is pvp a good way to level up ?

yes but too bad barely anyone trains anymore, i can't even find a party at bw/golems even in scania

As someone hinted above, everyone is probably hunting for Angelic Ring recipes and/or leveling their professions and personality traits.
Give it a little time, things will go back to normal.

I'm assuming that Future Ereve or LHC would beat PvP in %exp/hr.

I'm thinking this will depend on class.... Not going anywhere near Stronghold with my crappy HP anyway. ^__^v

And Zenith's LHC was dead even before people were farming AB recipes. It's only sometimes full even during 2x exp. Almost all the grinders got to lvl 200, loooool.

Yay for small servers and bringing more new servers out.