I agree so much with this. I used Replit extensively to prototype things in different languages and share my work with my teammates, who could then suggest tweaks to my ideas. We never came close to the limits of the free tier, but I paid for it anyway because I loved the product.
The magic is definitely gone.
FWIW you can still start from template environments by going to "Developer Frameworks," picking an example language, and clicking "Remix."
It's not as nice as before though. I miss when free accounts could have unlimited projects.