Well, if you were searching someone who played, talked with players on other worlds alot (im still in contact with a nice amount) and read the forums longer enough to be able to judge such a thing, I may be your man
Ive played all world since W11 and played at least 20 of them seriously enough to be able to compare them, and to have a nice view on .net (yea... I played too on other servers)
In my opinion, I think your right but as I see it, its only slightly more dead, inactive etc...
there are the reasons I would gave
I remember a while ago on the general forum (I think) a thread with a map of every world that existed. the goal of this thread was to see how much barbarians there were, and W16 had the most if we were looking at the map. (things may have changed...) non growing barbs and slow speed gives the nice amount of barbarians here... Maybe on this point we have lost players who liked to make clusters or to grow by barbs simply... But this also gives an aditionnal value to the villages who are not tiny.
This being said, W16 earlier was (still my opinion) slightly more in war than normal because the way to grow at a nice rate needed a bit more nobling between players.
Due to settings again(like world speed) and events on the worlds, many players left W16 and many players also were rimmed (a bit more than normal as explain before) (this occur on many worlds, dont worry I know xD)
Saying also that this world exist for some time already and also new players cant come in for some time... The number of players, and active players cant really show activity as much as there can be on other worlds younger. An old world is less active if we think that less players are playing it. If theres less players with more villages, at a certain point the time allowed to each village decrease also... (on ealry stage we farm like hell, and now we arent doing this hell farming with each of our villages...) This can also be revelant on fighting between eachother. Also, with less tribes, theres less conflicts...
EN10 Enter World 10 Section
707 players, 347,485 villages, 94 tribes
EN11 Enter World 11 Section
1,166 players, 332,980 villages, 90 tribes
EN12 Enter World 12 Section
828 players, 336,211 villages, 98 tribes
EN13 Enter World 13 Section
1,411 players, 318,375 villages, 126 tribes
EN14 Enter World 14 Section
1,073 players, 230,797 villages, 80 tribes
EN15 Enter World 15 Section
1,066 players, 323,034 villages, 105 tribes
EN16 Enter World 16 Section
1,890 players, 309,738 villages, 197 tribes
EN17 Enter World 17 Section
2,160 players, 290,844 villages, 167 tribes
EN18 Enter World 18 Section
1,860 players, 333,756 villages, 169 tribes
EN19 Enter World 19 Section
2,349 players, 311,033 villages, etc...
To compare worlds you have also to compare them when they have the same age, and take in consideration the speed of the world... (a speed 2 world becomes older twice more than a speed 1 world by example, its not accurate like this xD)
Due to the speed world again, you must take in consideration that everything is slower here than some other worlds. The duration of the war is longer, and the duration of recovery from a war is longer, the duration between 2 conflicts is longer etc... Were just in a part that recent and fast changes put the emphasize on what wasnt moving.
My last point is about the merges. being on a slow world (like explain on other posts) encourages diplomacy, so merges are pretty much encouraged also. We must consider that we are humans playing TW so we are not different from the other worlds players, but playing on different conditions. Merges are a good way to end unsolvable conflicts who takes jsut too much time for our patience. If there would be a winner fast, im pretty sure this would not end like a merge... So, saying that the top tribes will not war but merge is false I think, they will probably merge because they warred
(remember that your most vulnerable in time of war, and that it can be a wise move to stop being vulnerable to others, and double stronger by the merge
)
sorry for such a long post...