Still the same areas, but fewer and farther in between since the only newbies we will get are those that we send invites to. One of the side-effects of the un-launching.
I"ve run into a bunch of (really aggressive and demanding!) level 4s in Gregarious Grange this month. Usually I post on global if I see one, though not if they're being awful and don't deserve gifts....
If I ran into more than a couple of aggressive and demanding level 4s in Gregarious Grange, I would probably suspect multi abuse and might submit a report requesting the devs look into the matter...
The devs may be testing the new player experience, since this is something stoot and others have mentioned as being changed. If that's happening, there may be some "new players" who've been recruited as participants in usability testing.
I don't think the devs would come on as new players just to play games, but there may be non-dev folks who are doing this with alts. IIRC, you level-up quickly at the beginning of the game. Maybe it's difficult to remain a level 3, but not so difficult to remain a level 4.
@Katlazam, I have wondered if it could be one player I keep meeting, especially as there is a distinctive style of address (-DO YOU HAVE A WATERING CAN? -DO YOU HAVE A WATERING CAN? -CAN I HAVE IT -WAIT - NO -WAIT -SORRY -I MEAN - CAN I KEEP IT) but the most recent one (CAN YOU TELEPORT AND DO YOU HAVE TOKENS, CAN YOU TELEPORT AND DO YOU HAVE TOKENS, etc., demanding that I carry him to meet a friend in Chakra Phool!) suggested an actual new player, or he'd have known you don't need tokens to TP. On the other hand if it's one person who only plays the lower levels.... perhaps not. So yes, I wish I had written down their names so I could ask.