I reckon it's at least doubled and likely more than that the number of total active players, based on what I've seen of system traffic reports and other activity indicators.A better question would be, were any of the free epic accts sold even new players at all? Or is it just fake numbers pretending to be new players when its really all just people who are already playing the game and don't really mean anything at all statistically.....
Some of that will be "I've got an new alt or six, better play more than I normally would to build them up" but very unlikely to be all of it.
(The Fuel Rats probably wouldn't be so busy rescuing alts, for example)