I am a returning user as well, and the only reason I both returned and remained (not longer than a week ago) is because of the subscription server. I completely dropped my maxed character and its 6s runes on "F2P" after trying P2P out. No matter what people that have invested a lot of money in their F2P/P2W server are saying, the population in P2P (subscription) server is growing, and the way the server is run makes this game great now for me.
Feel free to read more about it here:
http://en.allods.com/forum/index.php?pag…d&threadID=2145
If you do join, I advise you to join Void.

Their policy is to help out players and this has substantially raised my experience with this game.
The server is not a barren wasteland. But of course there is not a huge flux of people since the server is completely new and for those that are just trying the game out, "F2P" is the way to go for experiments until they discover P2P. The guild I'm in has a lot of players, I always get help when I need it, and there is nice amounts of astral going on. Those that say otherwise just played a couple of hours in lower levels, and once in Novograd they probably just checked the Auctioner instead of the Negotiator (AH that opens at level 65). I've had a nice share of PvP going on in Asee, Kirah and a bit in Coba. And although maybe massive PvP like Witch's Hollow isn't so popular, Guild vs. Guild / Dominion is. So are raids.
For me, gaming content that didn't used to be available/was dead back when I played being available now and being in such a nice guild, plus a lot of unfairness attributes from P2W being eliminated have been a great enough reason for me to come back and stay on P2P.