War mode has zero to do with your complaint of the world feeling empty. War mode doesn't create a solo experience because you never would have seen those other players without it due to the PvP and PvE server splits. War mode simply allows any server to contribute to the PvP or PvE player pools. Your complaint is against shard technology. That is what limits the amount of players in one instance of the game world in order to reduce server load and increase performance.