What should RS3 gold you know- someone whose name looks my very own! First of all, welcome back. What's the grind like today? It is definitely a lot easier training your skills. Bonus experience has come to be very, very common, and matters like Loadouts, Presets, and also the Action bar make skilling a lot easier. There's still a great deal of grind, but I believe it is safe to say that the xp/h for every skill has gone up since you were last playingwith.
What's the impact of inflation been and how challenging is that the moneymaking process from scratch? The introduction of a strict tier program has really changed costs. Back in the days, the"great" slayer equipment will be Bandos, a whip and a dragon guardian. Now, if you own some of those items, you are regarded as a noob. But this has a couple of benefits: lots of things are dirt cheap at the moment. If you don't have chaotics (I've a feeling you wrote the Dungeoneering guide, but I'll still continue) then a team of light, abyssal whip and hands cannon are all tier 70-75 weapons that are beneath 90k.
Making money from scratch? I would say it's simpler than it once was. At this point you have Lodestones, which basically teleport you to many major cities. In itself makes the process much easier. If you're more of the combat person, Frost Dragons are still your location to go.
Is there still a people for a lot of these activities? Quite a few have died out, sadly. Some activities (like Castle Wars and Barbarian Assault) are a necessity for the Completionists Cape, which means you should be able to detect people playing those buy OSRS gold matches.