There's actually a lot of the old guard still here, it's just that the site is to big now that they're hard to find. You can usually find them lurking in the Dice RP section, though, looking for games.
The biggest change from the old site is the fact that RPs don't have individual forms anymore. There was an announcement on it a while back, something about malicious code. An alternate system fills the same roll, though, which is probably why it all looks so strange.