So, Cahal, are you telling me that all those people leveled up as there is nothing significant to be done at low lvls (1-5)? You might be right and here's why.
1) Arena at lvl 1-5 is dead because of heavy PayPallers with full runed purple armor along with lvl 10 mounts against none is willing to queue, so they either left the game (which is more frequent option), or leveled up.
Why are they looking like demi-gods? It's because game now provides more stuff to be bought, like reputation...so to be lvl 5 and to have Purple/Red BoE/V, you HAVE to be a PayPaller. Back then, many of us queued, it didn't matter what kind of gear we had, we enjoyed the game. Here's proof of that >
http://i40.tinypic.com/osqzhv.jpg
2)There are no Healers at Wirgold anymore which explains complete situation as well as reason of lowered number of new players. In most cases, who wants to do Valour, the one must go for BoE or BoV, others are just Hunters or lefters.
Non-Paypallers could compete against PayPallers some time ago, now...they can't.