RP-pvp attracts a different type of player. Players who, in general, care more about the narrative immersion than those who do not roll on servers tagged for RP. Blizzard used to have a specific ruleset for players on RP servers with regards to characters’ names, and while they weren’t all that good at enforcing this rule RP-servers did have fewer silly names when compared to regular servers. Another side-effect of RP-pvp was that it attracted more mature players. I have heard this said by many people who play on RP-pvp but who do not roleplay; they come for the more relaxed climate.
This is true. But was the death spiral “by its own volition”? There were several things that happened around the time the Horde began to death spiral. I go through them all on my TBC main in this long post: Save RPPVP, open free transfers to Zandalar Tribe - #23 by Mireia-zandalar-tribe
… but in short: a new MMORPG came out, Season of Mastery came out and Free Transfers were opened up for the first time that sparked the narrative that Zandalar Tribe was similarly dead when compared to other servers. Which, for the record, it really wasn’t. Also, TBCC was flawed in that there wasn’t a lot for players to do unless you were part of a 25man raiding guild. As I detail in the link above, my own guild had found a similarly sized guild to do 25mans with, but that guild left to play New World and we didn’t manage to find someone else to partner up with. So rather than rebrand to a raiding guild we simply took a break.
I returned to play the game in May, and I stayed on the server until the very last day. And even in the days leading up to the termination of the server, people were asking in the LFG chat about the server, completely oblivious to Kaivax’s blueposts here on these forums. Because I don’t think all that many people actually read these forums and Blizzard has not seen fit to communicate these rather drastic measures anywhere else.