This. @Krimson is totally correct on this. If I had a guess most people playing the game did nothing with Emp Merits and they just accumulated on toons.
What happens when the game has an excess of Emp Merits? Two possibilities, people miss out on content and rewards or, the danger of a large number of players cashing out at the same time causing the in game economy to crash.
I really believe if we had access to the game numbers they would show few people where spending their Emp Merits and there was a huge excess of them in game.