There's a decrease in players simply due to the fact that there are tons of new MMOs out there now, this game was epic back in the day and still might be one of the most enjoyable MMOs out there. Always felt like older MMOs like Cabal and World of Warcraft are miles ahead of everything else just in terms of sheer content.
I logged onto Cabal this weekend after several years without it and I couldn't recognize the game, item upgrading system was completely overhauled, all melee classes' initiation skills were nerfed pretty hard with enormous cooldowns and SP consumption added to them (for obvious reasons if you ever played this game).
The level cap is at 190 now, when I last played it was 170 and doing FT b2f was an achievement you'd dream about at night, now people are solo'ing it and there's like a tremendous amount of new dungeons and nation PvP maps that I've lost track of.
Crafting was overhauled as well, I can't come to grips with this new system to be honest lolz.
Leveling was vastly improved, remember the 30 minute long battle style promotion dungeons? GONE! Now your battle style level up missions are a lot faster with only 1 step as far as I can tell. Your mission rewards now include Skill EXP and insane amounts of alz, no more spending weeks figuring out how to raise enough alz to just max out your skills and a few more weeks afterwards to get half decent gear.
There's apparently a battle mode 3 as well which must be attainable at later levels I assume, also 2 empty SP bars which must be related to it.
Just to name a few of the improvements I've seen, been back for 4 days and counting.