If you guys haven't played for a while (since pre 1.9 anyways) you'll find things are very different now, especially in terms of making kinah - on the flipside things are crazy expensive now.
PvP is also a whole different ball-game, and it's mostly limited to Inngisson/Silentera Canyon/Gelkmaros now - the Abyss sees very little action nowadays. It'll probably even see less after the 3.0 patch, but that's still miles away.