I might be wrong here, but in games like DAoC, there are things you can actually do when there aren't others around.
But in Planetside, you don't get manys bonuses for captured undefended bases. We've been told that the number of BEPs you recieve is affected by the "threat factor" of the area, i.e. the more enemies the more BEPs you get.
So if you were there when everyone else wasn't, you wouldn't get many more BEPs although you would be able to capture bases (which would then be recaptured the next day
).