Warning: I really tried to answer only the OP's question, but some sadness/frustration on my part concerning the server surfaced. As I think it's constructive criticism, I've decided to keep it.
To answer the OP's question: No, I don't think that the new OGS is empty. But there are two factors that I'd say are making any positive progress difficult (acutally, I think thre are quite a few more, but these seem most important to me):
First, its the server's origin of a turn-based server. Most of the people registered on OGS have been looking for turn-based games and not for live games. So the new possibility might seem like like a nice bonus but not as something essentially interesting to them.
Second (and for me more grave) is the server's current built up which unfortunately suggests that it is actually empty. For example, there is no list that shows which players are online at this point of time (you can only see that with your friends), so I think many people are discouraged from opening life challenges because they don't know if someone close to their own strength is there (or even, like it is visible on IGS, actually looking out for a game) and there are also none / very few game challenges open.
For my part I can say that I already opened a few challenges for life games and if I count one time out where no one showed up shortly after the merge and the one time someone showed up but didn't play even one move, I always got a game going pretty quickly. Still, not knowing who's online now and not seeing any open challenges might have a negative effect psychology-wise. It is discouraging. It doesn't suggest that your in an active, lively community (if it wasn't for the forums I wouldn't even have the slightest feeling of community). It might even scare (new) people away. Personally, I think that's the key problem right now.
This might be especially true for new users coming to OGS. In the last 2 days I observed the count of registered users and it climbed by about 100. 100! This is a pretty huge number for a Go server I think (I leave those Asian servers out). I don't know if this was a coincidence or not but still, it's something you can think about. If we assume that there might be about 250 new accounts per week, then this raises the question of why the situation hasn't improved much since the merge. Personally, I blame the build-up and the lack of any noticeable progress in the debugging of the site in the last few weeks. After the merge there were many new functions, some of which worked and some of which didn't. After a few weeks now, I have not only the impression that more features are not working which have worked before (switching the little images from your games to game lists for example), but that the debugging is not happening at all anymore. For example after weeks (!) it is still not possible for some users to post something legible in the forums, whenever they post something the text is missing.
To be honest, this is a pretty huge cause of frustration for me, because if the site worked properly (that means if the functions available + the player's list were up and working), then this would for me really be the perfect server: Being able to play turn-based AND live games with one login is very attractive to me and since the merge made me play more regularly than before (which, because of my now not so bad but still-existant OGA is a feat). Still, every time I log on, every time I open a challenge and every time I'm making my move I'm really sad that this great potential lies to waste at the moment. It could all be so great..
I'm sticking up to it for now, but if there won't happen anything anytime soon... I don't know. 
Of course. I'm aware that all work on the site is done by people who sacrifize their free time for it (and I'm thankful for it! Merging two sites is by no means an easy task) and I AM understanding, but still.. more information would help here. I'm aware of the CHangelog page but it's been very quiet and nothing has been posted this month yet. Or in november.
