There’s a couple here and there, it’s not like new players have completely stopped joining, but there’s not that many.

That's typical when you hit market saturation/have an established game. Look at wow or RuneScape. The revenue comes from the people already playing your game.

The new light onboarding really was abysmal when I went through it earlier this year

You should've seen it before beyond light launched.

"Go shoot that, now that, now that. I'm so glad you're back guardian. Welcome to the tower."

My friends and I started without anyone to pull us through that mess, and we figured out what to do with Google and just clicking on things. We've since grown to a group of like 10ish, but yeah ... Like newer people don't really get what it was like before. It's not great, but it's gotten better.