Anytime combat is broken and not fixed, PVPers will quit and likely will not play. They are also more dependent on other people playing.

When you have 50 to 100 people playing and you split that to say best case 50 to 25 people per server. It will have a major impact on PVP.
It's common sense.
People didn't leave with totem decay, people came back. Not sure how much you have been playing, or what you know but you can simply ask in the questions and answers to the dev on what changes he thought effected the server the greatest and he will likely say that was one of the best ones for the server, along with carts.

You make me laugh about the gear. I could kill any player in game 1 v 1 naked with a shovel. I can kill any animal in the game naked and with my preorder weapon. Saying it's gear dependent makes me laugh pretty hard. Along with so many other incorrect statements like people leaving because of XYZ.
Xsyon didn't remove old saw blades and people left, he put them back in the game. When Xsyon first removed old saw blades few people even knew about the change for a long time. It wasnt until months later that people started to cry about it, then he put it back in the game. Did you see people come back in mass because of it? No. You are trying to say all these things were bad for the game, but the sad part is the data doesn't support your thoughts.
Baskets do not decay just FYI.

If you played the game at the start people did leave overnight. Major things that effected the # of people were 12 hour server roll backs, GM abuse, and massive server downtime. These happened within the first few days of release of the game. There were 1000s of people playing this game.

Znaiika, there is equal choice, I agree. If the game would had started with PVP or PVE servers I would have said go for it. But once you are down to 50 to 100 active players. You don't split that group up, that is just silly and one of the worst ideas ever.

Sadly I think the best thing for the game is a fresh start server once steam comes out, that is mixed PVP and PVE areas. I doubt we will see the second part, but the first we might see as a 3rd server IF steam does ok. Is my guess.