Runes of Magic US / AU

I used to be an avid player of Runes of Magic. I had quit the game early in January as I wanted to focus most of my energy on other things, namely my engineering internship.


As such, I have not played in a long time and am wondering what exactly has changed since the end of 2011. I see classes have been added, a new race and level cap to 72.


My progress in game was obtaining some amount of tosh hm items. The amount of time required and the general inactivity of almost the entire server (not to mention only latenight gaming) also had great weight in my decision to leave.


It looks like the website and everything has had a major overhaul, so the main questions I would like to ask are:


1) Has the server population increased back to previous levels, namely on Reni?
2) New IS item that allows to switch between races? (my inclination is highly doubt it)
3) Has bug fixing gotten much better? (i.e. no items disappearing from chests, customer support increased care)
4) Has communication between Runewaker and Frogster increased?
5) Who on Reni still plays that I will know? =P.
6) How's the new zone?


Thanks for even reading, and much appreciated if you do answer. I am possibly thinking of making a more 'casual' return to the game (assuming I still have my gear and didn't give it all away)


--Signia

So the same mixture of good and bad almost? How's the in game economy holding up? was in ruins when I left.

Is the level 72 gear that stuff that was in the IP? I'd imagine I'd be behind on gear by now as I didn't upgrade to tosh weapons by the time I had left (we had obtained some before I left but I knew I was not going to stay so I was not going to take it). For runes I'd be fine I'd imagine unless they did something crazy (X runes of a lot of things). I figured the new instance would be boring as tosh hm was much more difficult than the other instances they had (and for good reason, unlike diamond RT). Not sure if that sounds promising. Thanks for the info guys. I'll stop posting here now =).