PVP probably ruined it - they even confirmed like 80-90% of the playerbase just PVE'd
I think in my guild alone, 2 of my guildies were probably responsible for making 60% of our server quit after griefing them in DD lol
Last night I decided to go solo into DD in my carrier (had crawler in inventory) since I hadn't tried on the newer populated server and usually Monday nights are dead because of reset. Noticed a guy tailing me and my instincts told me they were 100% a ganker waiting for a friend, so I made like I was headed to a full large spice field and the guy zoomed ahead, then I did a hard turn and boosted towards A row. I got about 8km before I noticed the guy following me to catch up - he had picked up a friend that was standing on top of the boosted scout and trying to laser/rocket me. They didn't get a chance to do much damage because I know how to deal with that shit, but that sort of thing is why they had to split DD into PVE and PVP finally, because people like that just made the PVEers quit