1 - lord tonys back after being gone for like 2 years or so and this time hes cleaned up his act a fair bit but some people still have a raging hate-boner for him, mostly just blockchip though.
2 - the majority of people here are pretty much the same old group, most of us have been playing for a long time. me personally, ive been playing BL for over 6 years now.
3 - the "blockland is dying" thing is something that badspot
even made a thread for, interestingly enough. however, asking the question these days is a bad idea cause you could get banned for doing so.
3a - new meta add-ons? i dont understand what this means. are you meaning large gamemodes that lots of people use, or some new default gamemode/feature? i can tell you that slayer is pretty big right now, but its fairly buggy.
3b - after rtb's shutdown a lot of archives for it have sprung up, but most of them are currently no longer functioning. AFAIK the only one still working is
swollow's. there's also been some less-than-successful attempts at making replacements for rtb, mostly blockland glass (not affiliated with kalphiter this time, its being done by scout31) and oRBS (being done by daprogs). however IMO neither are very good. im still hoping for steam workshop implementation myself.
hope that answers your questions