Er, what zones were you running through? I can't go more than half a zone without running into at least one person, and then that "unidentified threat" awkwardness of initially meeting someone in the wilderness sets in. Sometimes we'll pass each other by, sometimes we try to kill each other. Sometimes we talk and have a nice chat about rampaging animals in the mist. Regardless, point being...
I see people a lot, and I've traversed a lot of the map. Maybe you just went through during the middle of the night when half the playerbase was sleeping, or as someone else said, missed everyone? It's not hard to do.