When Cimmeria came out, there were 'unspoken' rules for pvp, where it was considered bad form to attack questing players with a group or while they were fighting mobs, or attacking lowbies. Players getting ganked could call out in global for help and other players would come chase off the 'offending' parties.
Then Tyranny merged in and attacking questing players or players at the npc became the norm. Or hiding on rocks to ambush players was considered good form. And if anyone asked for help, they usually got called "QQers" or such and were ridiculed.
I left about when Fury came in as I already was not doing minis, sieges were pretty much over and minis were just ress pad farming on either side (not much fun to have it happen to you and I didn't like it when my team did it to the other guys: I'd be sitting and fighting the totem and asking for help on it).
Crom let me do the khitai content as a solo player, do faction quests (which were designed for solo content, not requiring a group to do) and basically enjoying the game. Let me go to sixmans and raids and not be farmed on the way by bored groups.
If players who attacked another player engaged in mobs would be then attacked by the engaged mobs or miniboss, then it would have been a lot more 'realistic' to me. The being attacked doing solo quests is what broke the camels back for me and caused me to make brand new characters on Wiccana (didn't do transfers, just made new characters) right after Khitai came out.
Pvpers wanted a merge, they got the pvp servers merged, the population is dwindling...Crom is a lot more active...now some of the pvpers want a merge so they can come mess up Crom and drive more people off the game?
The big question is why is Fury dying? Are they trying to infect Crom with the same disease by merging?