I'm firmly against altitis, it doesn't actually alter the lack of population problem, just might keep one or two people who want to play alts around.
The long term problem is repititve grinding with no real gain. Yes, augments are nice, but without GM, most augments are only flavour skills/spells at best(which is how I treated augments, to put towards the Daklore flavour of RP). Legendaries are pretty limited to the top of the tier people because, well... I hog them(hey, I'm logged in more than most people, it's gonna happen) and legendaries themselves are already strung thin and... not really very varied.
What the game needs is something to make the grind less of a grind, and add something to do other than quest and level. RP is always going to be optional, unless you have IMMs sitting there constantly introducing in-game RP events, like zombies invading Murkwood.
And the problem with "invasions" from mobiles, is that the massive differences in ability and survivability levels give, it'll end up geared to only a small portion of the populace anyway. So... giving them a "Rested" bonus isn't really going to offer much, only to people with alts. Which doesn't resolve the underlying issue.