Welcome to PPT Icyshelf and welcome back to Neopets. A lot of things have changed in the past year and a half. Some people have given a wonderful synopsis of events. I'll answer your questions as well though, just so you have even more people to listen to
Are there now any ways of making money other than restocking or hoarding? World Challenges used to be a great way to make money for some people, but there have been some changes in the past several weeks that have made this way of making money not so great anymore. To read what's going on with the World Challenges, read this thread:
http://www.pinkpt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24508
Are there better ways to train? Not that I know of. There's still the training places on Mystery Island and Krawk Island. There's the upper level training school on Mystery Island, but I don't know what stats you have to have in order to use that school (I obviously don't have pets with stats high enough). Other than the training schools, there are still faerie quests (you don't know which pet will be affected, so not a reliable way to train), kitchen quests on Mystery Island, and Coltzan's Shrine. I use the lab to train one of my pets. It's pretty unreliable because things can go up or down, and you have no control whatsoever, but it's fun.
Do petpets have any new significance? The only real significance petpets have are avatars. If you are an avatar collecter, there are quite a few avatars that require aged petpets. There's also now the petpet laboratory. Your petpet can gain or lose levels, get name changes, color changes, or species changes (which can help you get one of those aged petpet avatars).
Are autobuyers still a problem? Of course. If only there was a way to stop them. And now there are other problems to deal with, mainly cookie grabbers. See this thread if you're interested in what's going on with that:
http://www.pinkpt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24440
How's everyone doing? Pretty good here. Neopets life is good. Real life, not good, not bad, just there.
How far have you advanced since, say, May of last year? Quite far. Finally had over 1 million Neopoints in the bank. Bought a couple morphing potions for my pets. Bought the lab map and petpet lab map. Bought a weewoo. Completed the Lost Desert Plot (you may see it referred to as the LDP). Participated in the Maraquan plot.
Have there been any good plots? Oh yeah! The LDP was great! Best plot I have ever participated in. I would have never gotten through it though if it wasn't for some wonderful people here at PPT.
Have the plots crashed? Well, the Hannah and the Ice Caves plot I thought was terrible, especially with the battling. And there was to be a new Sloth plot with Kreludor, but TNT never got it off the ground.
Has neopets gone south? In some ways, yes (ads anyone?). In some ways, no. I try to see only the good things. If I concentrated on the bad things all the time, I probably wouldn't be playing anymore.