost some great people because of school, work etc).

The uncaring, most of the people I've seen around GW. They just want to play with their RL friends and hardly give a darn about anything else. We see their kind appearing and leaving or getting kicked after >3 weeks offline.

Last are the leeches (seen a LOT of those), they join only if they have something to gain and then leave as soon as someone else offers them anything. I hate those.

All this for what? Well, unless you can find those rare friendlies who actually have time to come online and have fun with you, your best chance are your RL friends. Other than that, watch TV, open the newspaper, check talkbacks on different news sites. Most of humanity isn't really all that great. From those who are, many are too busy doing good deeds RL or are simply not geek enough

As for those who were here and left, I think they've discovered that the grass isn't really greener elsewhere by now.