When I joined the game (near it’s population peak) every high sec system seemed to have a can-flipping suspect baiter in a belt somewhere. Hulkageddon was a thing that was widely accepted. Newbies were joining corps and the in-game voice forced you to listen to your corp mates by default, who would properly set expectations that high sec was dangerous unless certain mitigations were followed. Anonymous toons were placing small bounties on anyone without one – not large enough to have your friend kill you, just small enough to annoy you. People also were constantly spying on you – anyone could “add contact” and be notified of when you were online, even in high sec, coupled with locator agents. Every hub had scam alts and scam contracts filling the chat, even backwaters like Rens. Scam buy and sell orders were 0.01isking each other, in addition to the non-scam marketeers doing normal 0.01isking.
People worked hard to be safe in high sec, and others worked hard so that as soon as someone dipped a toe into low sec, piracy endued.
That was when the game was “thriving” by the numbers: it was incredibly dangerous and the player population understood that, or risk being laughed at on in-game comms and being told to play WoW or Scam Citizen (which was firmly a fresh scam).