Ironically, HC is partly what flooded Era servers, over saturating Whitemane and Mankirk, and bringing in the crazy Season of GDKP & Inflation.
Era was at a very healthy population level prior to that with much less emphasis on GDKP, RMT, and botting. Certainly not dead then, nor now. Vanilla wow has had a community for 20 years now. Always will.
PS come check out the dead server I play on, Grobbulus, where GDKP doesn’t exist and where Patchwerk met his fate last week, and is about to see his end again tonight. He’s totally totally dead. More dead than undead. Just like the server 
WANTED - Patchwerk - Dead or Bust