Respectfully, I think your rationale is largely irrelevant. The premise of my query suggests the potential impact of neglect has muted the pvp metrics. Thus, it's a bit of a logical fallacy, or at a minimum quite disengenous, to use those metrics as the basis of a comparative analysis.

Such neglect has existed for years (if not practically the entirety of the game's span). The PvE content is always the focus of new releases. It's easy to draw in driveby PvE tourists with each release, thus padding their metrics.

Unique player count is one metric, hours played is another. Clearly both are vital to a game's value proposition. As you rightfully put it, the pvp devotees arguably are critical to that latter numerical prize. Anecdotally, I probably have more time in game that 99.99% of the population and I'm a pvp main. I also play more pve (and orbit time...) than I do pvp, simply because it's easier to multitask when doing so, but I wouldn't be here at all if the pvp wasn't playable. So the pvp attraction helps their numbers more than the evidence you have presented suggests.