If the Reserved List didn’t exist, would Vintage and Legacy be popular formats?

Legacy and especially Vintage are very rarely played these days, and I see people attribute that to the Reserved List making cards too expensive, and saying that if the RL didn’t exist, lots of people would play, but is that actually true? If that was the case, with proxies being pretty popular these days, shouldn’t we see more people playing those formats? They’re also not very popular on MTGO where the RL isn’t a problem. If the cards were less expensive, do you think they’d become popular on the level of Modern or Pioneer? Would you personally be interested in playing?