So after about ... four? Five? Dunno... years of absence I think I want to give it another whirl. It was, after all, the most entertaining game I played (I mean, where else could you play a bureaucrat?). I love games with a high focus on group play and specialisation.

Which is quite hard to pull off if you don't have a group anymore. What good am I as a doc who can heal anything, anywhere, anytime when I can't get a mob down because I can't find an enfi/soldier to do the dirty job for me? And it's no fun being a bureaucrat, stunning, mezzing and slowing enemies does not kill them, no matter how much XP bonus I'd get for it if it ever happened.

Hence the question: How's the population levels? I also found the game most interesting before the expansions (AI pretty much killed the game for me back in the days), so F2P looks appealing for the cheapskate that is me. I'll miss the Shadowlands, but I could do without it. Original FTW! But ... does anyone seriously play that at all? I mean, past level 20ish? Before they get fed up with slow leveling and long traveling? I'd love to play a bureaucrat or a doc with a strong focus on healing, but alone either is basically impossible (or at least very, very frustrating). And I'm not really in the mood of creating 8 accounts and trying to juggle them to be my own team, that kinda defeats the idea of playing a group based game...

Also, I don't know jack anymore. I might still be able to stat a doc, but anything more complex is probably going to be a failure. I dimly remember that back when I quitted, it was not possible to reclaim spent IP, did that change? Or is everything still set in stone? 

So what it comes down to, is anyone still playing "classic AO"? Or is everyone off to fight the aliens and whatever came past it?

I'd guess something like 40-50% of the people you see running around in the major cities are fr00bs.  They are a big % of the population up thru around level 60 (thru the Temple of Three Winds), and at higher levels are less common, either because they became paying players, or ran out of easy content to chew on.  Past 60 there are no easy dungeons and you need to have, by that point, learned how to really equip your player - implants higher than your own level, etc...  There are a few freebie players at higher levels, some have even formed all-fr00b guilds.  They're often the ones who often have 3,000 - 5,000 side tokens as they don't mind doing lots and lots of missions.

As for doctors and crats, most low level teams really don't need either - the damage profs, grouped in teams, kill stuff fast enough to not need significant healing; and crat XP buffs don't become really attractive until closer to level 100 (and their AAO/AAD buffs aren't a factor until closer to 200).  Doctors and crats are crucial in higher level teams, they just have a rough time early on.  That being said, doctors on LFT should still be able to get teams pretty easy as all the DD profs have been told they need to have a doc present in their team.

Population levels are good but be aware that a large % of the newbie players will bullheadedly try to solo (or just team with their RL buddies they started the game with) and skip doing anything in teams unless they are after some item that requires bigger help (like getting a Stygian Desolator off Aztur).