If anything I'd like them to merge ship 3 and 4 right now..
I'm on ship 3 and recently came back after a few months break. Even with christmas and the new years, the game feels really dead compared to how it was back with the Steam release.
Channels 1 and 42 are really the only populated ones (34 and 50 being the only others getting to half a bar), with 1 being the single channel that actually hits cap during peak hours, while the things like concerts fill up 42. Every other time? It feels like there's still people missing.
Keep seeing the same people over and over in UQ's too, and if you join a "once only" quest late, it often doesn't even fill. Regular quests? Unless it's a daily, there's nobody to be seen.
We don't know how much the population will spike once NGS comes out.. but it's still at least half a year until launch of that, and to play with what feels like such low population really sucks.