As far as I know, autotraining works like it should. The battlegrounds however, were customized on Uthgard like so; Braemar 1-35 (its actually 20-35, but taking the keep gives 20% XP bonus to 1-35 lvl range,) Wilton 36-43, Thidranki 44-49. The revamp is supposed to re-adjust the BGs to be what they were during actual classic live times, like Caledonia etc.
Taking over a keep for your realm, grants a 20% XP bonus realm-wide, for the level range of the BG itself. The free single line respecs are at 5, 20 and 40, and from what I remember they do not carry over - so you either use them when you get them or lose them when you level up.
You can see their current progress at
uthgard.net, there's currently no ETA available for when the server will be up. They're trying to make it as accurate as possible, to math the post-SI classic era.
As for the reason why I and others who played it already, don't play the Genesis server anymore, there's another thread with like 20 reasons - stability was one of them but not the only major issue.