Onyxia population & deserted starting zones

Hello,
I just joined the server last night, and started leveling a Blood Elf because of nostalgia around their starter zone. I was surprised to find almost nobody else in silvermoon/eversong, and when i went to ghostlands after, a /who showed only 5 players in the entire zone. I played for about 5 hours and had a total of 0 encounters / conversations with other players...

It raised the question of what the population is like. Does anyone have numbers on the amount of players on Onyxia? Leveling felt like a solo experience for me, which is not what I play MMO's for. Do you recognize what I've described, or has your experience been different?

Depends on the daytime you play, but there are generally alot of Player active.

Also, the server both started with Vanilla content as well as already been around in Burning Crusade for a little while. Aside fresh players, others likely don't have much business being in starting cities. Even people making alts just rush away probably.