Hello! I have a pretty big question to ask, but I must present my quandary before I ask away.

Back when ESO was announced to be going in to a state of several closed betas, my old community decided to try out ESO as sort of a last ditch effort to keep people interested and playing. So, we played the Betas and weren't overly impressed. We concluded that since it was in beta, it was likely that we weren't getting the full experience. So, we continued with our plans. We started out in ESO and played for a few weeks. By the end of those couple of weeks we were already mostly burnt out and we all lost interest. The community itself mostly died off because of how unappealing the game seemed for the large, cooperatively driven group that we were. Most of our issues stemmed in the instancing and then how much effort it took just to stick together. Even further, we found the PvP in Cyrodiil particularly frustrating because of how disorganized it was (looking at the players mostly, and then how being a ranged fighter gave an upper hand). So, after two years I have decided to look in to the game for the community I am in now. This brings me to my questions:

1. Has ESO developed to the point in which it supports party play further (with no instancing BS blocking people from questing together)?
2. Has the Cyrodiil PvP become organized and balanced to the point that anyone can have a good time? (of course, it doesn't have to appeal to everyone, I just want to know if it is decently balanced and consists of more than riding your horse for 5 minutes just to get to a battle that gets you killed almost immediately, only to repeat the process; Basically, how much has it improved since its' first month of release)
3. ESO seemed to actually be decently established with the system of a player Guild. What changes have been made in the way of player guilding features?
4. How has the crafting and gathering changed? Improved, made worse, the same, or have been changes but not really much better or worse.
5. How is the population of the game at this point?
6. What does the process of getting to max level and hitting end game look like?
7. What does the process of reviving people look like? Still using crystals? If so, is it still really out of the question for early game players or not?
8. Are the large DLCs a "buy to play"? If so, is the only choice to pay IRL currency, or is there a way to pay in-game currency of sorts (reminiscent of EVE's Plex or Wildstar's C.R.E.D.D)?
9. How helpful are the developers?
10. Do the devs listen to the community?

Well, that's all I can think of for now. Thanks for any help!

TL;DR Was here for launch. Quit because game was borderline atrocious for groups. Thinking about trying again. Any tips?