Back on topic...
I've been playing for eight years as of last month; about seven to seven and a half of those have been spent as part of the group of EVE players who consider themselves roleplayers. At this point, here's how I see the situation:
Roleplay itself is neither dead nor dying. Neither, to be fair, is the population of players who consider themselves roleplayers. There are people coming and going all the time. What is changing is the ratio of content producers/creators to content consumers within that population.
When I started, there were far more people creating content for people to RP with. And the content being produced was varied, and there was usually at least something for everyone to get involved in that suited them and their character(s). These days, the producers' numbers are dwindling. Low turnout to planned and announced events (if any turnout at all), negative attitudes regarding those events either stated via channels or shitposting on the forums... is it really all that surprising that some are throwing our hands up in the air, going "fuck this," and walking away?
On the other hand, the number of content consumers (for simplicity's sake, I'm considering consumers to be people not hosting events or arcs or the like, and generally just lurking waiting for something to happen that they can react to; it's not the ideal definition but it's close enough for discussion's sake) has not just remained stable over the years but has multiplied in number. There's lots of people out there waiting to do stuff... but with the reduced number of people creating content, the variety of that content has also shrunk, and so many of the consumers don't have content that "fits" them.
It's a bit of a self-feeding cycle. The more content producers that get discouraged by low/poor response to the events and arcs they put time and effort into, the fewer events and arcs there will be for the content consumers. The fewer content producers there are creating stuff for people to do, the smaller the likelihood that what stuff is still being created is going to "fit" the content consumers out there. And the fewer content consumers that "fit" the stuff being created for them... the higher the chance that content producers will stop bothering to keep trying.
The obvious solution, of course, is to just have more people stepping up and creating content.
But it requires people to put in time and effort, and let's face it... we've got a lot of lazy (within this context) people among the roleplayer population.