Enough people have been away from the game for a long enough period of time that Daybreak's got a dead cat bounce waiting for them in May if they go with another free trade server. "Everyone's coming back bro c'mon bro we need you bro free trade bro just level one character bro" that kind of thing. That all works a lot better on people that haven't played in a while.
Retention is going to be ass though. People are going to set new personal bests for how long it takes to reach "what the fuck am I even doing here." All the reasons you stopped playing the last half-dozen times are still here, got worse and multiplied.