Well, I haven't played this game since 2004, so I have no idea what I'm talking about (even though back in the glory days I was the masteh) but I wanna chime my 2 cents anyways.
Basically pvp is as fun as the players make it be. If you have jerk-faces in pvp, then it sucks. It's always been that way since begining of player vs player combat (like quake1 and stuff) But if you *fun* polite pvpers, that actually say things like "good fight" or even chat with you afterwards, then pvp becomes fun because now you make buddies - even though they can kill you, your not mad because you know its all in good fun.
PvP starts to become avoidable when the immature peeps start manifesting themselves as avoidable jerks. That might be why the zones are empty (no first hand experience here)
